Hoosac tunnel
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Hoosac tunnel Hoosic Tunnel / Hoosick Tunnel
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 The Hoosac Tunnel Route
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| use | Railway tunnel | |||
| place | Green Mountains | |||
| length | 7.64 km | |||
| Number of tubes | 1 | |||
| construction | ||||
| Client | Troy and Greenfield Railroad, Massachusetts | |||
| start of building | 1856 | |||
| completion | 1875 | |||
| business | ||||
| operator | Pan Am Railways | |||
| release | 1876 | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| East portal | 42 ° 40 ′ 32 " N , 72 ° 59 ′ 54" W. | |||
| West portal | 42 ° 40 ′ 32 " N , 73 ° 5 ′ 29" W. | |||
Map with all coordinates: The Hoosac Tunnel (also Hoosic or Hoosick Tunnel ) is a 7.64 km long railway tunnel through the Hoosac Range , an up to 910 m high extension of the Green Mountains in Vermont . These low mountain ranges opposed a rail link from New England to the emerging west of the country. The east tunnel portal is at Florida , Massachusetts , the west portal is at North Adams , Massachusetts. Construction began in 1851 and was completed in 1875. At the time of completion, it was the second longest tunnel in the world after the Mont Cenis Tunnel . Until the completion of the Moffat Tunnel in 1928, it was the longest tunnel in North America and is still the longest tunnel east of the Rocky Mountains today .
Building history
The project to build a tunnel dates back to 1819 when a canal was planned between Boston and upstate New York . The tunnel was to connect the Deerfield River east and the Hoosic River west of the Hoosac Range. The project was put aside, but later revived when the Troy and Greenfield Railroad was built . The driving force was the industrialist, railroad entrepreneur and member of the House of Representatives Alvah Crocker . It took over 20 years to complete the tunnel and cost $ 21 million (around half a billion dollars in today's value). The construction was heavily criticized and was nicknamed "The Great Bore" (the big bore). Later Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said: "At one end of the tunnel there is a wall of lawyers and at the other end there will be a profit."
The first senior civil engineer was AF Edwards. After the state of Massachusetts granted a loan of $ 2 million to Edward Wellman and Company in 1855, construction began the following year. In 1856 Herman became Haupt senior engineer.
The competing "Western Railroad", with a southern route via Springfield and Pittsfield , fought against the tunnel and the more northern route through the state. Your work was successful. In 1861 the state stopped supporting tunnel construction. Haupt had to stop his work and file for bankruptcy. By then, 1295 m, a little more than a fifth of the total length, had been completed. Haupt went to the Union Army , became a railroad engineer during the American Civil War and made it a general.
After the "Troy and Greenfield Railroad" defaulted on loan interest and repayment in 1862, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts made use of its mortgage rights and took over the railway company and with it the tunnel project. As a result, the engineer Charles Storrow was sent to Europe to study new methods of tunnel construction, especially the use of nitroglycerine and compressed air ( hammer drill ) in tunnel construction. In 1863 the state resumed construction and commissioned Thomas Doane with the construction management.
In 1868 another $ 5 million was approved for tunneling. The Canadian engineer William Shanly (also Shanley) and his brother Francis took over the project from the state and managed the company until the tunnel was completed. The last chief engineer was Bernard N. Farren, who started work on November 19, 1874. He was responsible for all final work, including the enlargement of some tunnel sections, the securing of loose areas with vaults, the construction of drains and the completion of the eastern tunnel portal.
The first train passed through the tunnel on February 9, 1875. Regular operations between Boston and Troy (New York) began in 1876. The Troy and Greenfield Railroad was acquired in 1887 by the Fitchburg Railroad , which in turn was taken over by the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1900 .
The initiator of the project, Alvah Crocker , was one of the first to fully walk through the tunnel. Before the maiden voyage on the first train, he died of pneumonia.
