USA > Massachusetts > From the Hub to the Hudson : with sketches of nature, history and industry in north-western Massachusetts > Part 6
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87
BEGINNING TO BORE.
chusetts Railroad at Greenfield, through the valleys of the Deerfield and Hoosac to the State line, there to unite with a railroad leading to the city of Troy." The road must be located within two years, and finished within seven years.
The feasibility of the undertaking was not apparent to capitalists, however ; and at the end of six years the subscription books of the company showed a beg- garly array of blank pages, while almost nothing had been done towards the construction of the road. Ef- forts had been made during this time to obtain a State loan ; but it was not till 1854 that the Commonwealth loaned its credit to the company to the amount of two millions of dollars. Under this act a contract was made with E. W. Serrell & Company, and work was begun in earnest in 1855. The conditions under which the loan was granted were found difficult of fulfillment ; and the progress of the work was impeded. In 1856 a new contract was made with H. Haupt & Company by which the company agreed to pay three million eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars for complet- ing the road and tunnel. From this time till 1861 the work was carried on by the company and the contrac- tors. Excavations were made at each end of the tun- nel, and in 1858 the western section of the road was completed to the State line, connecting North Adams with Troy. In 1861, a difficulty arose between Haupt & Company and the State Engineer concerning the payment of the installments of the State loan, which resulted in the abandonment of the work by the con-
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
1
- tractors. Nothing farther was done until the winter of 1862, when an act was passed providing that the State should take possession of the road, the tunnel, and all the property of the Troy and Greenfield Com- pany ; and appointing a Commission to examine the works and report to the next Legislature. This Com- mission made an elaborate report in February, 1863, recommending the prosecution of the work by the State; upon which in the autumn of the same year work was resumed by the commissioners, under the able superintendence of Mr. Thomas Doane who had been appointed Chief Engineer. The enterprise was prosecuted by the commissioners until the winter of 1868, when the Legislature made an appropriation of four million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the completion of the work, requiring that it should be contracted by the first of January following. The contract was taken by Messrs. F. Shanly & Brother of Canada, who agree to finish the tunnel and lay the track by March 1, 1874. These gentlemen are now rapidly and vigorously carrying on the work.
The length of the tunnel from portal to portal is a little more than four miles and three quarters, and the rock through which it passes, except at the extreme western end where a secondary formation overlays the primary, is a solid mica slate, with occasional nodules of quartz. The mountain has two crests, with a val- ley between them. The one which overlooks the Deerfield is about fourteen hundred and fifty feet above the river bed; the one which overlooks the Hoosac
89
A BIG AUGER.
is seventeen hundred and fifty feet above the bed of that river. The lowest spot in the depression between these peaks on the line of the tunnel is about eight hundred feet above the grade.
The work is being driven from both ends; and in the valley at the top of the mountain a shaft is being sunk, from which, when the grade is reached, excava- tions will be pushed, east and west, to meet those that are being driven inward. This shaft besides giving two more faces on which to work, and thus expediting the completion of the tunnel, is expected to afford ventilation when the tunnel is completed.
At first the work was all done by hand-drills; but attempts were soon made to construct machines for rock-cutting. In 1851 a monster of this sort weighing seventy tons was constructed at South Boston, and "was designed to cut out a groove around the circum- ference of the tunnel, thirteen inches wide and twenty- four feet in diameter, by means of a set of revolving cutters. When this groove had been cut to a proper depth, the machine was to be run back on its railway and the center core blasted out by gunpowder or split off by means of wedges. It was conveyed to the Hoosac mountain, and, the approach not being then completed, was put in operation on a vertical face of rock near the proposed entrance to the tunnel." The Railroad Committee of the Legislature after examin- ing its operations were fully convinced that it was a stupendous success. It was operated under their eyes for full fifteen minutes, during which time it cut into
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
the rock four and one-eighth inches, or at the rate of sixteen and one half inches per hour. At that rate, by operating at both ends, the tunnel could be built in about two years. This was rosy. But unfortunately this mechanical behemoth refused to go on. Ten feet was the extent of its progress. It amounted to old iron and that was all. Nothing daunted by this fail- ure, Mr. Haupt, at an expense of twenty-five thousand dollars, procured another boring machine. This was to excavate the heading only, or a hole eight feet in diameter ; which was afterwards to be enlarged by manual labor and blasting. Mr. Haupt was sanguine about this. In a letter to General Wool, under date of September 25, 1858, he prophesies :- "The slowest progress of the machine when working will be fifteen inches per hour; the fastest, twenty-four inches. A machine at each end working but half the time with the slowest speed, should go through the mountain in twenty-six months." But this promising contrivance never made an inch of progress into the rock. It was "an auger that wouldn't bore."
