There was a narrow track along the bottom of the tunnel, where cars drawn by mules, for the removal of the rock to the foot of the shaft, where it could be hoisted out. My guide told me that a recent visitor to the tunnel asked, with apparent innocence, why they hoisted out all that rock, and suggested that it would be much easier to dig a hole in the bottom of the tunnel, and bury it there; but he did not suggest what should be done with the rock which they removed to make the hole. We encountered several of these cars, and at one place were crowded rather closely against the walls.
Originally gunpowder was used for blasting purposes in the tunnel, but later in the work nitro-glycerine was adopted.
Several accidents with explosive materials occurred during the construction of the tunnel, one of the most serious being in 1869. The magazine where the nitro-glycerine was stored for operations on the eastern part of the tunnel, was about a quarter of a mile from the portal. Three of the miners went one morning to prepare the nitro-glycerine for the day’s use, and an explosion occurred, killing them all. Two of them were inside the building at the time, and nothing but a few pieces of them were found; the other, who was outside the building, was so badly disfigured that it was almost impossible to identify him, and the force of the explosion was so great that not a plank or a timber of the building remained.
THE GREAT EXPLOSION.
On the 19th of October, 1867, a terrible accident occurred at this shaft. A depth of nearly six hundred feet had been reached, and thirteen men were at work below. The gasoline apparatus used for lighting the works exploded, and set fire to the buildings. The engineer was badly burned, and driven from his post, and the men perished by suffocation. The shaft was soon filled with water, but it was not until next day that the fire was extinguished so that anybody could descend. A workman named Mallory was lowered, with three lanterns attached to him. Near the bottom two of his lanterns went out, and at a signal he was drawn up nearly insensible from breathing the foul air. He said there were fifteen feet of water in the shaft, and no signs of the men. It was necessary to erect buildings and machinery to clear the shaft, and it was not until a year after that the water was pumped out, and the bodies of the victims were recovered. They were all in a good state of preservation, but crumbled to pieces soon after exposure to the air.
WORK AT THE HEADING IN HOOSAC TUNNEL.
As we neared the heading the noise increased. The shouts of the miners and the sound of the drilling machines overpowered any ordinary tones of the voice. The drilling machine was an iron frame, resting upon trucks, and was pushed as near as possible to the face of the rock. The drills were fastened to it in such a way that they could be turned upon any designated point. They were operated by compressed air, and worked with great rapidity, striking as many as three hundred blows to the minute. The quality of the rock was generally so hard that the drills became dull and blunt in a short time, and required to be sharpened; but they worked much more expeditiously than hand drills. Under the ordinary process of hand drilling it would take six weeks to accomplish the distance made in a single week by them.