To make this possible several railroads had to be located, the right-of-way cleared and graded and the roads built, all within a few months. One of them, reaching into two fine spruce districts, had thirty-seven miles of main line and twenty-three of spurs. The gravel for the ballasting of its tracks, nearly 5,000 carloads, had to be transported for a hundred miles. Part of the right-of-way had first to be cleared by hand power of huge trees amounting to a million feet of lumber per acre while other portions were covered by thickets so dense they were impenetrable except as opening was made with axes. Half a dozen or more other lines penetrated far into the vast spruce and fir forests of the Northwest. Sawmills were built, great warehouses were constructed and all the cities of the West and Northwest were searched for the enormous necessary equipment of shovels, scrapers, picks, axes, tools of many kinds, steam shovels, pile drivers, horses. Substantial camps were built to house comfortably the thousands of workmen. A kiln-drying plant was erected to insure proper drying of the wood and economize freight charges upon the stock. A total of 174,000,000 feet of spruce and fir was shipped out for airplane manufacture, of which a large part went to our co-belligerents. It was, indeed, seven months after our entrance into the war before any of it was sent to American factories, the Inter-Allied War Council thus directing the supply across the ocean because the need for airplanes was very great and they could be more quickly made and sent to the front in this way. Not until more spruce was produced than was necessary to satisfy their urgent need was any of it sent to our own factories. By November, 1918, enough spruce was being shipped out of the Northwest to meet the needs of all the associated nations.