These costly experiments with tunneling machines sufficed. After this the work was done with elbow grease and gunpowder until Mr. Doane took charge of the tunnel, when preparations were immediately made to introduce power drills. These had been success- fully employed on the great Mount Cenis Tunnel now constructing under the Alps between France and Sar- dinia. The impossibility of operating machinery with steam in a tunnel, owing to the fouling of the air with
91
POWER DRILLS.
smoke, made it necessary to find some other motive power for the drills; and the engineers of the Mount Cenis Tunnel at length succeeded in solving this prob- lem. Their method with variations and improvements was adopted here. Air compressed by machinery to a pressure of six atmospheres or ninety pounds to the square inch is carried into the tunnel in iron pipes, and there being ejected with the force due to its pressure, it not only serves to move the piston of the machine drill, but ventilates the tunnel. The dam in the Deer- field River just above the eastern portal of the tunnel furnishes the power by which the air-compressors are driven.
Under the management of Mr. Haupt, about two thousand four hundred feet of linear excavation was made at this eastern end. The distance penetrated from the eastern portal at the transfer of the work to the Messrs. Shanly was five thousand two hundred and eighty-two feet-just two feet more than a mile.
THE WEST END.
At the west end the difficulties of the work have been greatest. On this side the mountain wall is less abrupt than on the other; and on entering the slope of the mountain the workmen came upon a solid lime- stone rock easy of excavation. But this rock soon began to dip, and at length as they progressed, it dis- appeared below the grade of the tunnel, and they dis- · covered that they had passed through the limestone into what geology calls disintegrated mica and talc
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
schist; but what history with a truer nomenclature, designates as porridge. This loose rock, readily yield- ing to the action of water and dissolving into a fluid of about the consistency of gruel was a most formida- ble foe to the engineers. From before its face they retreated, resolving to make an open cutting instead of a tunnel for the first few hundred feet. Accord- ingly they ascended to the surface, sunk a shaft just eastward of the end of their completed tunnel, and began to take out the earth. But the open cutting was a job of some magnitude. When they had made an immense hopper, five hundred and fifty feet long, three hundred feet wide and seventy-five feet deep, they con- cluded to try tunneling again. As fast as excavations were made into this demoralized rock it was necessary to make a complete casing of timber to support the sides and roof of the tunnel. Within this casing an arch of masonry must be built. There was no solid foundation on which to rear the walls and roof of ma- sonry ; and it was therefore necessary to lay an in- verted arch of brick for a flooring. The top of the tun- nel is a semicircle, whose radius is thirteen feet ; and the sides as well as the invert are arcs of a circle whose radius is twenty-six feet. The invert was carried in for eight hundred and eighty-three feet from the portal ; at which point rock was found of sufficient firmness to sustain the walls of masonry. It will be seen there- fore that nearly nine hundred feet of the west end is a complete tube of brick, averaging about eight courses · in thickness.
93
FIGHTING THE PORRIDGE.
Most of this difficult work at the west end was done by Mr. B. N. Farren under a contract with the com- missioners. The obstacles have at some times been appalling. So treacherous was the quicksand, and so great the flow of water at times, that whole months have been spent in the most energetic labor without making an inch of progress. It was necessary thor- oughly to drain the porridge by side and cross drifts in every direction before anything could be done. For this purpose about twelve hundred feet of extra heading was made outside of the tunnel. When at last they pierced the thin quartz vein which separated the porridge from the mountain rocks, there was great joy in those diggings. Beyond this the rock was soft, but not affected by the action of water; and the troubles of the engineers were at an end.
