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

CHAP.>xv.] EXECUTION OF THE WORKS. 299
country by establishing one of the grandest public works that
has ever been achieved in England, the utility of which may
almost be pronounced unparalleled. Eighty miles of the railway
were shortly under construction ; the works were let (with-
in the estimates) to contractors, who were pecessarily for the
most part new to such work. The business of railway contrac-
tors was not then so well understood as it has since become.
There were no leviathans among them, as there are now, able to
contract for the formation of a line of railway hundreds of miles
in length ; they were for the most part men of small capital and
slender experience. Their tools and machinery were imperfect
they did not understand the economy of time and piece labour
the workmen, as well as their masters, had still to learn their
trade ; and every movement of ,an engineer was attended with
outlays, which were the inevitable result of a new system of
things, but which each succeeding day's experience tended to
diminish.
The difficulties encountered by the Messrs. Stephenson, in the
execution of the London and Birmingham Railway, were thus
very great ; but the most formidable of them originated in the
character of the works themselves. Extensive tunnels had to be
driven through unknown strata, and miles of underground excava-
tion accomplished in order to form a level road from valley to
valley under the intervening ridges. This kind of work was the
newest of all to the contractors of that day. The experience of
the Messrs. Stephenson in the collieries of the North, made them,
of all living engineers, the best fitted to grapple with such diffi-
culties ; but even they, with all their practical knowledge, could
not have foreseen or anticipated the formidable obstacles which
were encountered in the execution of the Kilsby Tunnel.
It will be remembered that the opposition to the railway on
the part of the inhabitants of Northampton had compelled the
engineer to avoid that town, and to carry the line through the
Kilsby ridge. A tunnel was thus rendered necessary of about
2400 yards in length, penetrating about 160 feet below the sur-
face. The exact nature of the strata throughout could not be
ascertained with precision, except by the expenditure of vast
sums in boring. Before the contract was let, however, trial
shafts were honestly sunk at diflferent points, to enable the con-
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