Northern Ohio journal. [volume] (Painesville, Ohio) 1872-1896, 1880-04-03
The st. GOthard Tunnel.

don Times writes as follows under date
of February %: ''The working parties
in the two sections of the ST. Gothard
tunnel had this morning, at Ills, COM
pleted 7,160 metres from the south en-
trance. The calculations of the en-
gineers as to the direction of the galleries
are thus fully verified, but they were out
by eighty metres in their estimate of the
length to be pierced. At noon yesterday
it was computed that there were still
very considerable number of meters to
bore, and that the meeting from both
ends would occur forty hours later, but
in the course of last night, on sounding
with long drill, it was found that the
thickness of the intervening rock was
only thirteen meters. The news of this
unlooked-for consummation became
speedily known, and at ten O clock large
crowds had assembled to wait for the
auspicious blast which should make of
the two galleries one tunnel. At Airolo'
few members of the local Landwehr,
with their band, were hastily summoned,
flags hoisted, and engines and wagons
gayly decorated, and when the train
bringing the people from Goschenen ran
into the station, the tunnel being practi-
cable for locomotives two-thirds of the
way, nothing was wanting to complete
the satisfaction of the engineers and
others connected with the undertaking
but the presence of M. Favre, the con-
tractor, who died six months ago in the
very tunnel which he had so nearly
brought to a successful conclusion, and
with which his name will ever be asso-
ciated.
The piercing of the longest tunnel in
| the world has thus been achieved in seven
years and five months-a rapidity of exc
cution quite unprecedented, for relative
| ly to its length the St. Gothard has been
bored in fourth of the time occupied in
the boring of the Hauenstein tunnel, and
in less than half the time taken by the
Mont Gents. This great advance in the
art of tunnel-driving is due to the more
extended application of machinery, and
above all to the efficiency of the air COM
pressers invented by Professor Colladon,
of Geneva. The perforators, actuated
by these compressors, do their work with
marvellous swiftness. In two hours one
machine drills twenty-six holes 1-2O
metres deep in face of rock some two
metres square. The holes are then filled
with dynamite, charged, and fired, every
explosion dislodging some two and one
half cubic metres of rock. The point OF
attack for the perforators is always the
/ upper part of the finished tunnel of the
future; the floor of the passage they cleal
out being afterward blasted and wrought
down by hand to the required level. The
locomotives used in the tunnel are moved
by compressed air, and ventilation is
provided from the same source. Horses
are also used for dragging the wagons
but owing to the intense heat and the
closeness, the mortality among them i:
very great. Out of stud of forty, ten die
on an average every month. The men worl
night and day in shifts of eight hours
each; the labor is very trying, and they
are compelled to take frequent holidays
Great circumspection has had to be exer
cised in the admission of outsiders to thu
galleries, as walk of several miles il
the sitting heat and vitiated atmospher,
might easily prove fatal to persons will
weak hearts or tendency to congestion
of the brain, and even the healthy wht
venture in for the first time have Otter
occasion to regret their temerity. Th,
scene in the interior of the tunnel i
weird in the extreme; the pitchy dark
ness, relieved only by the glare of few
lamps, the shrieking of locomotives, tn,
blowing of horns, the tramp of horses
the vibration of the perforators, the ex
! plosion of mines, the continual passin.
t of heavily-laden wagons, the groups o
naked men plying pick-ax, spade ant
shovelall these things mingled togethe
| create an impression never to be forgot
ten. The completion of the work, nov
t that the two galleries are joined and
free circulation of air is established, vii
: be comparatively easy. The tunnel
| expected to be ready for traffic by tn
' end of September, and the entire syster
E of which it is the center in the summe
of 1882. The great engineering trump
: of which the St. Gothard tunnel is a
D once the monument and the consumms
: ton, though peaceful, has not been
: bloodless, one. Between sixty and sey
; enty men have been killed by the prems
4 ture explosion of mines, and other mis-
: haps; many more have been seriously il
. ilred.''