KITCHENER'S RAILWAY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1511, 14 February 1901, Page 62

KITCHENER'S RAILWAY.

The unstoppable, go-aheadness of Lord Kitchener is paid ;• warm tribute by a writer in the Boston “National Magazine," and there can be no disputing it that Kitchener’s “double track” was a record-breaker in point- of time and importance of alacrity. When Bloemfontein passed from the possession -of the Grange Free State into that of the English, Lord Kitchener, the supply and engineering head of the English Army, found the single track road from Bloemfontein to Johannesburg must be double tracked. So great- was the stock of munitions of war at hand at Bloemfontein, so urgent the need of them at Johannesburg, that the- old-style single track line could not be depended upon to convey them. They say—those who were in Bloemfontein at the time—that the better part of the nearly eight miles of double track was laid in forty-eight hours —some of it could not be laid at all owing to the mountainous character of the country. But Lord Kitchener, having his rails and ties at hand, with a few spikes and much good British muscle in store, placed the ties uphill and downhill wherever they would lay/ laid his rails upon them, drove his spikes, tamp/ ed a little, ballasted much less, and shoved in Ids trains of supplies. liv'dAS place the rails were so poorly held that human agencies were employed to keep them in position while t-lie cars passed bafely over. However, Johannesburg got the supplies it needed, and the Kitchener "“double track” will pass into history as the quickest laid—without survey or grading—in the history of war railroad-building.