Railway engineering challenges

At the Civil Engineers’ Conference yesterday Mr W.R. Davidson (Dunedin) read a paper on the duplication and reconstruction of the DunedinMosgiel railway work, which he described, on account of the variety and extent of the engineering problems involved, as probably the most interesting of all duplication works on New Zealand railways (wires our Christchurch correspondent).

Extremely wet and heavy ground was met with at one point, where 50 feet of tunnel was constructed at a cost of £2100. At another point the floor of the tunnel rose 10 inches, and it was necessary to build 72ft of concrete invert 2ft thick. The construction of one tunnel involved the excavation of about 62,500 cubic yards of rock, and the placing of 2.5 million bricks and 5700 cubic yards of concrete. In excavating for the Chain Hills tunnel large quantities of moa bones were found. It was related by Mr Davidson that “We never had the slightest labour trouble when building the Chain Hill tunnels. We had competitions between gangs at both ends, and when for any reason it was necessary to take them off the job they almost cried, and all that for 11s per day. Our foreman certainly had the happy knack of keeping the men in good spirits, but I don’t know whether that is to be put down to his name, which happened to be Johnny Walker.’’