# St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 9/With Men Who Do Things

WITH MEN WHO DO THINGS
BY A. RUSSELL BOND
Author of “The Scientific American Boy” and “Handyman’s Workshop and Laboratory”
Chapter VIII
CARS THAT TRAVEL SKYWARD
“Why, how do you do, Mr. Hotchkiss,“ we both exclaimed.
“I’m well, thanks. But where have you been all this time? Why have n’t you been around to see me?”
“We have really intended to,” apologized Will, “but you know there is such a lot of interesting work going on in New York, and we have had so much to see—”
“So much to see? So you are still at it, are you? Mr, Squires told me about the narrow escape in the caisson, and I had about concluded that your experience there had cured you of some of your inquisitiveness.
“We have had a worse experience than that. We were in a pretty bad blow-out in one of the tunnels under the river.’
“You don't mean the time the fellow was blown through the river-bed?”
“Yes, we were right alongside of him when it happened; and then we were on the new bridge when it took fire.”
“What!"
“Yes, we had quite a time of it, dodging embers and red-hot bolts all the way down the tower.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Hotchkiss, “if I had known what ‘hoodoos’ you were, I would have ‘shoo-ed’ you right out of my building! Why, you are positively dangerous to have around! Come in here quick, before a cyclone strikes us, or a safe falls on our heads!” Mr. Hotchkiss hustled us into a restaurant. “I want you to lunch with me, and tell me the whole story of your experiences. Three narrow escapes in succession! and here I was just going to send you over to another job. Now, I don’t believe I dare assume the responsibility.”
“We have had some rather exciting times,” I admitted, “but I thought that they were very common in big engineering jobs.”
“There is real danger in all big work, but such a run of accidents as you have had is decidedly out of the ordinary; and if you keep on, you will get so bad a reputation that no one will want you around.”
“But how can we help it?”
“I don’t suppose you can. It is about time your luck turned, though. I ‘ll try you on this next thing, anyway, and see whether you can't come off without an accident. As a matter of fact, I can’t imagine what could happen this time.”
“What is the job?” asked Will, eagerly.
“There are all sorts of transportation systems in this town,’ began Mr. Hotchkiss, “to bring New York's teeming population to and from work every day. The trolleys, or surface lines, carry something like two million passengers per day, and the elevated railways nearly a million and a half, while the subways take in just about a million fares, But there is a transportation system here in this city that carries more than all the rest put together—eight million passengers per day.”
“Eight millions! What, here in New York?”
“Yes, in Manhattan alone.”
“Why, I thought there were only five million people all told in Greater New York.”
“People, yes, but I said passengers. One man could be a dozen passengers if he took a dozen trips in a day. Yes, sir, it is the greatest and busiest transportation system in the world, yet it does n't take in a single fare. What ’s more, it is one of the safest forms of transportation. Have you guessed what I am talking about?”
“It's too much for me,” I confessed.
“You don’t, mean the elevators, do you?” queried Will, “They are not any too safe, from what I hear,”
“It must take an awful lot of power to lift an elevator,” I remarked.
“Not as much as you think. In fact, it often takes more power to ran an empty car down than a partly loaded one up.”
“Why, how can that be!’ we both exclaimed in astonishment.
“It is like this. A car is always balanced with a counterweight. The cables that run up from the top of the car pass over a set of sheaves or pulleys at the top of the shaft, and at their other ends they are attached to the counterweight. Usually the counterweight is made heavy enough to balance the weight of the car with half a load of passengers. Now, if the brakes should give way on the winding-drum at the top of the shaft while a car is standing empty half-way up the shaft, it would actually fall up instead of down, because it would be so greatly overweighted by the counterbalance. You see, all the motor has to do is to move the difference in weight between the car with its passengers and the counterweight; and this can never equal more than half the weight of the passengers. But I don’t suppose you would find our elevator system half so interesting as the one I am going to send you to. The only uncommon thing we have is an ‘air-cushion,’ but that is not very unusual any more.
“By an air-cushion, I mean,” he continued in answer to our question, “a scheme for retarding the car in case it should fall by any mischance. The bottom of each shaft is sealed in with air-tight steel doors, so as to make a rectangular pocket in which the car fits like a plunger in a cylinder. Now, if the car should drop into that pocket at high speed, it would compress the air under it Lo such an extent as to form a pneumatic cushion that would check its fall. Our highest elevator-shaft will be six hundred and eighty feet high, the highest continuous elevator-shaft in the world, and, as you can imagine, a car would be traveling if it fell that far! We don’t dare to make the stop too abrupt, for it would hurt the passengers, and then, too, it would be liable to burst out the doors, so we don’t make too close a fit of the car floor in the shaft. But that means that we have to extend the air pocket to a considerable height. On those high shafts, the air pocket extends up one hundred and thirty-seven feet, or ten stories. You could cut the cables with the car at the top of the shaft and let it fall. It would be making something like one hundred and thirty-two miles per hour when it ​splashed into the air pocket, but when the air was compressed under it, and squeezed up between the car floor and the walls of the pocket, it would retard the car to such an extent that it would settle down to the ground floor without a serious jar.”