This demoralized rock, which has given so much grief to the friends of the tunnel has given equal joy to its foes. This has been their constant argument to prove that the tunnel was a blunder and a failure and a swindle. Driven from every other stronghold they have entrenched themselves in this porridge with des- perate resolution. Marshalled by the amiable but in- domitable Mr. Bird of Walpole, the pamphleteers have let fly at this soft rock a broadside of paper missiles. There are a good many bird-tracks in the new red sandstone at Gill; but the Bird tracts about this por- ridge are much more numerous.
While part of the miners were fighting with the por- ridge at the west end, another army of them ascended
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
the mountain side to a point on the line of the tunnel about half a mile east of the west portal, and there sunk a shaft in the solid rock, three hundred and eighteen feet. From this shaft an opening has now * been made to the west end, and the heading has been pushed eastward sixteen hundred feet,-making a con- tinuous lineal excavation of four thousand fifty-six feet from the west portal to the end of the heading.
The cost of this work is not an insignificant item. Up to the time when the commissioners took posses- sion of the road the State had advanced nearly a mil- lion of dollars. The commissioners have expended $3,229,530. The Messrs. Shanly are to receive for completing the work, $4,594,268. Add to these sums the amount required to finish the road from the tun- nel to North Adams, and the total cost of the road and the tunnel according to the last estimate of the commissioners will be a little over nine millions of dollars.
If anybody wants to know what advantages are to be derived from this large expenditure, the answers are easy. This road will shorten the distance from Boston to Troy by nine miles ; and on account of its easier gradients, will be a much better road for freights than the Western. It will thus give greatly increased facilities for trade between Boston and the West, and will by its competition reduce the enormous prices of transportation over the Boston and Albany Road. At the same time it will help to develop the resources of the country through which it passes, and will open to
95
OTHER TUNNELS.
pleasure as well as to business a most attractive and profitable line of travel.
The longest tunnel now in use is the Woodhead Tunnel on the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railroad,-a short distance from Manchester, England. This is a little more than three miles long. The Nerthe Tunnel in France, between Marseilles and Avignon is nearly as long. The great tunnel before referred to, now constructing under the Alps at Mount Cenis, is more than seven miles and a half in length. The Hoosac will therefore, when it is constructed, be the longest tunnel in the world with the exception of the one at Mount Cenis.
Now if the ladies will array themselves in their shortest skirts, their oldest hats, their water-proofs, and their over-shoes, we will go forth and see what we have been reading about. From Rice's to the tunnel the road runs along the river side, part of the way under a delightful canopy of forest trees, and part of the way upon a precipitous bank. In the bend of the river lies the immense pile of rock removed from the tunnel. Passing by the stores, and crossing the track that issues from the portal we follow the stream up to the Deerfield Dam, a structure built for use, and an- swering its purpose well; but like all the best works of man, as beautiful as it is useful. Retracing our steps we descend the stream to the machine-shops and compressor building, in which we watch for a few moments the slow but mighty movement of the enormous air pumps which supply the motive power
96
FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
to the drills that are hammering away upon the face of the rock more than a mile distant in the heading of the tunnel. Here too we may see one of the drilling- machines brought in for repairs. It is the invention of Mr. Charles Burleigh of Fitchburg; and it consists of a cylinder and piston operated by the elastic force of compressed air. The drill is fastened to the piston, and is driven into the rock by repeated strokes of the piston.
To the left of the track as we approach the portal we can see the hole in the rock made by the big borer some years ago. A little tool-shop occupies the niche. Perhaps we shall have time before we go in to ascend this brook which flows past the mouth of the tunnel, for a quarter of a mile to the Cascade of the Twins. Two rivulets that unite to form this brook, coming from different directions, tumble over the rocks from a height of fifty or sixty feet into the same little pool. It is a good place to spend an hour or two upon a hot day.
