Civil public works transformed hostile geographical voids into orderly town real estate.
At Milepost Ten point zero, fourteen thousand two hundred feet below the snowy peaks of Haven-Hold, Giles Croft stood at the edge of the newly completed portal.
He held a six-foot boxwood folding rule in his hand, checking the posture of the final load-bearing tunnel ring.
The twenty-five-foot circular bore of the Great Underground Tunnel stretched ten nonstop miles behind him.
Seventeen thousand six hundred segmented steel and water-setting concrete liner rings formed an unbroken, dry, lit up channel through the mountain’s deepest granite roots.
Each ring was bolted with twelve one-inch heat-treated alloy bolts, torqued to four hundred foot-pounds and sealed with vulcanized EPDM rubber rings that held back two hundred pounds of pressure of water-pressure rock pressure.
The double-track Bessemer steel railway gleamed under overhead carbon-arc lanterns. He carried fresh air-flow air and spark power straight from the surface foundries.
The rails were nonstop-welded using potion-made fire-powder charges, fully eliminating joint gaps.
