Moving the Earth for the Railroad

The main task of the workers was to excavate the earth and create embankments for a more level elevation and greater stability for the railroad. It required an enormous amount of labor – hundreds of men per section using pickaxes, shovels, crowbars, wheelbarrows and carts to remove the dirt and then for embankments adding tampers to compact the soils and planks for temporary retaining walls. The dirt from the embankments largely came from the excavations but it required moving a large amount of dirt from the excavations sites to where it was needed for the embankments.

Jessop's and Watson's Sections

Jonathan Jessop’s Section 1 was about 2.4 mils long handling over 270,000 cubic yards of dirt which is enough to bury a football field with more than 126 feet of dirt. This section moved more dirt and earth than any other section while building the Washington Branch railroad hauling the dirt in carts an average distance of 2400 feet (almost half a mile) from the upper part of the excavation area to over a mile in “the cut”. The cost of doing this section was just under $4,300!

John Watson’s Section 4 was about 1.2 miles long and in that “short distance” moved over 220,000 cubic yards of dirt lowering the imaginary amount of dirt on top of a football field to just 103 feet high. This amount of work was in half the distance of Jessop’s section but was also more expensive for the railroad costing over $21,000 to complete. From “the cut” to where the dirt was used for embankments was an average of 0.8 miles with over half a mile of that through woodlands.

The next area to be worked was Section 5, also contracted to Watson, and it contained the cut through Snowden’s Ridge. This section was about 1.25 miles long, just a little longer than Section 4. It removed 150,000 cubic yards of dirt at the highest cost on the line at about $28,500. We don’t know why the costs were so high.

B&O Washington Branch History

Moving the Earth for the Railroad

Labor Violence on the B&O

The Murder of John Watson in North Laurel

The Murder Trials

The Watson Family

Jonathan Jessop - The Man Behind "The Cut"