Preliminary to embarking upon the contract he had prepared careful calculations showing him how much rock it was requisite to remove every day to effect completion in time, and he made up his mind to hold to this table by hook or by crook. A tunnel face is not a spot where much leeway can be made up, for only a certain number of men can be crowded upon its limited area. But he met this disadvantage by spurring the drillers to superhuman effort by the offer of an attractive bonus. In this way he was able to maintain the advance he had calculated per day until the heart of the mountain was gained, when owing to the extreme hardness of the rock the men could not help falling behind the scheduled progress. Now and again, however, when they encountered a softer stretch of material they were able to make up lost time.
The months sped by; the contracted time for completion loomed nearer and nearer. Determined not to be beaten, Bennett urged his drillers harder and harder, offering fancy wages for additional effort. The strain wore him almost to a skeleton; he scarcely slept, so haunted was he by the determination to fulfil his side of the bargain. Checking and rechecking of the finished work convinced him that the opposing parties could not be far apart in the heart of the Cascades.
One morning the men on one side paused momentarily in their drilling. They could hear the faint muffled chink, chink of drills. It was the party advancing from the west. With a loud cheer, answered by a ghostly sepulchral hurrah, both parties bent to their tasks with redoubled energy. Before long a gaping hole was revealed in the heading. The two forces had met—the tunnel was pierced. Without hesitation they set to widening the breach out to its appointed dimensions, and at last, with a sigh of relief, threw down their tools. The tunnel was finished practically, and there were seven days or so to spare.
In another instance a railway company required a bridge to be opened within a certain period. Its accomplishment on time meant the accretion of a large sum of money to the treasury, and accordingly a bounty of some £5,000, or $25,000, was offered to the firm building the bridge. The latter in turn offered a portion to the men responsible for the actual work. Under the incentive of this offer the riveters and erectors strove might and main. The odds were against them hopelessly, but general co-operation enabled the work to go forward with great speed. By maintaining this high pressure the huge fabric assumed its definite shape in quick time, and the last rivet was driven home with a resounding cheer a few minutes before the expiration of the stipulated time.
Yet railway construction has its farcical side, especially in America. Conflicting interests often clash, and then lively times ensue. In Canada it has been no unusual sight to see an existing railway rush a large gang of workmen to a point threatened with invasion by a rival. Their presence ostensibly is to improve the line in possession, but in reality the men are drafted there to thwart the competitive enterprise. This is the “fighting gang,” and it is rightly named, because the opposing forces often meet and a free fight results.
When these tactics are waged by opposing railway magnates the struggle is often bitter and long drawn out. It was so when J. J. Hill and Harriman came to close grips in Oregon. The former great railway-builder decided to carry a line down to the coast along the bank of the Columbia River. Harriman construed this act as an invasion of his preserves, and spared no effort to defeat the “Grand Old Railway-Builder of the West,” as J. J. Hill is called popularly. Directly Hill’s proposals became known, Harriman, to secure his legal status, revived a defunct project known as the “Wallula Pacific railway,” which had been incorporated so many years before, and yet had accomplished so little, as to be forgotten. Hill was coming down the north bank of the Columbia, and suddenly Harriman discovered that his moribund project was to follow the same course. The result was that two rival constructional forces appeared on the scene, one bent on building a line, and the other determined to prevent its realisation. A hail of rock rained from one camp to the other, and the grade was demolished as rapidly as fashioned. One day the Hill navvies were in possession, the next, through being outnumbered, they were driven out and the Harriman army held the position, only to evacuate it when the former reappeared with reinforcements. No blood was spilt, but it came perilously near it when a navvy on one side threw a piece of rock harder against an opposing workman than the latter appreciated. Injuries were numerous, and one day the aspect became so threatening that a pitched battle appeared certain. At times, however, the battle became Gilbertian. The rivals merely played catchball with pieces of rock, tossing the missiles at one another with considerable banter and amid a rain of jokes.
For eighteen months this state of affairs prevailed, and then the courts deciding against Harriman, he was forced to retire from the scene. Directly he did so, his gangs of navvies walked over to the opposite camp, because from their point of view Hill’s money was just as good as that of Harriman. It was immaterial to them for which side they worked, so long as they were paid for it. The result was that the two gangs which had been engaged in more or less deadly strife, now worked harmoniously side by side to carry the Hill line into Portland. Such tactics as these, however, come somewhat as an interlude to the grim tussle with Nature which is the railway-builder’s invariable lot.
CHAPTER III
THE BORING OF THE GOTTHARD TUNNEL
The little country of Switzerland, as is well known, is a tumbled mass of snow-clad mountain ranges. On the Italian frontier, however, this natural barrier becomes more rugged and defiant, some of the peaks towering 10,000 feet or higher into the clouds. For centuries this frontier chain so successfully walled in the Helvetians that they could not pass into Italy without making a wearisome detour. Travelling from one country to the other before George Stephenson demonstrated the possibilities of the steam engine running on rails, therefore, was a journey not to be lightly undertaken, for it occupied weeks. An effort to ease this situation was made so far back as the thirteenth century by the blazing of a footpath over the St. Gotthard, but it was a mere dangerous and dizzy trail. Little wonder, therefore, that it was not favoured by other than the more adventurous.