Facts and Figures Concerning the Hoosac Tunnel Part 3

To the sound judgment, energy, and untiring perseverance of Mr. Brooks, and the inventive genius and skill of Mr. Stephen F. Gates, of Boston, and Mr. Charles Burleigh, of Fitchburg, belongs the credit of perfecting a pneumatic drill, by means of which our great tunnel will be completed much within the time named by the Commissioners, and with a reduction of their estimate of its cost by hand labor of several hundred thousand dollars. We have seen this drill operated by compressed air, at the rate of two hundred blows a minute, each blow given with a force of more than five hundred pounds, cut an inch and a quarter hole in a block of Hoosac rock, thirty-eight inches in thirteen minutes, without changing its points. Its superiority over the Mt. Cenis drill consists in its lightness, automatic feed, and smaller size. The Mt. Cenis drill is eight feet long, and weighs six hundred pounds, and the whole machine moves forward in feeding. The Hoosac drill is four feet long, weighs two hundred and eight pounds, and can be handled by two men. In feeding, the drill alone advances, and in such manner as to accommodate itself to any kind of rock it may encounter, whether hard or soft. Its points are sharpened in a die by half a dozen blows of the hammer. It will do the work of twenty men; and, finally, sixteen of them can be applied to a surface upon which only nine of the Mt. Cenis drills can be used.

The operation of this drill has already been witnessed by hundreds of persons, among them machinists, engineers, and stone masons, and not one of them entertains a doubt that it will do all which is claimed for it by the inventors. But the carriages are nearly ready, and these little machines will shortly be put to their work. The friends of the Tunnel have no fears of the result.

Ma.s.sachusetts has always led her sister States. At the call to arms, her sons have been first in the field, and first to die for the common good. Her schools and colleges, her inst.i.tutions of charity, and her statutes have furnished models for the new states of the great West, and for foreign republics. In her manufactures and mechanic arts, in the products of her inventive genius, in maritime enterprise, in the building of ca.n.a.ls and railroads, and in every undertaking to develop the resources and promote the prosperity of the country, she has been first and foremost. With so proud a record, and with almost exhaustless means at her command, we do not believe our n.o.ble state is yet ready to abandon the lead; nor that the consideration of a few millions of dollars will prevent her from breaking down the barrier which divides us from the West, and by which the great stream of Western traffic has been so long checked and diverted. Rather let us trust that, by wise legislation, a liberal policy, and a cordial support of the gentlemen to whom the conduct of this enterprise is entrusted, the great work of De Witt Clinton will be perfected, and the n.o.ble design of Loammi Baldwin executed, by the completion of the Hoosac Tunnel, before it shall be announced from Sardinia that the Alps are pierced and France and Italy have joined hands under the Grand Vallon.