BIG RAILWAY DEVIATION

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 291, 3 May 1911, Page 8

BIG RAILWAY DEVIATION

IMPORTANT OPERATIONS AT MOKOIA. As part of the Railway Department's scheme for improving existing grades and curves so as to reduce working expenses, an important and somewhat costly deviation of the New Plymouth branch is being carried, out eouth of Mokoia station, near Hawera. The existing track winds in a very circuitous way up a one-in-fifty grade to Mokoia, but the deviation of about two and a quarter miles will improve the grade to 1 in 80, substitute one easy curve for the present series, and reduce the distance by twenty chains. These are important benefits in working the traffic, but they are being purchased at a high price, as nearly the whole deviation is through deep cuttings. These are being constructed by ,day labor on the tunnel method. A drive is put through at the rail-level, shafts sunk to meet it from the surface, and the soil shovelled easily down these ever-widening holes until the surface workers convert the tunnel into an open cutting. One cutting involves the driving of a tunnel 28 chains long at a depth of fifty feet. The formation is papa rock with layers of sand and soil on the surface. It is expected that the work will take over a year to complete. The scheme of improvements involves the substitution of the wooden viaduct over the Manawapou river by a steel one twenty feet higher, and the reconstruction of the approaches.—Wellington Times.