“Has any one ever tried it?” I inquired.
“Oh, yes, it has been tried often enough. The designer of our elevators is going to make the trip himself to prove that everything is all right.”
“Oh, say! could we go with him?” put in Will, excitedly.
“What! with your reputation! Well, I should say not!”
“But there is n’t any danger, is there?”
“No, no danger whatever,” said Mr, Hotchkiss. “Yet you never can tell. A man was fatally injured in a test like that once, and you could n’t guess why.”
We shook our heads.
“Because, instead of standing, he sat in a chair! You think I aim joking, don’t you? but I am perfectly serious, I assure you. I ’ll tell you how it was. If you should drop freely for a hundred feet, and then take twenty-five feet in which to come to a stop, you would have to lose speed four times as fast as you gained it; and so, while you were losing speed, you would he adding four pounds to every pound you weigh. If you weighed one hundred and fifty pounds normally, you would suddenly find yourself weighing six hundred pounds more, at seven hundred and fifty pounds altogether. The weight would be so well distributed that you could stand it if you kept your legs firmly braced, but it would be more than a frail chair could endure. That is how it was in the case I spoke of. The chair was smashed by the suddenly increased load, and the man was fatally injured by one of the splinters.”
“But if that is the only danger,” persisted Will, “I don't see why we could n't take the trip. We would n't think of sitting down. I ’d like to see how it feels to fall five hundred feet in an elevator.”
“You would n't enjoy it, I dropped twenty feet once in an ordinary elevator before the safety-catches stopped the car, and I don’t care to do it again. Why, do you know, that car fell so fast I could n’t catch up to it! 1 must have given a sort of involuntary spring when the car first started, because my feet were a foot off the floor all the way down. Of course 1 was falling all the time, but the car kept ahead of me until it stopped. Then down I went in a heap on the floor. It was all over in an instant, but I lived a lifetime in that instant, wondering whether the safety-catches were going to save me. The elevator man, who was the only other one in the car, had evidently jumped too, because his head was up against the roof all the way down. No, I don't believe you would enjoy the experience, and I assure you that 1 won't let such unlucky scamps as you two try it. Something would surely happen!”
“What is that other elevator you were going to tell us about?”
“I am not going to tell you about it. I am going to let you see it for yourselves.”
He took out his card, wrote an address on the back of it, and a word of introduction to a “Mr. Williams.” “Now show that to Mr. Williams, and he will let you see something that will interest you, I think. Don't forget to come back and report any adventures you may experience.”
When we reached the address to which Mr. Hotchkiss sent us, we were surprised to find, instead of a finished building, a fenced-in lot in which they were still at work upon the foundations.
“This can’t be the place,” said Will. “They ​would hardly be putting in the elevators before the building was started.”
“Maybe he meant next door, in that sky-scraper,” I suggested.
Fortunately, the elevator starter of the next building happened to know the Mr. Williams for whom we were looking, and sent us back to the adjacent lot. “You will find Williams on the job over there, He is superintending the driving of the deepest bore on record.”
That puzzled us all the more, as we could n't see, for the life of us, what that had to do with the construction of an elevator. Sure enough, when we got there inside the fence and were directed to Mr. Williams, we found that he was overseeing the sinking of some sort of a shaft. A jolly individual he was, exceedingly fat, and well bespattered with mud. He waddled over to us, looked at our card of introduction, then shook us heartily by the hand.
“So you ‘ve come over to see how we dig a hole, have you? We are down two hundred and sixty feet in one shaft, and we still have to go one hundred and five feet more; three hundred and sixty-five feet, think of it! How is that for a hole, and only twelve inches in diameter, too?”
“But what has that to do with elevators?” we asked.
“Why, this is ta be a plunger-elevator. Did n't Mr, Hotchkiss tell you?” Then Mr. Williams explained to us how the thing worked.
HOW A PLUNGER-ELEVATOR IS BUILT.