On our return the train is in readiness. " A11 aboard!" shouts the conductor, who is also the en- gineer, likewise the brakeman. He is dressed in an over-coat of dirty yellow rubber cloth ; and he flour- ishes a rawhide. The cars upon which we mount are not exactly drawing-room cars, but they answer tolera- bly well. The locomotive is a good sized mule, who lowers his long ears, bends his strong back, and makes for the portal. In we go! The blue canopy over head gives place to the dripping rock, a breeze
HOOSAC TUNNEL .- EASTERN PORTAL.
97
A ROMANTIC RIDE.
coming out of the mountain and produced by the air escaping from the drills at the distant heading greets us; and we soon perceive that we have passed out of the summer heat into a much cooler temperature. Perhaps, too, if there has been a recent blast we shall meet odors and vapors coming forth from this darkness which will remind us of Tartarus, rather than of the Cave of the winds. By and by an un- earthly clangor reaches our ears; in the murky dis- tance lurid lights and goblin shapes are seen flitting and stalking about ; and presently we are in the very workshop of Vulcan himself; in the midst of noises dire and forms uncouth, and faces grimy and hideous. The drilling-machines are fastened to a massive iron frame which is pushed up against the face of the rocks ; when holes enough are perforated, the frame is pushed back ; little tin cartridges of nitro-glycerine to each of which the wires of a galvanic battery is attached, are placed in the holes; the workmen retire to safe distances; the galvanic circuit is completed, and a sound like all the noises of an earthquake and a thunder-storm rolled into one, followed by a tremen- dous rush of air toward the portal, announces that a · few more inches of the Hoosac Tunnel are completed.
A very short visit to this interesting spot generally satisfies nervous people; wherefore we will speedily remount our conveyance and turn our faces toward daylight.
When the heats of noon are past, and the sun begins to sink behind the Hoosac Mountain we will prepare
5
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
for our stage ride of eight miles to North Adams. There is a vulgar prejudice against that excellent and time-honored institution called the stage-coach, but this prejudice is rarely able to survive the journey over the Hoosac Mountain. Persons who have made this overland trip have discovered that the true luxury and glory of travel are only to be found in the stage- coaches. Fatigued with the journey in the cars to this point they have alighted from the stages on the other side refreshed and vigorous. The change from the cars to the stages is always restful. The grand scen- ery and the bracing air of the mountain are full of de- licious intoxication. If mere bodily comfort were sought in travel the stage ride could not well be omit- ted ; but they who seek refreshment for their minds will readily allow that these eight miles over the Hoosac Mountain are worth more than all the rest of the journey. The only objection to the tunnel worthy of a moment's consideration is that it will deprive many travelers of this precious interlude.
Under the lengthening shadows our train of elegant six-horse coaches begin to climb the mountain. Barnes & Co. are the names written over the coach doors. Barnes is the popular host of the United States Hotel at Boston, and " Co." includes " Jim Stevens," one of our drivers, who with "Al Richardson," another of the drivers, manages the business here. "Jim " was once somebody's baby, but that must have been some time ago. It wouldn't be much of a pastime to dandle him now. It is pleasant to know that his skill and trust-
99
A WEIGHTY JUDGMENT.
worthiness as a stage-driver are in direct proportion to his size. He might, perhaps, be bigger than he is ; he could not possibly be a better driver. To sit by his side and see him handle the reins on one of these mountain trips, deftly turning his long team round the sharp angles in the steep road ; quietly making every horse do his part on the heavy up hill stretches, and coolly keeping them all in hand in the crooked descent, and all without swearing or shouting or whipping, is to enjoy one of the triumphs of horsemanship. " Jim" learned his trade in a long apprenticeship among the White Hills, and he is fond of talking about that re- gion; and yet he maintains that the scenery of this stage ride over the Hoosac is hardly surpassed in that famous resort of travelers. It ought to be conceded that the opinions of men. like "Jim " and " Al," whose avoirdupois balances are respectively three hundred and twenty and two hundred and thirty pounds, are entitled to some weight.
