5 miles of train tunnel bored out of Bear Resivoir Mountain. Still in use; I witnessed a 35 car train come through it with about 30 coal cars filled up. Imagine that; 2009 - transporting coal to a power plant somewhere.
Think about it; task yourself with the mission to build a five mile tunnel through a mountain in the rugged elevations of Bear mountain. Doing this now, could be done with the latest electronic surveying equipment, but try doing it one hundred years ago.
Yes, they started from opposite ends and legend goes - they went off track at one point and had to re-route. They also had to burrow down vertically to facilitate the horizontal drilling.
The drill bits weren't very efficient and the steam driven boring machines were slow and labor intensive. They used explosives.
200 men lost their lives prematurely.
There's a few other stories, like when they first tried to illuminate it; only to have the lamps and circuits short out frequently because of water leaching through the arch stone ceilings.
Charlie the tour guide at the Bear Reservoir power plant told me they used plumb bobs to line it up. So far I've refrained from bringing up another more recent tunnel on the opposite side of the state.
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