The evening times., 1899-06-17
LoNDON'S BUSIEST SPOT.
Excavations for the Central Station
of Three Tunnel Roads.
From the London Daily News.D

(From the London Daily Neus)
That marvellous piece OF engineering
work down under the roadway at the Man
sion House is just approaching the close
of one very important stage, though the
whole work will certainly not be finished
| till November, and perhaps not then. Any
body privileged TO go down below there
cannot fail to be amazed that it should
have been found possible to do what has
been done while the full tide OF London S
traffic has been going on just overhead.
When they began work here, the whole OF
the great eXpanse of roadway had a solid
earth foundation, except that the ground
was ramified by an astonishing tangle of
all sorts of pipes, ranging from the old
wooden water pipes of past age up to
hydraulic mains and the pneumatic tubes.
Now, the space down below the road is
another world of gloomy galleries and i'm
penetrable vods dimly illumined by cleo
tric glow lamps. and peopled by whole
host OF dusky gnomes, who still seem TO
be wriggling their way down into the bow
els OF the earth.
There is a great circular gallery run
ming all around just under the road, and
from this passages shoot OFF in various di-
rections. upward and downward. Under
meath this is a corresponding gallery in
which the various services-gas, water,
hydraulic power, pneumatic dispatch, tele
graph and telephones-have all been re-
duced from the chaos to orderly system,
and lie there in the gloom very impressive
ly suggestive of the veins and arteries
through which rushing the life cur
rents and nervous pulsations of the tre-
mendous world whose dull echoes roll sui
lenly through the weird obscurity.
The great space in the centre Of these
two subterranean galleries seems still to
be abandoned to chaos and is one i'm
penetrable mystery of glowing lights and
dark shadows, steel girders and brick
walls and dusky figures that look TO be
hopelessly laboring to evolve order out Of
the confusion. The booking Office of the
Central London Railway will be here, and
from the thick of the disorder, black. un-
fathoTable shafts drop down perpendic-
ularly to the railway platforms below. In
the five hydraulic lifts that will carry up
and down ninety or a hundred people at
time.
The roadway, which formerly was solid,
is now nearly all of it supported on steel
girders, and what remains temporarily
propped up on balks of timber and brick
walls will in the course Of two or three
weeks get its steel beams underneath it
and the timber and the bricks will be
knocked away. mere Will De mass OI
concrete laid above the girders, and when
that has had four or five days to dry and
harden asphalt will cover it all. The work
has been done in ten or eleven sections,
and only one of these sections has now to
be done, and this most difficult and troub-
lesome engineering feet will have been got
safely through.
There will never again be any need to
break up the roadway between the Bank
and the Mansion House, and probably be-
fore the end of the year there will be a
light and convenient subway all round this
busy space, to be reached by a short flight
of steps from either of the street corners.
The South London Electric Railway and
the City and Waterloo will have direct
with the subway by slopes.
1t is interesting to learn that the whole
of the great and intricate system of steel
girders and pillars upon which the road
way at the Mansion House is being laid
has already been erected experimentally
in a field at Derby. The business having
been thus rehearsed, as it were, the whole
fabric has been brought section by section
and put here in the heart Of London. II
seems probable that the extensive obstruc-
tion on the pavement in front Of the Royal
Exchange will not be cleared away till
toward this time next year.