TUNNELLING NIAGARA RIVER.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 211, 11 February 1875, Page 3

TUNNELLING NIAGARA RIVER.

(From, the Buffalo Commercial.')

The fact has heretofore been stated that Civil Engineer William Wallace had prepared a plan for tunnelling the Niagara River at Buffalo for submission to and consideration by those engaged in the movement for providing additional facilities for travel and business between this point and Canada. A few facts in regard to the proposed plan will bo of interest. It contemplates a passenger depot on the Terrace, near Main street, with a railroad track running through the Terrace to Court street, down Court street to its foot, across the canal; thence down between the canal and the track of the Niagara Falls branch of the Central Railroad to a point a short distance south of the railroad bridge over the canal, where the cutting will commence. .The tunnel is to run under Black Rock Harbor and the river, and emerge on the Canada side near where the old car shop formerly stood. After the surface is again reached the track will be continued around the high ground and join that of the Canada Southern Railway near the Episcopal church. The whole length of the cutting, including the tunnel, is 4900 feet, and of the tunnel proper 2940 feet. The proposed dimensions of the tunnel are thirty feet wide and twenty feet high. This would give 22,627 cubic yards of excavation per lineal foot, or 65,333 cubic yards in all. In the through-ent on this side of the river there would be 126.29 cubic yards of rock and earth excavation —how much of earth cannot be determined without test pits. On the Canadian side the rock and earth excavation would amount to 118,317 cubic yards. The roof of the tunnel would be some sixteen feet below the bed of the river at the deepest point. The grade from the centre is put down at sixty feet to the mile. The estimated expense of the work complete is 1,500,000 dollars.