Steel on the Grade: The I.W.N. Pushes North From Usk

Twelve carloads of steel for the I.W.N. extension arrived here this week and the work of tracklaying will be resumed Friday, another ten-mile section of the grade being turned over to the railroad on that date. Usk was reached last week and the yards have been laid at that point. No arrangements have been made so far for a depot or yards at Cusick.

But little of the grade remains to be completed this side of Tiger and the work on the lower end will be ready to turn over by the time the steel gang gets there.

The tunnel at Blueslide will be completed within 50 days. It has been found necessary to concrete at once about 100 feet of the north end of the tunnel, as the roof is not solid material and is threatening to slide and burst through the timbers. Gravel for the concrete work will be brought from the pit at Coleman and taken to Blueslide on barges.

Gilbert Brandt, contractor, who had a camp at Ruby, has completed his work and is shipping this week to Monroe, Wash., where he has a large contract on a Great Northern extension. Mr. Brandt had a difficult piece of rock work at Rocky Point. Two men were killed at this place by a rock slide last winter.

The work of ballasting was resumed Tuesday between Dalkena and Usk.

President F. A. Blackwell made a trip down the river on the Ione Monday as far as Ione, returning Tuesday. He was accompanied by John L. Hall and G. T. Hagenbuch, of Williamsport, Penn., and Robert Gibson, of Newark, New Jersey. The gentlemen are large stockholders in the I.W.N. and the Panhandle Lumber Co.

A number of the Panhandle Lumber Co.'s teams from Spirit Lake went through town Wednesday, bound for Locke, where they will be put to work on the railroad grade.

A Ledgerwood car has been fitted up by the I.W.N. to plow the gravel off the flat cars. Heretofore this work was done by the locomotives.

The station at Usk was opened for business July 15th. Regular freight and passenger service from Newport north will not be started until the Morrissey cut north of town is completed, which will be about Sept. 1st. The shoofly track around this cut is on a curve so sharp as to make impossible the hauling around of passenger cars or the larger locomotives.

Nine carloads of steel for the I.W.N. extension arrived over the Great Northern last night.