Steady climbing now for forty minutes. The road creeps cautiously up the mountain side,-much of the way through the forest, but often revealing the rugged grandeur of the hills. Now you begin to get some adequate idea of the depth and sinuosity of this Deer- field Gorge. Half a mile from Rice's is Puck's Nook, where the road makes a sharp turn to the north, cross- ing one of the Twin Rivulets, which here comes gurg- ling out of a dense thicket above the road, and leaps merrily down a steep ravine upon our right. A little farther on, we emerge from the woods, and climbing a
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
steep pitch, look down into the valley out of which we have ascended. The green meadows, the orchards, the river, the bridge, the shady road along the bank, the neat white hostelry of Jenks & Rice, and the other buildings nested in this snug little valley, and around them all, built up into the sky, the steep, solid battlement of hills ! It would not do to call this val- ley a basin ; the bottom is too small, and the sides are too high and steep; it is a cup rather,-the drinking cup of a Titan-embossed as the seasons pass with green and gold and garnet forests, and drained of all but a few sparkling drops of the crystal flood with which it once was overbrimming.
On the hill across the river the line of the tunnel is marked by a narrow path cut through the forest to a signal station on the top. A white object upon that hill-top furnishes a perpetual conundrum to travelers : the guesses are commonly divided between a white cow, a pale horse and a shanty. It may give relief to some minds to know that it is a rock. When you are exactly in the range of that line on the opposite hill you are exactly over the tunnel; and you will notice similar paths cut through the forests both above and below the road. "Jim" says that one lady on being told that the stage was at that moment passing over the tunnel, ejaculated with a little scream, "Oh! I thought it sounded hollow !"
A long pull and a strong pull of Jim's honest blacks and grays brings us to the top of the eastern crest of the Hoosac Mountain. Now look! You have but a
IOI
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS !
few moments,-make the most of them. You may travel far but you will never look upon a fairer scene than that. The vision reaches away for miles and miles over the tops of a hundred hills grouped in beautiful disorder. Fifty miles as the crow flies from the spot where you are standing, the cone of old Monadnock pierces the sky. Further south, and ten miles farther away, the top of Wachusett is seen in a clear day dimly outlined in the horizon. Down at your feet flows the deep gorge of the Deerfield whose course you can trace for many miles. Nothing is seen at first view but these rugged hills and the deep ra- vines that divide them-no trace or token of meadow or lowland ; but some subtile enchantment presently attracts the eye to that miniature valley out of which we have climbed, bordered on one side by the Deer- field, and walled in on all the other sides by the steepest hills. This little valley at once becomes the center of the picture; from it the eye makes many wide ex- cursions over the hill-tops but it hastens back again. It is like a ballad in the middle of a symphony ; the symphony is grand, but the ballad keeps singing itself over in your memory at every pause. And yet that is a very tame little valley, or would be anywhere else. Its smooth, green fields edged by the river, would never attract a glance in any level country. But, shut in here, as it is among these hills,-the only sign of quiet amid all these tokens of universal force,-it is unspeakably beautiful. The mountains, too, are grander and wilder by the contrast with this peaceful
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
scene. Every artist, whether in words or colors ought to look upon this landscape. It would teach him a useful lesson.
Over the crest of the mountain, westward, swiftly down into the valley of the Cold River, which divides the eastern from the western summit. The stunted beeches on the left, barren of branches on the north- west side, show how fierce the winter winds are, and from what quarter they come. This summit is two thousand one hundred and ten feet above tide water, and the western summit is four hundred feet higher. Over the top of the hill in the west we catch our first glimpse of Greylock.
Beyond the lowest part of the valley, on the slope of the western crest, the new buildings over the Central Shaft of the tunnel are seen. At this place, on the 19th of October, 1867, a horrible casualty took place. Thirteen men were at work at the bottom of the shaft, five hundred and eighty-three feet from the surface, when the accidental explosion of a tank of gasoline which had been used in lighting the shaft suddenly set the buildings over the shaft into a blaze. The engineer was driven from his post, the hoisting apparatus was disabled and inaccessible, and the terri- ble certainty was at once forced upon the minds of all who looked on, that the men at the bottom of the shaft were doomed. How soon or in what manner the men were themselves made aware of their awful condition or in what way they met their fate no one will ever know. Some doubtless were killed by the
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CENTRAL SHAFT .- MALLORY'S PERILOUS DESCENT.
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