They were hauling up one of the boring tools just then. It was on the end of a cable attached to a “jumping” machine. Slowly the cable was wound up, and the length of time it took to raise the tool gave us some idea of the enormous depth to which the shaft had already been sunk. When the tool finally came up, we found that it was flat, with a cutting edge something like a chisel. It was pretty badly worn, and a newly sharpened one was put in its place; then down went the tool into the long, deep bore. When it reached the bottom, the line was pulled up until the tool scarcely touched, after which the machine was started, and drilling was resumed. Mr. Williams told us that the tool would not be allowed to hit the rock with hammer-blows like a pile-driver, for it would be sure to turn off sidewise and follow a seam or a fault, making a crooked hole. Instead, the tool was dangled so that it just barely touched, then, as it was jumped by the machine, the stretch of the cable at each yank would let it strike the rock with a light, springy blow that could not turn out of line; at each blow of the tool it was turned around slowly, so that it would pound out a circular hole. The rock dust was carried to the surface by forcing water into the bore, so that it was a rather mussy job.
“Before we came to solid rock,” explained Mr. Williams, “we had to go through about eighty feet of sand, and the boring was then done with a water jet. This steel tubing,” he said, pointing to the lining of the hole, “was sunk into the sand by forcing water at high pressure against the sand through a jet placed in the ​bottom of the tubing. The water loosened the sand, and it was carried up and out of the hole with the overflow.”
After we had seen our fill of the shaft-sinking, Mr. Williams took us over to the next building, and showed us how plunger-elevators are operated.
“These elevator-shafts are not nearly as long as the ones we are building next door. They are only two hundred feet high.”
We watched one of the elevators go up, pushed by the light plunger of hollow steel only six inches in diameter. Beads of water trickled down the black, oily surface. As the car went up higher and higher, the slender plunger began to sway as if it were a flexible rope. The car was carrying a heavy load of passengers, and I supposed that that was the reason for the unsteadiness of the plunger.
“It does not seem to be standing the weight very well,” I said. “It looks almost as though it would buckle.”
“Weight!” he quoted. “Why, that plunger is not doing much more than to carry the passengers. The counterweight balances about eighty per cent, of the weight of the car and the plunger. I don’t know exactly what these plungers weigh, but in our elevators next door they will weigh close to five and one half tons. If you loaded one of them on a truck, it would take four horses to draw it. But if the cables to the counter-weight should break, the car would buckle and crumple up that tube as if it were made of rubber.”
“That would break the force of the fall, at any rate,” remarked Will.
“Yes, if the tube did n't snap in two, and a jagged piece of it pierce the floor of the car, and injure one or two of the passengers.”
“But suppose the plunger broke off and the counterweight cables did n’t?” I suggested.
“Why, the car would be relieved of the weight of the plunger, and it would shoot up to the top of the shaft like a rocket. But an accident like that is next to impossible. Yet I did once hear of a case when a car was undergoing repairs. In overhauling the car, the plunger connection had been carelessly loosened without fastening the car down, when suddenly, without any warning, the strain of the counterweight wrenched the car free from the plunger, and up it shot, smashing itself free at the top of the shaft, and then falling down to the bottom again. But such a combination of carelessness would probably never happen again, and the plunger-elevator can be regarded as a pretty safe kind.”
Mr, Williams then showed us through the power plant, and explained how the pumps kept the pressure tank up to the proper pressure, and that each tank had some air trapped in it which acted as a sort of spring, so that, when the elevator man turned the valve lever and the water rushed into the plunger cylinder, it was forced out at a constant pressure by the air; and when he turned the valve the other way, the water poured out of the cylinder into a reservoir, being squeezed out by the weight of the car and the unbalanced weight of the plunger. When the pressure in the tank fell too low, a pump would start up automatically and pump water out of the reservoir into the pressure tank until the desired pressure was restored.
Fortunately no accident befell us on this occasion, and we had a very tame story to report to Mr. Hotchkiss. But although there was nothing very thrilling and deliciously exciting about elevators and “jump” drilling, we felt that we had learned something worth while; also it made an interesting page in the diary that Uncle Edward had asked us to keep. I had taken over the task of writing the diary, because it seemed to me that, in this way, I might repay in a small measure my obligations for the fine vacation I was having at Uncle Edward's expense.
Chapter IX
QUENCHING A CITY'S THIRST
We ran to the bridge across the “transverse” to see what was going on. As we watched, a cage rose quickly to the top of the head-frame, a car tilted forward, its end gate swung open, and out poured a load of broken rock into a large hopper beneath. Then the cage started down again, dragging the car back with it into the shaft. It was a rather deep shaft, too, judging by the length of time that the cable was unreeling. Down in the “transverse” below the hopper was a cart taking on a load af rock.
“I wonder what it can be?” queried Will, excitedly.
