The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. XIX.] EVIDENCE OF F. GILES, C. E. 221
mainly directed to the utter impossibility of forming a railway
over Chat Moss. " No engineer in his senses," said he, " would
go through Chat Moss if he wanted to make a railroad from
Liverpool to Manchester." * Mr. Giles thus described this bot-
tomless pit : " The surface of the Moss is a sort of long, coarse,
sedgy grass, tough enough to enable you to walk upon it, about
half-leg deep ; underneath that, on putting an iron into the soil
(a boring-rod), it will, with its own weight, sink down. In the
centre, where this railroad is to cross, it is all pulp from the top
to the depth of 34 feet ; at 34 feet there is a vein of 4 or 6
inches of clay ; below that there are 2 or 3 feet of quicksand
and the bottom of that is hard clay, which keeps all the water in.
The boring-rod wiU get down to the first vein of clay by its own
weight ; a slight pressure of the hand will carry it to the next
vein of clay ; a very little pressure indeed will get it to the ad-
ditional depth" of 2 or 3 feet, beyond which you must use more
pressure to get it down to the foundation. If this sort of mate-
rial were to be carried, it would greatly increase the expense ;
and it would be necessary to lay it aside, for the purpose of
draining and drying, before any man in his senses would convey
it along the railroad for the purpose I have been speaking of.
... In my judgment" (the judgment of Mr. F. GUes, C. E.,
against that of the unprofessional person " not in his senses,"
who proposed to form the railroad),— " in my judgment a rail-
road certainly cannot be safely made over Chat Moss without
going to the bottom of the Moss. The soil ought all to be taken
out, undoubtedly ; in doing which it will not be practicable to
approach each end of the cutting, as you make it, with the car-
riages. No carriages would stand upon the Moss short of the
bottom. My estimate for the whole catting and embankment
over Chat Moss is 270,000/. nearly, at those quantities and those
prices which are decidedly correct. ... It will be necessary
to take this Moss completely out at the bottom, in order to make
a solid road." t
Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, C. E., gave his evidence to
prove that resistance to a moving body going under four and a
quarter miles an hour was less upon a canal than upon a i^il-
* Evidence, p. 386. t Ibid. pp. 383-386.
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