The rolling-stock is quite in keeping with this diminutive railway. The tiny engines have driving-wheels 24 inches in diameter, while the cylinders have a diameter of 12 inches and a stroke of 17¾ inches. Yet they can haul a load of 100 tons at a speed of 25 miles an hour on the level and at 9½ miles an hour on the steepest banks of 1 in 50.
This appears to be a mere crawl in comparison with the speeds with which we are familiar on the standard railways. But when one recalls the manner in which this little “toy” line has changed conditions of travel in a lonely corner of the African continent, and the former rate of progress possible by bullock-cart, even 9½ miles an hour appears to be an amazing speed. Before the iron horse appeared in German South-West Africa, to travel from Swakopmund to Omaruru, a mere 145 miles, was a heroic achievement, entailing a laborious slow tramp through lonely sterile wastes of boulders and scrub. A pace of 7 or 10 miles a day was considered fast travelling, and one who covered the journey in a fortnight was considered to have driven hard. To-day the same distance can be reeled off in about 12 hours.
CHAPTER VII
THE WONDERS OF THE TYROL
Probably there is no country in Europe wherein are compressed so many and such varied marvels of engineering executed in connection with the building of the iron road as in Austria. As is well known, the country is a sea of towering rugged mountains, with steep slopes, knotted by crags and scarred by deep gullies, intersected by broad sylvan valleys.
Such topographical conditions impose a severe tax upon the skill and resources of the engineer. Consequently this territory has been the scene of many grim grapples with Nature—some in which the odds have been overwhelmingly against the engineers, and in which success has been achieved only by dogged perseverance. Conspicuous in this direction are the wonderful tunnels.
It was the successful piercing of the Mont Cenis and St. Gotthard tunnels that first spurred the Austrian engineers to work of this character. Their first attempt, the boring of the Arlberg, was such a conspicuous success that they did not hesitate afterwards to have recourse to such methods when all other means appeared impracticable. To-day the country can point to four huge Alpine tunnels which stand among the foremost achievements of their class in the world. Such ways and means for forcing the iron road from one point to another are highly expensive, but in each instance the ends have justified the means. By their provision, points only a few miles apart as the crow flies, and which with surface railways could have been connected only by wearying, devious routes, have been brought into close communication.
When the Arlberg chain was taken in hand, the preliminary surveys showed that it would approximate seven miles in length, and that about the centre of the tunnel a solid mass of rock, 1,600 feet in thickness, would extend from the roof and track to the storm-swept mountain pass overhead.
At this time the two previous projects of this character had proved so costly, had occupied such a long time, and had entailed the grappling with technical difficulties such as never had been encountered before, that the idea of tunnelling the Arlberg was entertained with mixed feelings. But Julius Lott, the engineer-in-chief, was not to be dissuaded from his enterprise. He maintained that it could be accomplished far more quickly and cheaply than had been the Cenis or Gotthard works. True, it was not to be quite so long as either of the latter undertakings, but similar difficulties, if not others more perplexing, might lurk buried there in the heart of the crest. The engineer was urged in his decision by the perfection of a new boring implement which had been evolved during the final stages of the Gotthard tunnel. Although the circumstances there did not enable the new invention to demonstrate its possibilities to the full, yet what had been done sufficed to show that the new tool was destined to revolutionise the methods adopted in such huge boring operations.
This was the Brandt rock-drill, a wonderful appliance which in one stroke displaced incalculable manual labour. The tool is operated by water pressure, and the drill ploughs its way into the rock under a rotary movement in much the same manner as an auger forces its way through a piece of wood. The water pressure brought to bear upon the drill is tremendous, ranging from 1,400 to 1,680 pounds per square inch, and even the hardest rock scarcely can resist its attack.