“A new subway, maybe,” I responded. “They have been talking about one lately.” But a man who was leaning over the rail beside us broke in with the information that it was the new aqueduct.
“Oh, yes,” I chimed in, “Mr. Price told us we must surely see it, Don't you remember, Will?”
“It ’s a whale of a job, too,” said the stranger. “The biggest thing of the kind ever undertaken. There never was anything to compare with it.”
“How about the Roman aqueducts?” I put in.
“A mere trickle of water,” he said contemptuously. “Why, this aqueduct is going to be fourteen feet in diameter. Yes, seventeen feet in some places; and when it is entirely completed and worked to its fullest capacity, it can furnish us every day with five hundred million gallons of water, brought here all the way from the Catskill Mountains. It is one hundred and twenty-seven miles from the proposed upper lake down to the reservoir in Staten Island. That ’s quite a river, now, is n’t it? While with the five hundred million gallons that we get now from the present systems, there will be enough to supply every man, woman, and child in Greater New York with two hundred gallons per day.”
“How much is two hundred gallons?” I inquired.
“About three bath-tubfuls, all good, clear, clean water.”
“But what in the world do they expect to do with all that water?”
I had been suspecting that the man was exaggerating a good deal, and now I was sure of it. “Come off,” I interrupted, rather impertinently. “You can’t ‘put that over’ on us, We know something about tunneling and excavating in this neighborhood, and we know that the deepest hole ever dug in New York did n’t go one hundred and ten feet below water-level; and then the air-pressure in the caisson was so heavy that the men could only put in two hours of work a day.”
“But,” explained the man, “this is not caisson work. The ‘siphon’ under the river is being put through solid rock, where they do not have to bother with pneumatic pressure. Why, it is just because they wanted solid rock that they had to go so deep. This tunnel is being built to last forever, Nothing short of an earthquake can hurt it, and the chances of an earthquake in New York are pretty slim, according to what geologists tell us.”
“It seems to me it is pretty dangerous work,” put in Will. “Suppose they should strike a break in the rock. Just think with what pressure the water would pour in, and drown them!”
“You may be sure they thought of that before they started excavating. Borings were made to find out what sort of rock they had to go through. First they started boring from a scow anchored in the middle of the river. They had all sorts of trouble, too. Once a string of canal-boats banged up against the scow and broke it from its moorings, smashing the drill. Then, another time, the ice carried the scow off. Finally, they gave it up after drilling down seven or eight hundred feet without coming across anything but an occasional boulder. It seemed as if that river had no bottom at all. At any rate, it was not worth while trying to reach it from so unsteady a base as a scow; so, instead, they began drilling on a slant from each side of the river, at such an angle that the drill holes would meet at a depth of about fifteen hundred feet below the middle of the river. The drills went through rock all the way, and no water was struck. So then they bored another pair of test holes that met at a depth of nine hundred and fifty feet, going through solid rock all the way. That decided them that it would be perfectly safe to run the siphon through at the eleven-hundred-foot level.”
“How do you happen to know so much about the matter?” we inquired.
“Oh, I am just a taxpayer, but I like to know what I am paying for with my taxes; besides, I’m proud of New York’s big undertakings.”
“Jim, we ’ve got to go up and see that work,” said Will. “My, but it would he interesting!”
“There is a good deal to interest you right here, too," continued the stranger. “Do you know the tunnel at this shaft is two hundred and fifty feet below the surface? And it goes right down the {{wdl|Q15063317|island of Manhattan]] at about that same depth, and then it goes under the East River, dipping down to a depth of over seven hundred and fifty feet, so as to keep in solid rock all the way.”
“But why don’t they put pipes down?”
“There are lots of reasons. They would cost more. Two or three pipes would be necessary because a single pipe to carry all that water would be out of the question, and then there would be the expense of flexible joints, which would have to be strong enough to carry the pressure, and to keep the pipes from breaking under the drag of the tide. Oh, yes, pipes would involve constant care to keep them from breaking or rusting through. I don’t believe you realize what an enormous pressure of water there will be in this rock tunnel. Why, in the down-town section, the pressure will be enough to send the water up to the top of a twenty-five-story building without pumping. In fact, most of the pumping stations around the city now will no longer be necessary.”
We must have spent an hour or more with this chance acquaintance, discussing the wonderful work on this tremendous engineering undertaking. We got so excited over the matter that we started down-town at once to visit Mr. Price, and get a letter of introduction to the chief engineer of the aqueduct. We were eager to go up the Hudson and see for ourselves the work on the great siphon. We thought it would be quite a stunt to go down a thousand feet under ground.
To be continued.