The scale of the work was massive. Hundreds of large steam drills bored holes in which were planted tons of dynamite, which blasted the rock of the cut so that it could be excavated by steam shovels, most made by Bucyrus Foundry and Manufacturing Company. Dozens of spoils trains took the spoil from the shovels to the landfill dumps, about away. In a typical day, 160 trainloads of material were hauled away from a cut . This workload on the railroads required some skillful co-ordination. At the busiest times, there was a train going inbound or outbound almost every minute.