190

TUNNEL UNDER LIVERPOOL.

CHAP. XI.

The principal difficulty was experienced in pushing on the works connected with the formation of the tunnel under Liverpool, 2200 yards in length. The blasting and hewing of the rock were vigorously carried on night and day; and the engineer's practical experience in the collieries here proved of great use to him. Many obstacles had to be encountered and overcome in the formation of the tunnel, the rock varying in hardness and texture at different parts. In some places the miners were deluged by water, which surged from the soft blue shale found at the lowest level of the tunnel. In other places, beds of wet sand were cut through; and there careful propping and pinning were necessary to prevent the roof from tumbling in, until the masonry to support it could be erected. On one occasion, while Mr. Stephenson was absent from Liverpool, a mass of loose moss-earth and sand fell from the roof, which had been insufficiently propped. The miners withdrew from the work; and on Mr. Stephenson's return, he found them in a refractory state, refusing to re-enter the tunnel. He induced them, however, by his example, to return to their labours; and when the roof had been secured, the work went on again as before. When there was danger, he was always ready to share it with the men; and gathering confidence from his fearlessness, they proceeded vigorously with the undertaking, boring and mining their way towards the light.

The Olive Mount cutting was the first extensive stone cutting executed on any railway, and to this day it is one of the most formidable. It is about two miles long, and in some parts more than a hundred feet deep. It is a narrow ravine or defile cut out of the solid rock; and not less than four hundred and eighty thousand cubic yards of stone were removed from it. Mr. Vignolles, afterwards describing it, said it looked as if it had been dug out by giants.

The crossing of so many roads and streams involved the necessity of constructing an unusual number of bridges. There were not fewer than sixty-three, under or over the

CHAP. XI.

OLIVE MOUNT CUTTING.

191

railway, on the thirty miles between Liverpool and Manchester. Up to this time, bridges had been applied generally to high roads, where inclined approaches were of comparatively small importance, and in determining the rise

of his arch the engineer selected any headway he thought proper. Every consideration was indeed made subsidiary to constructing the bridge itself, and the completion of one large structure of this sort was regarded as an epoch in engineering history. Yet here, in the course of a few years, no fewer than sixty-three bridges were constructed on one line of railway! Mr. Stephenson early found that the ordinary arch was inapplicable in certain cases, where the headway was limited, and yet the level of the railway must

192

SANKEY VIADUCT.

CHAP. XI.

be preserved. In such cases he employed simple castiron beams, by which he safely bridged gaps of moderate width, economizing headway, and introducing the use of a new material of the greatest possible value to the rail'way engineer. The bridges of masonry upon the line were of many kinds; several of them askew bridges, and others, such as those at Newton and over the Irwell at Manchester, of considerable dimensions. But the principal piece of masonry on the line was the Sankey viaduct

This fine work consists of nine arches of fifty feet span each. The piers are supported on two hundred piles driven deep into the soil; and they rise to a great height, -the coping of the parapet being seventy feet above the level of the valley which it spans, and in which flow the Sankey brook and canal.

By the end of 1828 the directors found they had expended 460,000l. on the works, and that they were still far from completion. They looked at the loss of interest

СНАР. ХІ.

IMPATIENCE OF DIRECTORS.

193

on this large investment, and began to grumble at the delay. They desired to see their capital becoming productive; and in the spring of 1829 they urged the engineer to push on the works with increased vigour. Mr. Cropper, one of the directors, who took an active interest in their progress, said to him one day, "Now, George, thou must get on with the railway, and have it finished without further delay: thou must really have it ready for opening by the first day of January next." "Consider the heavy character of the works, sir, and how much we have been delayed by the want of money, not to speak of the wetness of the weather it is impossible." "Impossible!" rejoined Cropper; "I wish I could get Napoleon to thee-he would tell thee there is no such word as impossible' in the vocabulary." "Tush!" exclaimed Stephenson, with warmth; "don't speak to me about Napoleon! Give me men, money, and materials, and I will do what Napoleon couldn't do-drive a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester over Chat Moss!" And truly the formation of a high road over that bottomless bog was, apparently, a far more difficult task than the hewing even of Napoleon's far-famed road across the Simplon.

The directors had more than once been pressed by want of funds to meet the heavy expenditure. The country had scarcely yet recovered from the general panic and crash of 1825 and it was with difficulty that the calls could be raised from the shareholders. A loan of 100,000l. was obtained from the Exchequer Loan Commissioners in 1826; and in 1829 an Act was obtained enabling the company to raise further capital, to provide working plant for the railway. Two acts were also obtained during the progress of the works, enabling deviations and alterations to be made: one to improve the curves and shorten the line near Rainhill, and the other to carry the line across the Irwell into the town of Manchester. Thanks to the energy of the engineer, the industry of his labourers, and the improved supply of money by the directors, the railway made rapid progress in the course of the year 1829. Double

194

OCCUPATION OF HIS TIME.

CHAP. XI,

sets of labourers were employed on Chat Moss and at other points, in carrying on the works by night and day, the night shifts working by torch and fire light; and at length, the work advancing at all points, the directors saw their way to the satisfactory completion of the undertaking.

It may well be supposed that Mr. Stephenson's time was fully occupied in superintending the extensive and for the most part novel works connected with the railway, and that even his extraordinary powers of labour and endurance were taxed to the utmost during the four years that they were in progress. Although he had able helpers in the young engineers whom he had selected to take charge of the different "lengths" of the line, every detail in the plans was directed and arranged by himself. Every bridge, from the simplest to the most complicated, including the then novel structure of the "skew bridge," iron girders, siphons, fixed engines, the machinery for working the tunnel at the Liverpool end, had all to be thought out by his own head, and reduced to definite plans by his own hands. Besides all this, he had to design the working plant in anticipation of the opening of the railway. He planned the waggons, trucks, and carriages, and himself superintended their manufacture. The turntables, switches, crossings, and signals, in short, the entire structure and machinery of the line, from the turning of the first sod to the running of the first train of carriages upon the railway,-went on under his immediate supervision.

He had no staff of experienced assistants,-not even a staff of draughtsmen in his office, but only a few young pupils learning their business; and frequently he was without even their help. The time of his engineering inspectors was fully occupied in the actual superintendence of the works at different parts of the line; and he directed all their more important operations in person. It was in the midst of this vast accumulation of work and responsibility that the battle of the locomotive engine had to be fought,--a battle, not merely against material difficulties,