WILLIAM HOOD '67 Chief Engineer of the Southern Pacific Railroad Lines

If there is any one class of men more than another of whom it may be said: "By their works ye shall know them," it is the great class or confraternity of engineers*. Impatient of talk, they are men of deeds rather than words. Their joy in life is to plan and build and gain dominion over Nature according to the primal command in Genesis.

Only sixty years ago, just before the civil war, the Rocky Mts. and "great American desert", inhabited by hostile Indian tribes, separated the middle west from the Pacific slope. The nation maintained a chain of army posts along the shifting frontier of this vast domain. Then the principal occupation of the U. S. army was to fight Indians, from the Canada line to Texas. The Fort Snelling massacre occurred during the war and the Custer massacre and Modoc war soon after. The Union and Central Pacific, railroads, completed in the late sixties, — the first trans-continental railroad in the world, constantly required protection by detachments from the army for its surveyors and builders, who, indeed, often dropped their tools and took up arms to beat off the foe. Many are now living who saw the great herds of buffalo and deer on the great plains and shot them from the trains. So short is the interval within which our western frontier has been pushed across what then seemed almost an illimitable country, until it has been crowded into the Pacfic ocean; and already the western wave of empire has begun to recoil upon itself, and the nation has turned back to redeem the wilderness by the construction of vast reclamation works.

The means by which this great empire has swept over the continent and laid its foundations in fewer years than heretofore required centuries, is the railroad. All intelligent people know this, but one must needs travel over the rails of one or more of the nine great trunk lines which now cross the continent to really understand what a mighty conquest the railroad has made. The thoughtful traveller in the sumptuous through train of today,traversing these vast wildernesses of deserts and mountains, needs but little imagination to realize what a struggle the pioneer surveyors and builders maintained against the apparently inconquerable opposition which such a country presents.

A Dartmouth man, who attended the Chandler Scientific School in its early period, has the unusual distinction of an uninterrupted lifelong Connection with the greatest of these trans-continental systems, which by its steamship line to New Orleans, controls traffic from New York to San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.' William Hood was born in Concord, N. H., February 4, 1846. In the general catalogue of Dartmouth College he is entered as a member of the class of 1867. That same year he entered the Engineering Department of the Union Pacific Railroad "at a time when the entire trackage of what is now the Southern Pacific Company lines was about 90 miles". He states that he has been in the engineering department of the Central Pacific railroads and other lines now operated by the Southern Pacific Co., since that time, and is still in active service. This is a period of fifty-one years. He has been identified, through the various grades of engineering service to his present position (long held as directing head) with the development and extension of this great system of trackage, from the 90 miles in 1867 to 11,000 miles in 1918, — from New Orleans to San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and Ogden, Utah. In his own words: "This was strictly pioneer railroading, and a great deal of it frontier railroading of a character to require initiative and continuous hard work."

The full meaning of that statement is strongly impressed upon the traveller who rides on these lines through the great-Southwest. There are sweltering days in the deserts (thermometer from 100 to 110 degrees in the train and 120 degrees or more outside) with the fascinating views of distant mountains which slowly rise from the horizon and as slowly disappear, — ever coming but never near; the hazy atmosphere and an occasional mirage giving impressions of enchantment and unreality. In this waterless land the pioneer surveyors and builders had to carry their water supply 50 to 100 miles; and bases for every sort of supply had to be established and maintained most liberally ,to ensure the very existence of the parties. It is said that if a man wandered only a short distance out of sight of his party he would be dazed, overcome by heat and thirst, and if not rescued, would quickly perish. In a different way the forbidding conditions which the surveyors overcame among the mountains are no less impressive. The traveller finds himself in a bewildering labyrinth of lofty peaks and ridges where the roadbed twists and squirms by every sort of "horseshoe curve", hairpin curve, S curve, and spiral, climbing along the sides of seemingly impossible precipices with grades as steep as they dared to make them, running along the edges of yawning chasms and occasionally surmounting a summit commanding wide views of a maze of mountains or an outlook over widespread valleys.

Right here the general reader needs to understand that the old-time "railroad curve" was a compound of circular arcs with radii of varying length beginning with less curvature and leading to the sharp curve at the middle. But the transition from a straight line (tangent) to a circular arc is too abrupt. If. the speed is high, say 45 miles per hour, equal to 66 ft. per second, the sudden swerve gives to the passenger a severe jerk. Therefore, as the weight and speed of trains increased, engineers devised "easement curves" to mitigate this evil and the shock to which it subjects the rolling-stock. Such are certain forms of parabolic arc and spirals now in general use. Among the best of these is Hood's spiral devised by Mr. Hood many years ago, — a very practical and excellent solution of the problem effected by a simple application of mathematics. He furnished Professor Hazen with descriptive pamphlets with tables for facilitating computation and layout, so that many classes taught by Professor Hazen in the railroad course have been well instructed in this feature of railroad practice.

Among the subjects fundamental and essential in the training of the engineer is descriptive geometry. This may be defined as the graphic art directed by geometry. It guides the artist in his drawing to keep his perspective true. No artist with even an elementary understanding of this subject would paint a sunset scene with .the horns of the crescent moon pointed towards the sun, as some have done. This subject was probably included in the curriculum of the Chandler School under Professor Woodman in the sixties. As a mental discipline no subject is better, not even the vaunted classics. Its result is a geometrical drawing, but its method requires first the exact solution of the problem by mental process. While literary training develops the imagination towards fiction and poetry this develops the geometrical sense and compels the man to be exact and true. Now for an illustration:

In a certain part of Southern California the railroad rises from a broad, fertile valley to a pass high up in the fountains. At first sight the transition seems to be too abrupt to be possible;, and the traveller on the train watches with keen interest to see how the engineer did the trick. By a series of cuts and prodigious high fills, winding by ingenious curves boldy built up from the valley floor, — upward and and onward, literally in the air, — by side-hill cuts and fills and through tunnels and more cuts, the mountain gorges are reached, and then, by continuous "heavy work", with more turns and tunnels, the summit is finally passed. Looking back from vantage points over this winding way the appreciative observer says: "This is magnificent engineering; I take off my hat to the engineer." Yet it is only one of many instances. Commenting on these impressive engineering triumphs in an interview with Mr. Hood, he said to the writer in effect: "The essence of engineering consists not so much in the mere construction of the spectacular layouts or developments (which is chiefly the business of the contractor and resident engineer), but more especially in the invention required, — the analysis of the problem, the design, the solution by the mind which directs it all."

Thus the engineer participates in the work of creation; speaking reverently he is an agent or coadjutator of the Divine Architect in creating betterments for the world. Had the subject of this incomplete sketch permitted, a more extended and particular account of his work might have been given; but, with the modesty of the true engineer, he insisted upon brevity. So the reader must be content to hail Mr. Hood as creator and master builder of transportation lines in the great "Southwest" and Pacific States, and try to appreciate how much that implies.

The membership of the four great societies of American engineers, civil, mechanical, mining and electrical, with affiliations, exceeds thirty thousand.

WILLIAM HOOD '67 Chief Engineer of the Southern Pacific Railway System

Professor Robert Fletcher, Direc tor Emeritus of the Thayer School