“Yaw’ve bean a darmnation short toime abaaowt it!”
In the construction of the London and North-Western Railway, the contractor at Blisworth also failed and also died.
Besides the perpendicular cutting which he had undertaken to execute, there was, on the surface of the rock through which it now passes, a stratum of about twenty feet of clay of so slippery a nature, that for a considerable time, in spite of all efforts or precautions, it continued to flow over into the cutting like porridge. The only remedy which could be applied was, at vast labour and expense, to remove this stratum for a considerable distance, terminating it by a slope at a very flat angle, all of which extra labour, trouble, and expense, we may observe, is not only unseen but unknown to the traveller, who, as he flies through the tunnel, if he looks at the summit at all, naturally fancies that it forms the upper extremity of the work.
In the construction of the tunnel at Walford an accident occurred of rather a serious nature. A mass of loose gravel concealed in the chalk, slipping viâ the shaft into the tunnel, suddenly killed eleven men, besides letting down from the surface a horse and gin.
Cuttings.
9. In passing through the consecutive cuttings of a great railway, the traveller usually considers that those through rock must have been desperate undertakings, infinitely more expensive than those through clay. The cost of both, however, is nearly equal; for, not only does the perpendicular rock-cutting require infinitely less excavation than the wide yawning earth one of the same depth, but when once executed the former is not liable to the expensive slips which subsequently occasionally afflict the latter.
In determining whether the line should proceed by tunnelling or by cutting, the engineer’s rule usually is to prefer the latter for any depth less than sixty feet; after which it is generally cheaper to tunnel. If, however, earth be wanted for a neighbouring embankment, it becomes of course a matter of calculation whether it may not be cheaper to make a cutting instead of what abstractedly ought otherwise to have been a tunnel.
In the construction of the Tring cutting alone of the present London and North-Western Railway, there were excavated 1,297,763 cubic yards of chalk, of which about fifteen cubic feet weighed a ton.
Embankments.
10. Besides contending with water above ground as well as below, the constructor of a railway is occasionally assailed by an element of a very different nature. For instance, when the Wolverhampton embankment of the present London and North-Western Railway, at vast trouble and expense, was nearly finished, it was observed first to smoke, then get exceedingly hot, until a slow mouldering flame visible at night appeared. The bank began to consume away, and the heat continued until it actually burned the railway sleepers; at last, however, it exhausted itself. The combustion was caused by the quantity of sulphuret of iron or pyrites contained in the earth of the embankment, which, having been baked by the fire, will probably never slip.