COMPLETION OF THE ST. GOTHARD TUNNEL.

Kumara Times, Issue 1135, 19 May 1880, Page 4

COMPLETION OF THE ST. GOTHARD TUNNEL.

A correspondent of the Times, telegraphing from Airolo on February 29 th, says - I The working parties in the two sections of the St. Gothard tunnel had this morning, at 11.15, completed 7,160 metres from the south entrance. The calculations of the engineers as to the direction of the galleries are thus fully verified, but they were out by 80 metres in their estimate of the length to be pierced. At noon yesterday it was computed that there were still a very considerable number of metres to bore, and that the meetings from both ends would occur 40 hours later, but in the course of last night, on sounding with a long drill, it was found that the thickness of the intervening rock was only 13 metres. The news of this unlooked for consummation became speedily known, and at 10 o’clock large crowds had assembled to wait for the auspicious blast which should make of the two galleries one tunnel. At Airolo a few members of the local Landwehr, with their band, were hastily summoned,flags hoisted, and engines and waggons gaily decorated, and when the train bringing the people from Goschenen ran into the tunnel being practicable for locomotives two-thirds of the way, nothing was wanting to complete the satisfaction of the engineers and others connected with the undertaking but the presence of M. Favre, the contractor, who died six months ago in the very tunnel which he had so nearly brought to a successful conclusion, and with which his name will ever be associated. The piercing of the longest tunnel in the world has thus been achieved in seven years and five months—a rapidity of execution quite unprecedented, for relatively to its length the St. Gothard has been bored in a fourth of the time occupied in the boring of the Hauenstein tunnel and in less than half the time taken by the Mount Cenis. This great advance in the art of tunnel driving is due to the more extended application of machinery, and above all to the efficiency of the air compressors invented by Professor Golladon of Geneva. The perforators, actuated by these compressors do their work with marvellous swiftness. In two hours one machine drills 26 holes 1.20 metres deep in a face of rock some 2 metres square. The holes are then filled with dynamite, charged, and fired, every explosion dislodging some 2| cubic metres of rock. The point of attack for the perforators is always the upper part of the finished tunnel of the future ; the floor of the passage the clear out being afterwards blasted and wrought down by hand to the required level. The locomotives used in the tunnel are'moved by compressed air, and ventilation is provid ed fr om the same source. Horses are also used for dragging the waggons, but, owing to the intense heat and the closeness, the mortality among them is very great. Out of a stud of forty, ten die on an average every month. The men work night and day in shifts of eight hours each ; the labor is very trying, and they are compelled to take frequent holidays. Great . circumspection had to be exercised in the admission of outsiders to the galleries, as a walk of several miles in the stifling heat and vitiated atmosphere might easily prove fatal to persons with weak hearts or a tendency to congestion of the brain; and even the healthy who venture in for the first time have often occasion to regret their temerity. The scene in the the interior of the tunnel is weird in the extreme ; the pitchy darkness relieved only by the glare of a few lamps, the sbriking of locomotives, the blowing of horns, the tramp of horses, the vibration of the perforators the explosion of mines, the continual passing of heavily-laden waggons, the groups of naked men plying pickaxe, spade, and shovel—all these things mingled together create an impression ‘never ,to be forgotten' The completion of the work now that the two gaileries are joined and a free circulation of air is established will be comparatively easy. The tunnel is expected to be ready for traffic by the end of September, and the entire system of which it is the centre in the • summer of 1882 The great engineering triumph of which the St Gothard tunnel is at once the monument and the consummation, though a peaceful, has not been a bloodless one. Between sixty and seventy men have been killed by the premature explosion of mines and other mishaps, many more have been seriously injured, and those who have borne the heat and burden of the day are well worthy of the medals that are about to be bestowed upon them and the fete with which they are to be honored on Wednesday at Airolo, and at which the Federal Council and probably the Governments of Germany and Italy will be represented.