How the Swiss Built the Greatest Tunnel in the World, 1905
[Tappan Introduction]
There was no question that a tunnel through the Simplon would
be a great advantage; but could it be made? It would have to go through the heart of a
mountain from five to seven thousand feet in height; and this would involve difficult
questions of ventilation, to say nothing of the heat in which the men would have to work.
Some of the rocks were hard, and some were soft. And this tunnel must be twelve and one
half miles in length. The Swiss are a careful people. They wanted the tunnel, but they did
not want to undertake a plan that could not be carried out. Therefore they consulted three
tunnel experts, from Italy, Austria, and England respectively. It was decided that the
thing could be done, though with many difficulties to be surmounted. The following account
of the making of this tunnel was written by Francis Fox, the tunnel expert named by
England.
THE work went on steadily from both entrances, and consisted of one single line tunnel,
with a parallel gallery for the second tunnel running alongside at a distance of about
fifty-five feet; cross passages every two hundred and seventeen yards were provided both
for purposes of ventilation and for taking in and out the various materials. Most
praiseworthy arrangements were made for the care of the men with the view to their
suffering no harm from the exposure to Alpine air after working in the heat of the
galleries. A large building was fitted up near each entrance, provided with cubicles for
dressing, and with hot and cold douche baths. At the top of the building steampipes were
fixed, and each man was entitled to his own private rope and padlock; this rope passes
over a pulley in the roof, and has a hook at the end to which he can attach his day
clothes, with his watch, purse, and pipe, and pulling them up by the cord and padlocking
it he secures the safety of his belongings. On returning from his work he at once enters
this warmed building, has his bath, lowers his clothes, and, hanging his wet mining dress
on the hook, raises it to the roof. Here it hangs until he again returns to work, when he
finds his clothes dry and warm.
The adoption of the Brandt hydraulic drill not only enables the gallery to be driven at
least three times the usual speed, but it avoids the creation of dust, which in mining is
so productive of miner's phthisis. Not a single instance of this fell disease has occurred
during the work, and although a well-appointed hospital was provided at each end of the
tunnel, the beds were generally empty.
At a distance of two and one half miles from Iselle a great subterranean river was met
with in September, 1901, which caused serious delay, and for a period of six months the
total advance was only forty-six meters. The difficulties at this point were such as in
the hands of men of less determination might have resulted in the abandonment of the
undertaking. Not only was it necessary to close-timber the gallery on both sides, and also
at the top and floor, with the heaviest baulks of square pitch pine twenty inches thick,
but when these were crushed into splinters and the gallery completely blocked with their
wreckage, steel girders were adopted, only in their turn to be distorted and bent out of
shape. It seemed as if no available material could be found which would stand the enormous
pressure of the rocks, until steel girders, forming a square placed side by side (the
interstices being filled with cement concrete) resisted the load. Fortunately the
"bad ground" only extended for a distance of about fifty yards, but it cost
nearly £1000 per yard to overcome this difficulty, and required the encasement of the
tunnel at this point on sides, floor, and arch with granite masonry, eight feet, six
inches in thickness.
Meanwhile the progress at the Brigue side was good, and the miners reached the half-way
boundary and then began to encounter great heat from both rock and springs. It was a
curious experience to insert one's arm into a bore-hole in the rock and to find it so hot
as to be unbearable; the maximum heat then encountered was 131º F. But now a fresh
difficulty presented itself, as in order to save time it was desirable to commence driving
down-hill to meet the miners coming up-hill from Italy, and thus the very problem which
the ascending gradients had been provided to avoid had to be faced. As the gallery
descended the hot springs followed, and the boring machines and the miners were standing
in a sea of hot water; this for a time was pumped out by centrifugal pumps over the apex
of the tunnel, but at last, and while there yet remained some three or four hundred yards
to be penetrated, it was found impossible to continue going downhill.
Nevertheless time had to be saved, and as the height of the heading was only some seven
feet while that of the finished tunnel was twenty-one feet, it was decided to continue to
drive the gallery forward, on a slightly rising gradient, until it reached the top of the
future tunnel. After seven hundred and two feet had thus been driven, the hot springs
proved so copious that work had to cease, and an iron door, which had been fixed in the
heading some two or three hundred yards back, was finally closed, and the gallery filled
with hot water. Advance now could only be made from the Italian "face," but even
there the difficulties from hot water were very great, so much so that for a time one of
the galleries had to be abandoned and access obtained to it by driving the parallel
gallery ahead and then returning and taking the hot springs in the rear. The only way in
which these hot springs, sometimes as high as 125° F. could be grappled with was by
throwing jets of cold water under high pressure into the fissures, and thus diluting them
down to a temperature which the miners could stand.
At the right moment, at 7 A.M. on February 24, 1905, a heavy charge was exploded in the
roof of the Italian heading, which blew a hole into the floor of the Swiss gallery and
released the impounded hot water. It was here that a truly sad incident occurred; two
visitors to the tunnel, who, it appears, had entered the gallery with a desire to witness
the actual junction, were overcome by the heat and probably the carbonic-acid gas from the
pent-up hot water, and died. By means of jets and spray of high-pressure cold water the
air of the tunnel is reduced many degrees in temperature, and it is very noticeable how
rapidly the heat of the rocks cools off when the gallery has been driven past them.
On April 2, 1905, the visitors and officials from the Italian side, traveling in a
miner's train, arrived within two hundred and fifty yards of the "Porte de fer,"
in the middle of the mountain, six miles or more from either entrance, and completed their
journey on foot up to that point. Meanwhile the officials and visitors from the Swiss
entrance had traveled up to the other side of the door. At the right moment this was
opened by Colonel Locher-Freuler, and the two parties met and fraternized, embracing one
another. A religious dedication service, conducted by the Bishop of Sion, was then held on
the spot, and the Divine blessing was invoked on the tunnel, the officials, the workmen,
and the trains, and touching reference was made to those who had lost their lives in the
execution of this great work---some forty or fifty in number. Thus was the "Fete de
Percement" of the greatest tunnel in the world celebrated.
Source:
From:
Eva March Tappan, ed., The World's Story: A History of the World in Story,
Song and Art, 14 Vols., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), Vol. VII: Germany, The
Netherlands, and Switzerland, pp. 601-605.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton.
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© Paul Halsall, November 1998
