THOSE MOUNTAINS ARE MADE TO BE CROSSED. Book Review No. 45 is West End (also available here), Charles S. Roberts's reminiscence, with some history, of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road's initial crossing of the Alleghanies.^(*) This work includes sufficient research and commentary to distinguish it from the more common compendium of roster shots that passes itself as a railroad book, thus meeting the minimal standards for the book reading challenge.

This stretch of railroad properly qualifies as the world's first mountain railroad. The builder of the Semmering Pass line in Austria did extensive research on Baltimore and Ohio's efforts before deciding that a railroad could be driven from Vienna to Graz by way of Gloggnitz, Semmering, and Mürzzuschlag. The climb from Piedmont to the summit alone is longer than the Semmering Pass crossing, and there are several long, steep slogs confronting eastbound traffic out of Grafton, West Virginia. To be sure, the summit at Semmering is a bit higher than the "Summit of the Alleghanies," but the difference is not as great as that on the Pennsylvania Rail Road's Main Line, another contender for a mountain railroad antedating the Semmeringbahn. (It's also possible to imagine Brahms or Dvorak taking the air at Deer Park or the Glades and working on some music. The mind boggles at the thought of Brahms in Altoona or Gallitzin.)

West End has in common with Mr Roberts's work on the Pennsylvania an excessive reliance on private information left to the reader to take on faith. Two examples. First, the thesis of the book is that the West End is the toughest stretch of railroad anywhere (others have more traffic or tougher grades) but the author provides no empirical support for that conclusion. Yes, lugging a lot of coal over sixty miles of moutain railroad on unstable rocks in wintry conditions is challenging, but to some extent that describes the Wyoming coal line and much of the Norfolk and Western. Second, the author refers to a Westinghouse plan for electrifying the West End in the late 1920s as daunting the consulting engineers, pp. 158-159. "Westinghouse engineers were obviously taken aback by the severity of West End operating conditions and one has the feeling that they were not absolutely and completely sure that they could get the job done. Electrification for Norfolk and Western, Virginian, Great Northern and others were success stories." That "other" leaves out the Milwaukee's Pacific Coast electrification, the more challenging of the two pieces of the Puget Sound under wire, as the line was cobbled together somewhat hastily in the first place in order to have a transcontinental railroad, rather than a superbly-engineered line as far as Avery, Idaho. Are readers supposed to be so steeped in Baltimore and Ohio lore that the impossibility of wiring it is to be taken on faith, rather than after a review of the evidence, or perhaps as a consequence of the money running out in 1929?

^(*)The marker at the crest of Seventeen Mile Grade reads "Summit of Alleghanies Altitude 2628 Feet." The marker at the crest of Sand Patch identifies the summit of the "Alleghenies."