The Savannah morning news., 1904-10-02

There are greater engineering
works going on in the world to-day.
For example. the construction of the
Assouan dam and the other irrigation
works on the Nile which, as their
creator, Sir William Garstin, proudly
boasts. will live in the use and OBJ
servation of mankind long after the
ancient monuments of the Egyptians
have disappeared beneath the sands
of the Nubian desert. But of its
kind the New York subway is the
greatest things yet done. and it is
also the greatest engineering enter
prise of any kind in the United States
TODAY.
1t will be opened throughout near
1y the whole of it's length in the
course of the present month, if
strikes do not further delay the COM
pletition of the work 1t is practically
finished from the residential districts
away uptown to the great business
section around City Hall. Some work
is still going on farther downtown
towards the Battery, and also at the
northern extremity of Manhattan
and on the Brooklyn extension.
GOthnrd and Mt, Cents, Rabbit Bur
rows.
Time was when the Gothard and
Mont Cents tunnels were held to be
considerable holes in the earth. They
are mere rabbit burrows in comparison
with the vast shaft which has been
driven longitudinally through the Is
land of Manhattan.
Or take. instead, the greatest eXca-
Vations made by vanished civilizations
Great as are the caves of Elephanta
and the temples of Karnak and OF
AboOsimbel on the Nile bank, the floor
space of the stations of the New York
subway taken together is greater than
that of any two of them, and when the
Brooklyn and under-the-river tunnels
to be made are completed, such sta
tional areas will exceed in combined
space all the rock-hewn temples OF the
ancient world known to archaeology.
This is the statement of an engin-
Ger connected with the work who nap
pens to be gifted with a poetic imagl-
nation But none the less he possesses
that precision of detail which properly
belongs to his profession, for he mas
computed that the earth which has
been, or will be, eXcavated in the max
ing of the subway amounts to exactly
1.10O.2SS cubic yards. The rock tuh-
neled amounts to half million yards'
the rock excavated, to more than dou-
BILE that quantity.
Figures Hardly Comprehensive.
Here are some other figures which
sneak fo~ themselves as to the mag
uitude o. the work: 1000
Steel used in the structure, '0'OOo
tons: cast iron, a mere tritle OF
ia 600 tons concrete, far over 100000
e1Ibic wards: water proofing, more
man 100000 cubic yards; brick
20 900 cubic yards; vault lights, over
1000, each shedding it's beams TOT d
ea6ii1s of many yards; total length
If track approaches, about SoO'oOo
FEET. These figures do not lhcluue
The great Brooklyn extension by way
If the Battery tunnel, which IS al
adt, under way; or other schemes
FOR the extension of the subway ser
vice either mooted or in active pro-
ccss of execution.
The Ptolemies and the third
Rameses builded monuments In their
9ay. but they did nothing so vast as
This. >, oia
F.. New York engineer, "Pliny tells US
It took thirty thousand men eleven
weary years to cut a tunnel three ana
a half miles long. To-day, employ
ing less than twelve thousand men,
The New York masters of engineer
mig mechanics have made a tunnel
AOual i'm caDacity to one OF over MY
miles in length like that of Rome,
10 say nothing of some ten miles of
elevated structure and the excavation
Of extra areas for underground sta
lions"
other Underground Roads.
True, there are other underground
roads in the world, but, compared
with them, this one is as "all Lon
bard street to a China orange" The
famous "twopenny tube in London,
for example, about covers the distance
from the Battery to Forty-second
street. where the real journey to the
end of the line is hardly beginning.
1t has been carefully estimated by
engineers that if the subway were
a single tunnel six feet high and three
feet wide. it would reach from New
York TO Chicago. The part exca-
waited through the solid rock would
reach from the metropolis to Cleve-
land. Three million cubic yards of
hole"--that is how one man connected
with the work summed it up.
While the excavations are going on,
millions of feet of lumber are being
used to prop up the street so that
the ordinary traffic can go on. All
the engineers engaged i'm the enter
prise are impressed by its magnitude.
and cannot help stopping now and
then to indulge in the weirdest kind