TUNNELTHREATENS COLLAPSE

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1170, 4 July 1911, Page 6

TUNNELTHREATENS COLLAPSE

ON NOIiTH AUCKLAND RAILWAY.-. (By Telegraph.-SDccial Correspondent.) Auckland, July 2. According to reports which liavo reached the city, the tunnel works on tho North Auckland railway, where the routa traverses the BickerstalYc Eslate, have lately been the scene of serious subsidences and falls, of a nature that • has not been unexpected in view of tho kind of land that is being pierced. Mr. F. Marnier, M.P., who was in Auckland last uiglit, told a reporter that ho had it on good authority that a slip had : occurred ot the tunnel, 'flie news had occasioned him no surprise at all, for ho knew the country to be of a kind most treacherous to do such work in. It was a peculiar limestone - formation that cemented together in dry weather, but, when it was wet, and especially when it was opened up and disturbed, it moved -. very readily. Tho tunnel now in course , of construction would be about fifteen ehaius long, but it was not the worst, of the two in the bad' area. "The other , will be a.terrible job," he. said, "for the country there is almost afloat.". Ho i added that, tho Government must, have known what it was like, for, plenty, of warning had been given. It is'worth while to recall that* when, the respective merits of the rival - routes for the North Auckland railway were being considered as long ago as the end of ' 1909, Mr, Jas. Stewart, C.E.. •' of Auckland, strongly advocated the eastern route en the western line. In the BickorslalVo Estate, he said the railway must pass through at least s mile and a half of tlm very worst slipping country he had ever come across in his experience. The wholo countryside seemed to be oil tho move.