LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILROADS. A Belt Line to Cost £3,000,000 per Mile.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 31, 5 January 1884, Page 7

LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILROADS. A Belt Line to Cost £3,000,000 per Mile.

The London " Daily Telegraph " has the following on the construction of the link line (underground) from the Mansion House to the Tower, which is estimated to coat at the rate of £3,000,000 a mile. The work of tunnelling under the streets of a city like London is one of enormous difficulty. Especially is this the case when it is necessary to divert sewers, to underpin heavily-freighted buildings, and to demolish lofty warehouses without, if ib is possible, stopping or seriously impeding public traffic. These were the elements of the task set before the engineers of t the link line from the Mansion House to the Tower. At the very commencement of their operations, in Great St. Thomas Apostio, thoy came upon warehouses ponderously laden with goods which had to be undermined and yet sustained by powerful temporary supports bo cautiously inserted that not a brick should be moved out of its place, and not a single floor altered ,in its level. The work of underpinning amounts, practically, to carrying down the foundations of a building to the level of the base of the tunnel which is being made beside or^ below it. Here, in great St. Thomas Apostle, are some new warehouses four or live stories high, containing, in addition to their own weight, hundreds ot tons of merchandise. It is decided to leave them standing. To do this new sloping wall- of concrete are built beneath and again -r the oiigiual walls, taking the place of the foundations, and these are carried down f a- enough tj make it absolutely safe. The task is quiru as critical though perhaps n<>t »•» famous ac the American engineering ioat oi removing a building bodily from one sito to another. Iv this case the toun l.ttioin are, in effoot, carrieiljdownward, while this superstructure is u ti moved. The making of a tunnol beneath the buiy streets of L m^.on is no' only a difficult but also very interesting operation. It is not done, as most peopl • seem to suppose, by excavating i trei cii to the depth and breadth required — saj tw mty-iive feet — and utien building the jirc'i ovor it. Instead ot this, thp engineer di.s a \ a^sage on ; either .su e of ms tv mel ti rej or four \ feet wide, e recce vithai these; his walls of concrete, and then, re no\ ing a layer of the surface earth, constructs his area of brickwork. When this is* completed, the earth within — which the workmen know as ♦• dumping"— is easily excavated and removed. Mr Walker, the contractor, is able to carry on this process simultaneously all along the route, some 1,200 men being employed on the different short lengths, and within three weeks from the present time the arch fro,n end to end will, it is expected, be complete. In making this link line the arches contain seven courses of brick. They are supposed to be strong enough to bear any pressure, to resist any vibration, and to endure for nearly all time. The static pressure of enormous warehouses, the dynamic force of moving traction engines, is supposed to be effectually provided against. Considering the inherent difficulties of the undertaking, the work of constructing this connecting \\ne of underground railway may be considered to have been executed expeditiously. A section of the new street will be open for traffic presently, and in a few months the railway will be in operation. Fast experience leads to the reasonable expectation that the joint companies —the Metropolitan and District railways— will benefit largely by the extension. Their respective Chairmen, Sir Edward Watkin and Mr J. S. Forbes, have good reason to believe that the completing link of their systems will be the most remunerative of all. When to these is added the intended line from Aldgatetothe East London, whichruns through the Thames tunnel, the whole railway system of the metropolis, north and south of the river, will beunited. TheCityCorporationhavemet the contracts for the work handsomely, by contributing their quota of £300,000 by instalments as the various sections of the new stieet were made. The Metropolitan Board, however, though guaranteeing £500,000 on the completion of the improve ments, withhold the whole B'tm until the work is finished, a course for which there may be good reasons, but which increases the financial difficulties meantime.

Of hot milk as a stimulant, the Medical Record says :-Milk heated too much above 100 degrees Fahrenheit loses for a time a degree of its sweetness and density. No one who, fatigued by over-exertion ot body find mind, has ever experienced tho reviving influence of a tumbler of this "beverage, heated as hot as can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it because of its being rendered somewhat less acceptable to the palate. The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is surprising Some portion of it seems to be digested and appropriated almost immediately, and many who now fancy that they need alcholic stiinulents when exhausted l»y fatigue will find in tln^simp l^ draught an equivalent that will I>j abundantly satisfying and far more <endurin^ in iU eifects*