The daily Alaskan., 1918-01-02

| Than Twelve Miles In L0nath ano lte
 Cost Exceeded Fifteen MiIlions-our
 Own Hoosao Tunnel.
 The costliest as well as the biggest railroad tunnel in the world is the long hole burrOwed below the Alps between Brlgue, Switzerland, and Iselle, Italy.
 This tremendous tunnel, the Simplon, is F miles 637 yards In length and cost more than $15,OO0O0O, Several mill lions more will be spent in completing the second chamber Work was begun on 1t in 1898, and traffic began to move through in 1908.
 The SlmplOn is about three miles longer than the St. Gothard and the LoetSchberg tunnels and more than four miles longer than the Mont CeniB, the three next longest of the worlds railway tunnels.
 The Mont CeniS was the first of these, big bores. It was completed In 1871 and at once diverted passenger and | freight transportation away from Swift zerland, as 1t furnished a direct route | to Italy from southeastern France. The Swiss determined to win back their lost traffic, and in 1871 work was started on the St. Gothard, which was not finished until eleven years later. l The St. GOthard Is about nine and one third miles in length and cost $11, ,500,- | coo.
 In It's toll of lives 1t was the Costliest of all Faulty ventilation, the terrific heat and tie lack of care In keeping down the dust caused the deaths of 800 laborers. This tunnel Is wholly In Swiss territory, and eight years ago 1t was bought from the owners by the government
 The SimplOn, located about halfway between the Mont Cenis and the St. GOthard. is a double tunnel, although only one chamber has been wholly ex- cavatcd. The other will be enlarged and nut into service when the first be- l comes overtaXed Better arrangements | for ventilation kept the death roll | down to sixty, twenty-five cubic feet of fresh air being supplied to the labor CTS for every one blown into the St, Gothard.
 The difficulties conquered were Ire mendous. The Simplon Is not only the longest. but the lowest of the Alpine tunnels, and the rock temperature sometimes reached l33 degrees. When the workmCn from the Swiss | side reached the center of the great bore they were halted by an enormous spring of hot water Then the Italians were stopped, and for some time 1t looked as though the whole work might | have to be abandoned. But the engi- neers refused to be duunted, although six months were required to dig out the last 300 yards of the tunnel. So slight were the errors made In the digging that the headings from el- ther side met with deviatiOns of but eight inches internally and three and one-half inches vertically. The total length of the tunnel was thirty-siI inches less than had been calculated. Trains are pulled through the tunnel in eighteen minutes. at the rate of forty-two miles an hour by powerful ] electric locomotives.
 The Loetschberg Is the latest of the big Swiss tunnels This Is about the same length as the St. Gothard and Is also wholly in Swiss territory, being located to the north of the Simplon. It Is a part of the Bernese Alps rail way, which has thirty-four tunnels in it's forty-eight miles between Thur and Brigue.
 The Simplon will apparently remain the biggest of railway tunnels until submarine one Is driven under the Eng | fish channel or perhaps under Boring sea. At present the longest projected mountain tunnel in Europe Is French 1 undertaking, which is planned to pass directly under Mont Blanc, the high est mountain in Europe, and to form another highway between France and Italy. But this tunnel will be only a | little over eleven miles long, so that 1t will be merely second in rank If It Is carried out.
 The Hoosac tunnel. in western Mas | sachusetts, was the first really big tun- nel in the United States. Begun in
 1855, 1t was not finished until 1876.
 Air drills and nitroglycerin were used in this work for the first time on big scale in any American engineering
 work. The HooSac tunnel Is four and three-quarters miles in length.-BostOn Post