The Railway Conquest of the World

IN order to describe fully the complete conquest which the iron horse has accomplished in British India, volumes would be required. In that country the steel highway has been driven forward in the face of prodigious difficulties of every description; the story is an exciting romance.

But the features which impress the traveler most strongly are the bridges. Some compel more than passing interest because of their great length, such as the Sone bridge, on the East Indian railway, which consists of 9 spans, giving the structure a total length of 10,952 feet, making it one of the longest bridges in the world; or the Godavari over the river of the same name on the Madras North-East line, 9,066 feet in length; others because of their height, as, for instance, the Gokteik Viaduct in Burma, 325 feet high; or the Dhorabhave Viaduct, 178 feet above the stream; while here and there attention is challenged because of the massive proportions of the structure or its unusual design, as, for instance, the Jubilee Bridge across the river Hooghly at Naihati, or the Lansdowne Bridge across the Indus at Sukkur, the main span of which is 790 feet clear.

It may be safe to assert that no country has offered the bridge-builder such striking opportunities to display his ability or enterprise as the Indian Empire. The Americans point to the great width of their waterways, and the huge structures which leap across the Mississippi, Missouri or Columbia rivers, but, compared beside the erections which carry the railway across the Indian waterways, they appear puny.

The Indian rivers are famous for their great width, and the extent to which they break up the country through