Identifier: railwaysotherway00penn (find matches)
Title: Railways and other ways: being reminiscences of canal and railway life during a period of sixty-seven years; with characteristic sketches of canal and railway men, early tram roads and railways, steamboats and ocean steamships, the electric telegraph and Atlantic cable, Canada and its railways, trade and commerce
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Pennington, Myles, b. 1814
Subjects: Railroads -- Canada Canals -- Canada
Publisher: Toronto : Williamson & Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ce they had come. As far backas 1859 the author, then at Montreal, remembers receiving somesuch telegram as the following from George Holmes, agent atPoint Edward, Sarnia: A great blow from the north—an icejam—river impassable. This kind of trouble in winter hascontinued more or less ever since, causing much obstruction tothe traffic of the Grand Trunk Railway at that point. I have already alluded to the late Vice-President Blackwellsexperiments with the Flying Ferry at Point Edward. Littledid that gentleman dream that in the year 91, flying ferries,steam tugs and car barges would no longer be required; that agigantic and marvellous piece of engineering work would beaccomplished in tunnelling under the great St. Clair River, andthus uniting the Dominion of Canada, at Sarnia, by a real underground road, with the United States, at Fort Huron inthe State of Michigan, and enabling the Grand Trunk Railwayto run its cars on dry ground through to Chicago without anybreak or interruption.
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ST. CLAIR TUNNEL. CROSS SECTION VIEW SHOWING STRATA ANDCONSTRUCTION. The St. Glair Tunnel. 173 When it is considered that the river St. Clair in its deepestspot is forty feet, and its width about half a mile, andthat it forms the channel through which the greatlakes, Huron, Michigan and Superior, empty their sur-plus waters into Lake Erie, it will be seen that the undertak-ing of boring and constructing a tunnel under this mighty riverwas one of immense magnitude, and that its successful com-pletion confers on Mr. Joseph Hobson, its chief engineer, a well-earned and permanent niche in the temple of fame; while it willat the same time be a lasting monument to President Sir Henr)^W. Tyler, ex-General Manager Sir Joseph Hickson and others,who inaugurated and provided the means for carrying out a workof such incalculable value to both countries. The tunnel proper is 6,026 feet in length, and, includingthe approaches, 11,553 feet. The time of construction was a little over two years, and i

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