Route connection and operation
The Troy and Boston Railroad and the associated "Southern Vermont Railroad" and "Troy and Greenfield Railroad" opened a railroad line from Troy (New York) in 1859 , where connections to the New York Central Railroad and the Hudson River Railroad existed, east to North Adams, Massachusetts at the west portal of the tunnel.
When the state bought the “Troy and Greenfield Railroad” in 1863, there was a possibility of competition. In 1877 the Boston, Hoosac Tunnel and Western Railway (BHT & W) was formed to build a line west from the Massachusetts-Vermont border, where the Troy and Greenfield Railroad ended. The route ran parallel to the "Troy and Boston Railroad" via Johnsonville and Schenectady to Rotterdam Junction , where in 1880 a connection with the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway was established. At the eastern end, the line began in Greenfield, where the state-owned line ended. The BHT & W route ended in Winthrop, Massachusetts . In the next few years there were fierce rivalries between the "Troy and Boston Railroad" and the "Boston, Hoosac Tunnel and Western Railway", up to and including legal proceedings that did not end until the Fitchburg Railroad took over both companies in 1887.
The eastern tunnel portal was completed in 1877. The operation in the tunnel continued to increase, so that in 1881 a second track was laid in the tunnel. The shaft sunk at the highest point of the route was soon no longer sufficient for ventilation. Steam-powered fans were installed in 1899. But even these measures do not help against the heavy smoke and gas pollution in the tunnel. The Boston and Maine Railroad, now the tunnel owner, therefore switched the steam locomotives passing through the tunnel to oil as fuel. The exhaust steam damaged the rock and masonry in the tunnel and the gases caused the telephone and signal cables to corrode more quickly. As the steam condensed on the rails, the traction conditions deteriorated. It was therefore necessary to use additional locomotives on a regular basis. The trains always had to wait until the tunnel was largely clear of the previous train. Maintenance work was only possible for two hours a day due to the conditions. In 1910 almost 100 trains passed the tunnel every day. At that time, the Boston & Maine was controlled by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad . It had already started electrifying its route network. The same system was used for the electrification of the Hoosac tunnel as for this company. Work began on November 1, 1910. On May 27, 1911, electrical train service was started through the tunnel with an overhead line with 11 kV and 25 Hz alternating current between the Hoosac Tunnel passing point in the east and North Adams in the west. The route length was 12.7 kilometers. A total of 34.4 kilometers of track were electrified. The ventilation system was also converted to an electric drive. Power was supplied by a 6 MW steam power plant at Zylonite . At the two ends of the tunnel there were switchgear with which the network was controlled. The overhead line hung outside the tunnel on steel supporting bridges. Cross cables were installed on steel towers on more than four main tracks. Installation in the tunnel was particularly difficult, as this was done while the system was still in operation. After each train passage, you had to wait 10 to 20 minutes. The work trains had passenger cars that were fitted with appropriate air locks.
Baldwin and Westinghouse ordered five locomotives for operation . These 118 tonne locomotives with the wheel arrangement (1'Bo) (Bo'1) were given the track numbers 2501 to 2505 . Already in April 1911 they were renumbered in the group 5000 to 5004. In 1917 two more identical locomotives with the numbers 5005 and 5006 were delivered. In order to cope with the increased traffic caused by the Second World War, two electric locomotives acquired second-hand from the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad were used from 1942 . A 1450-ton freight train took 15 to 20 minutes and a 400-ton passenger train 7 to 8 minutes to travel through the tunnel. The steam locomotives stayed in the train with reduced fire.
Diesel locomotives took over operations on August 24, 1946. A separate electric train operation was therefore no longer necessary, was then discontinued and the seven remaining electric locomotives were scrapped in February 1947. In 1957 the second track was dismantled to enable loaded truck trailers to pass through. In addition, a storm protection gate was built on the west portal. The last scheduled passenger train passed through the tunnel on November 30, 1958.
On November 2, 1973, the tunnel was added to the National Register of Historic Places with the number 73000294 .
Today the tunnel is still used by Pan Am Railways for freight trains.
