. New England; a human interest geographical reader. was done by hand. Afterward acompressed air drill was invented which made theprogress much more rapid. The men worked in re- Beautiful Berkshire 33 lays of eight hours each, and there was no pause, dayor night. WTien the work was in full swing the pound-ing of the drills, the rumbling of the cars carrying awaythe refuse, and the explosions made a noise in thenarrow passagethat was drilling wascarried on fromboth sides of themountain, and thefloor of each tun-nel was slantedslightly upwardto allow thewater which camedown constant
. New England; a human interest geographical reader. was done by hand. Afterward acompressed air drill was invented which made theprogress much more rapid. The men worked in re- Beautiful Berkshire 33 lays of eight hours each, and there was no pause, dayor night. WTien the work was in full swing the pound-ing of the drills, the rumbling of the cars carrying awaythe refuse, and the explosions made a noise in thenarrow passagethat was drilling wascarried on fromboth sides of themountain, and thefloor of each tun-nel was slantedslightly upwardto allow thewater which camedown constantlythrough the roofto flow away. Alarge amount ofwater still seepsinto the tunnel, and the discharge at the west end is six hundredgallons a minute. That the work might proceed more rapidly, a shaftwas sunk from a hollow on the height to the level ofthe tunnel, a distance of over one thousand feet, andthence the excavating was pushed in both accurate were the engineers that the several passagesjoined with only a few inches A dweller on the heights 134 New England The first train passed through the tunnel in February,1875, but much still needed to be done. There wasgreat danger from falling rocks, and to make the roofsecure the tunnel was arched with brick. It is fourand three-quarters miles long, twenty-four feet wide,and twenty feet high, and is equipped with a doubletrack. The original estimate of the cost was twomillion dollars, yet the actual cost was over fourteenmillion. At the time the tunnel was begun it was the biggestundertaking of the kind that had ever been were many accidents, and in all one hundredand ninety-five lives were lost. The most seriousaccident was in the central shaft. The buildings atthe top caught on fire, and thirteen men down belowperished, suffocated by the smoke of falling timbers. About ten miles west from the tunnel is Williams-town and its famous college. The chief street in theplace is probably unexce
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonclifton1865194, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910
