Competitors had reached the city of Tacoma on the Puget Sound years before. Hill demanded the Great Northern Railway have its own line to the timber, coal, and deep-water ports. Between him and this prize were the steep snowcapped stone walls of the Cascade Mountains.
Stevens looked for it himself and found the brutal pass that now bears his name. It would take 40 years to force the mountains to submit to the Great Northern timetable. By the interim track was completed—just long enough to establish service to the Puget Sound with a set of eight terrifying switchbacks. In the first Cascade Tunnel of 2. Snow was the natural enemy of the Great Northern, and the battle was fought seven months of the year.
Protective snow sheds were built along the line to protect the trains from avalanches. Combined with snowplows, this was plenty to handle a typical winter, but was not normal. A ten-day blizzard in February stopped two trains at the pass. The slope above had been denuded of vegetation the summer before, leaving a smooth chute towards the tracks. The weather changed and warm rain began to fall. Lightning struck and unleashed an avalanche.
It washed the trains into the valley, killing 96 people. Five months later, the last body was found. It remains the deadliest avalanche in United States history.
By the following year, Great Northern installed eight more miles of snow shed over 12 miles of track. It soon became clear the cost of maintaining the snow sheds was prohibitive. A longer tunnel was needed.
Hill died in and Great Northern was continued by his son. By they were ready to attempt a second tunnel. It would be a lower elevation and over twice the length of the first. When a car was full, it was moved away and an empty car was lifted into position with a crane. Each round took about five hours to complete and advanced the tunnel by eight feet. Five rounds in 24 hours was considered excellent progress. After supporting the bore with heavy timber, finishing crews widened it to full size.
Concreting of the walls began on Wednesday, April 27, , and by the day of the east-west breakthrough, Saturday, October 20, , 6. Another mile of the tunnel had been enlarged to full size and was ready to be walled.
Mucking crew had had already removed the debris through connecting passages to the work tunnel, allowing concreting operations to advance without interference. Collapsible forms were placed in front of the timbered walls and the void was filled with cement. Once the concrete set, the forms were taken away and moved forward.
The arch was made by pumping cement between steel forms and the timbered top heading, using a pneumatic gun. As distances from the mouth of the tunnel increased, sand, gravel and dry cement in correct quantities were loaded into rail cars and shuttled to the mobile mixing plant at the work site.
Concrete was laid at a rate of about feet per week. On the heels of the cement layers came railroad construction workers, who laid down the roadbed and permanent trackage between Scenic and Berne, and the linemen and electricians who installed the overhead trolley wires and signals. Meanwhile, Great Northern Railway had two major improvement projects due for completion at the same the time as the new Cascade Tunnel.
The first project was the construction of new route, called the Chumstick Cut-Off, between Winton and Peshastin in Chelan County, which relocated 20 miles of trackage, eliminating six tunnels and eight miles of snow sheds on the east approach to Berne.
The new roadbed was made from crushed rock from the tunneling project. The second project was the electrification of 73 miles of track between Skykomish and Wenatchee. In , Puget Sound Power and Light Company installed new power stations at Wenatchee and Skykomish, supplying 7, kilowatts of power for railroad operations over the new route.
Great Northern also built a new repair shop at Appleyard Terminal in South Wenatchee to handle the maintenance on its eight new ton, 3, horsepower, American Locomotive Company-General Electric Y-1 locomotives.
Although site safety was paramount, the job of tunneling was inherently hazardous and cost the lives of a number of workers. The last fatalities, reported by the press, took place on Thursday, November 8, , when two rock slides inside the tunnel killed four workmen. The first slide occurred at a. Boulders crushed to death Gust Thomas , age 36, the straw boss, and gravely injured Justin C.
Smith, 26, all laborers. Four hours later, a smaller rock slide occurred at the Scenic portal, killing laborer Pete Kobich All of the victims were taken by special train to Seattle General Hospital, where both Roberts and Wilson succumbed to their injuries the following day. The Gutherie Company contracted with a Seattle mortuary to ship the remains of the four dead to relatives at company expense. On Tuesday, November 13, , William J.
Jones, King County coroner, announced that no inquests would be held regarding the four fatalities. The decision was based on a report by a Washington State Department of Labor and Industries safety engineer who determined the deaths were entirely accidental. The geological formation of the ground through which the tunnel is being driven is such that these hazards exist. In the railroad began construction on a new Cascade Tunnel, located about feet down the mountainside.
For the most part this tunnel sat away from the worst of the mountain's winters being located below the highest elevations. Opened four years later in it was impressive in its length at 7. However, while it avoided the worst of the winter weather, Cascade proved a headache to operate. The extraordinary length forced the Great Northern to electrify the tunnel to avoid fumigation issues, caused by operating steam locomotives.
However, as it turns out the railroad had constant trouble with its electrics, which always seemed to have issues obtaining the correct voltage needed to power trains over the summit and through the tunnel it has been said that the GN's electrified operations were never engineered correctly.
Finally, after World War II the railroad chose to abandon its electrics and switch to diesels in By doing so, the GN had to install an expensive ventilation system to keep the diesel exhaust well fumigated. This proved to be more difficult than originally expected; fumigation problems haunted the railroad and its successor, Burlington Northern, not only because of the tunnel's length but also due to the grade, about 1. The first ventilation systems took up to, if not more than, an hour to clear the tunnel of fumes before another train was allowed to enter.
Additionally, crews were required to wear, or at least have with them, respirators in the event of a ventilation failure as it usually took a train a full hour to scale the tunnel. Today, owner BNSF Railway has installed a ventilation system capable of removing exhaust within 20 minutes although crews are still required to have respirators with them at all times.
For an idea of just how bad it could be for crewmen operating through tunnel please read this account by John Crosby who worked this segment of the line during the Burlington Northern era. One still has to wonder, however, why Burlington Northern did not exercise its ownership of nearby Snoqualmie Tunnel after the Milwaukee Road abandoned its main line through this region in Using that bore, which was the best engineered tunnel across the Cascade range, would have saved BN and BNSF millions in maintenance costs and liability.
For more reading about the history of Cascade please click here. For more reading about Snoqualmie Tunnel please click here. In a gentleman by the name of Andre Kristopans put together a web page highlighting virtually every unit every out-shopped by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division. Alas, in the site closed. However, Don Strack rescued the data and transferred it over to his UtahRails.
If you are researching anything EMD related please visit this page first. The information includes original numbers, serials, and order numbers. Wes Barris's SteamLocomotive.
0コメント