After the collapse of a section of the brick inner wall of the tunnel near the west portal and rock collapse, the tunnel was closed on February 12, 2020. For repairs, the tunnel was complete until April 4, 2020 and then closed for hours during April.
Dead during construction
195 workers died during the construction of the tunnel. The building was therefore given the name "The bloody pit". Most of the deaths were due to the unsafe nitroglycerin .
The worst accident occurred on October 17, 1867 when the 313 m long central exhaust air shaft was being built. A burning candle in the elevator building ignited gasoline vapor emitted from a lamp, causing an explosion. The building caught fire and fell into the shaft. Four workers at the top of the shaft managed to escape, but 13 were trapped at a depth of 164 m. As the pumps were also destroyed, the shaft began to fill with water. The next day, a worker was lowered with a rope, but found only smoke and no survivors.
construction
Around 1.8 million tons of rock had to be moved during the construction of the tunnel. Therefore, attempts were made with technical aids to advance and facilitate the tunnel construction. On March 16, 1853, the tunnel boring machine "Wilson's Patented Stone-Cutting Machine" was used for the first time . However, it broke after an eruption of ten feet of rock. The reason for their failure is that at that time there was no experience with the necessary hardness of the drill bits. Today, extremely hardened special steel is used for this purpose, at that time brittle cast iron was still used, which could not withstand the loads. This abandoned construction attempt can still be seen today to the left of the eastern tunnel portal. That is why the traditional manual construction method was used again for tunneling.
Later, the “Burleigh Rock Drill” was one of the first pneumatic hammer drills . These rotary hammers were an improved version of the tool used for the first time when the Mont Cenis Tunnel was being built in France. The pneumatic hammers also improved the health situation of the workers on site, as they provided more fresh air. For the first time, nitroglycerin and detonators were also used on a large scale .
With the completion of the central exhaust air duct in 1870 it became possible to start the tunnel construction at two further points. A 305 m long elevator was installed in the shaft to remove the overburden.
One of the greatest challenges was the precise determination of the direction of construction so that the four tunnel construction sites also meet. For this reason, a straight line was cleared through the forest above the mountains between the tunnel portals. Various measurement points ensured that the line ran without an arc. The tunnel construction direction was then aligned on the basis of this “auxiliary line”.
On December 12, 1872, the breakthrough took place between the east portal and the part of the tunnel, which began from the exhaust air shaft. The deviation of the tunnel axis was only 1.4 cm. On November 27, 1873, the remaining tunnel was breached.
Since the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel laid many foundations for modern tunneling and because of its importance as one of the longest tunnels in the United States, it was named "Historic Civil Engineering Landmark" by the American Society of Civil Engineers .
See also
literature
- William D. Middleton : When the steam railroads electrified . 2nd revised edition. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2001, ISBN 978-0-253-33979-9 , pp. 148-153 (American English).
Web links
- ZDF documentary about the Hoosac tunnel ( Memento from October 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Extensive English page about the tunnel
- Hoosac Tunnel Historical Notes (Engl.) ( Memento of 21 January 2013, Internet Archive )
- Railroad Extra - Hoosac Tunnel. Archived from the original ; accessed on February 23, 2020 (English).
- Hoosac Tunnel: Abode of the Damned? - Exploration of the tunnel
Individual evidence
- ↑ All-Time Boston & Maine Diesel Locomotive & RDC Roster ( Memento from June 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Scott Stafford: Partial wall collapse temporarily shutters Hoosac Tunnel. In: The Greenfield Recorder (daily newspaper). February 14, 2020, accessed on February 23, 2020 .
- ↑ Hoosac Tunnel experiences partial wall collapse, rerouting traffic. In: Trains News Wire. February 12, 2020, accessed on February 23, 2020 .
- ^ Hoosac Tunnel Restored to Service. Norfolk Southern , April 5, 2020, accessed on April 6, 2020 (English): "Hoosac Tunnel (...) was restored to service last night, Saturday, April 4. There will be some ongoing engineering work consisting of 12-hour outages for the month of April which could cause delay to some shipments. "