SIX WEEKS’ WORK

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20526, 9 April 1941, Page 6

SIX WEEKS’ WORK

LAST OF BIG TUNNELS EAST COAST RAILWAY ! LOSS OF SKILLED MEN ! REORGANISATION PERIOD If the recent rate of progress is maintained, the last of the big tunnels on tlie Gisborne-Wnikokopu section oi i the East Coast Main Trunk Railway will be pierced by the end of May. Allowing for the Easier break, the reVnaining portion of ihe actual tunnelling will take about six weeks, and by the expiry of three months the whole of the tunnel should be lined and ready for platelaying.

Reorganisation of the work was necessitated recently when the services of a number of skilled lunnellers were requisitioned for other more urgent works jobs, and the rate ol progress fell oil considerably during this period. The concentration of excavating work at the southern end of tho remaining big tunnel, which joins Tikiwhata and Waiau valleys, was decided on before the urgent works called for skilled man-power, and the latter call piled more complications on a situation already in. the process ol i eorganisation. Not An Urgent Matter Completion of the Tikiwhata tunnel is not an urgent matter, l'or there is still much other work to be done before the Gisborne-Waikokopu section can be handed over to the Railways Department, and the tunnel merely links two sub-sections worked from Bartlelts Camp and Kopuawhara respectively. The position with regard to tunnelling on the line is best appreciated by laymen from a comparison of the work done with that which remains to be completed. At the outset of railway construction between Waikokopu and the Gisborne terminus, there were 3J miles of tunnelling, or 300 chains, to be carried out. To-day, about three chains remains uncorrmleted, this length representing only 1 per cent of the total.