| From the Richmond Dispatch |
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| August 30, 1864 |
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| Expeditious work |
| Allusion has already been made by one of
our contemporaries to the possibly unexampled energy and promptness
with which the Virginia & Tennessee railroad has been repaired and
put in running order after the extensive injuries done to it by the
Yankee raids. Colonel R. L. Owen, the President of the company, has
laid the company and the public under obligation for the successful
manner in which he has directed the affairs of the road in the trying
emergency. The following is a more detailed statement than we have yet
given of the repairs alluded to above: |
| There have been in the past year six
different raids, destroying the greater part of the bridges and depots
on the road — those of May and June burning all the depots but three
between Lynchburg and Wytheville, (one hundred and thirty-five miles),
and burning all the bridges from Lynchburg to Salem, together with
those between Dublin and Christiansburg. The total length of bridges
destroyed was upwards of four thousand lineal feet. One of these, over
New river, was eight hundred feet long, fifty-six feet above the water
of the river from five to twelve feet deep. This was re-built of green
timber, cut from the woods, in nineteen days. The bridge over Little
Otter, seven hundred and forty- five feet long and ninety-six feet
high, was rebuilt also in nineteen days in the same manner. One over
Big Otter, four hundred and fifty feet long and eighty-five feet high;
one at Elk creek, seventy-three feet high, and all the smaller
bridges, were re-built of green timber, and the track which had been
torn up in several places, in one place for eight miles, and all the
cross-ties burnt, the rails bent, burnt
and broken, by mechanics detailed for that purpose, were straightened
and re-laid upon new cross-ties, amounting to eighteen thousand or
twenty thousand, and the water-tanks, &c., re-built, and the whole
road running in sixty day! This cost the company about half a million
of dollars, and, with the exception of a company of sappers and
miners, was done by the company's own hands and with their money. |
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