He had plunged 47 miles into the mountains and had gained an altitude of about one mile, when he was brought to a dead stop. The mountain along which he had crawled laboriously broke off abruptly. Further advance was impossible. To have cut a tunnel would have been a herculean task, and as the mountain wall dropped straight down below, and towered to a dizzy height above him, he found himself in a quandary. A few feet immediately above him, however, he espied a ledge running parallel with that on which he had laid his track. He resolved to gain that upper gallery, but the crucial question was, How? Then he hit upon a brilliant idea. It was something new and untried in railway engineering, but as he had already tested all existing methods to gain the point at which he now stood, there was no alternative but to devise new ways and means of overcoming perplexing situations as they arose, despite the apparent novelty of the solutions. He resolved to lift the track from the lower to the upper ledge by a “V-switch.” [Illustration: MEIGGS’ MASTERPIECE--THE V-SWITCH, BY MEANS OF WHICH THE RAILWAY IS LIFTED FROM ONE LEVEL TO ANOTHER, SHOWING TURNTABLE AND METHOD OF OPERATION] [Illustration: THE INFIERNILLO BRIDGE It is approached at either end through a tunnel, and owing to the precipitous cliffs the men had to be slung out from the sides in rope loops and cradles to set the steel.] [Illustration: A HORSESHOE CURVE IN A TUNNEL The train enters the lower mouth, describes a semicircular turn in the heart of the mountain, and emerges from the upper portal.] The embankment on the outside of the track at the point he had gained was levelled off, and a small turntable was erected. From the latter two short lines were laid down at an angle to the track in the form of a widely opened “V,” with the turntable at the apex. The main line cuts across the top of the “V,” forming a triangle, and continues a short distance beyond. The manner in which the train is lifted from the one level to the other is as follows. The engine pulls it up the lower line on to the section crossing the top of the V, and in such a way as to be between its two angular limbs. The engine is uncoupled, and runs down one leg of the V on to the turntable, which is then swung round until the engine faces the other arm of the V, up which it passes until it gains the main line. It is now at the rear of the train which it was pulling a few minutes before. The engine is coupled up, and the train is pushed backwards until it is over the switch connecting with the upper level. It then proceeds forward in the usual manner. In reality it makes a zigzag course up the mountain-side.