The first Act for loaning the credit of the State to the Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company, dated April 5, 1854, provides, besides other conditions, that when seven miles of the road in one or two sections is completed, and 1,000 feet of the tunnel, in one or more sections, sufficient for one or more tracks is completed, then $100,000 of scrip shall be delivered to the company.
The size of the tunnel required by this Act is not definitely stated, nor what proportion of the $100,000 of scrip is loaned on account of the tunnel.
The Act of April 4, 1860, defines the size the tunnel to be 14 feet wide and 18 feet high. If this means excavation and not completed tunnel, then the room required for the ballast and drainage would reduce the height to about 16 feet above the rails; a size absurdly small enough to be regarded as certainly not above the minimum intended by the Act. The same Act provides that $30 per foot shall be allowed on account of heading, and $20 on account of the enlargement, making $50 per foot for the completed tunnel; $50,000 of the first advance may therefore be considered as on account of the first 1,000 feet of completed tunnel, and the remainder, say $50,000, on account of the road which had been then completed west of the tunnel.
The second delivery of scrip was on account of the tunnel, and under the provisions of the' Act of 1859, which provides that $50,000 may be advanced upon the completion of 1,000 feet of heading. The heading was done and $49,777.78 delivered October 4, 1859.
The third delivery of scrip was under the provisions of the same Act, and was on account of grading three miles of road, in detached pieces, near Greenfield. For this, $50,222.22 was delivered January 3, 1860.
The fourth delivery was under the same Act, and for completing the second 1,000 feet of tunnel, for which $30,222.22, was delivered March 1, 1860.
An Act changing the terms of the loan was passed April 4, 1860. Section 2 divides the scrip remaining undelivered, as follows: "No further deliveries of scrip shall be made to said company upon the conditions authorized in former Acts, but the undelivered portions of the loan of two millions of dollars authorized by chapter two hundred and twenty-six of the Acts of eighteen hundred and fifty-four, amounting to one million seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars, shall be divided and apportioned between the railroad and tunnel, and for the construction of each, respectively: 'six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the completion of the unfinished portion of railroad extending from the eastern terminus of said road near Greenfield, to within half a mile of the eastern end of Hoosac Tunnel."
Section 3 contains the following provisions: "The governor and council shall annually appoint a state engineer for the purpose of examining and determining monthly the amount and value of the work done, and materials delivered on the railroad and tunnel of the Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company, who shall receive an annual salary of one thousand dollars, payable quarterly. The state engineer shall forthwith fix permanent marks in each end of the Hoosac Tunnel, marking the progress of the work up to February twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and sixty, from which to determine the progress subsequently made. He shall also determine by suitable notes, marks or observations, the amount and value of all grading, bridging, masonry, or other work done, or iron, or other materials delivered on the road east of the Hoosac Tunnel, prior to December twenty-second, eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, and fix data from which to determine the value of any work, or materials delivered subsequent to the date last named. He shall monthly, immediately after the first day of each month, estimate the proportion which' the work done upon the road, since the preceding estimate, bears to the whole of the work required to be done in the graduation, masonry, bridging, and superstructure of said railroad east of the Hoosac Tunnel; and also the work done in the excavation of said tunnel, which he shall certify separately to the governor, together with the amount of state scrip to which the company is entitled under the provisions of this Act. Such monthly estimates shall be based upon a width of road-bed at grade of fifteen feet, on embankments, seventeen and a half feet in side cuts, and twenty feet in through cuts; in the heading of the tunnel upon dimensions fourteen feet wide and six feet high in the middle, and in the finished excavation of the tunnel of fourteen feet wide and eighteen feet high in the middle.
"The deliveries of scrip shall be at the rate of fifty dollars for each lineal foot of tunnel, divided between heading and full-sized tunnel, in the proportion of thirty dollars for each lineal foot of heading and twenty dollars per lineal foot for the remaining excavation; and of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the whole of the graduation, masonry, bridging, and superstructure of the unfinished portion of the road east of the tunnel.
"The Scrip shall be delivered on the road in the proportion which the value of the work done and the materials delivered each month bears to the estimated cost of the whole work and materials required on the portion of road aforesaid.