A RAILWAY AT SEA.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11118, 5 November 1907, Page 5

A RAILWAY AT SEA.

A raib?oad now being bulit in Florida, at thS extreme south-east corner of the. United States, is being built 156 ; mUes out; to sea. and the problems involved in its construction make the ;feat one of novelty and interest. The work is an extension of H. M. Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad, from Miami to Key West, the nation's southernmost city, and now only accessible by water. It seems as if human coral insects were building a solid reef from the mainland to tiie island city, employing cement as thejr material, and using the forty-two keys, or islands, between the two cities as 'the natural piers upon which to anchor the sections of concrete viaduct over the intervening seventy-five miles of water. . Where the sea is shallow great dredges are raising embankments between the keys, , but to span the wider inlets, which sometimes reach a depth of twenty feet, and are more directly opposed to tide and storm, six miles of arched viaduct will be required. This work will require 286,000 barrels of ceirient 117,000 cubic yards of .rushed rock, 612,000 cubic yards of sand, 612,000 lineal feet of piling, 5700 tons of steel reinforcing, and 3,500,000 feet of dressed lumber. An industrial army of 2500 is employed on the work, which has already progressed to a point where construction trains run over 70 miles of track. When passengers trains begin running over the completed line two years hence a man may take a sleeping car at New York or St. Louis, and remain aboard it until he reaches the railroad station at Key West, about three hours' sail by fast steamer from Havana. The engineers of tiie trains for the run from Maima to Key West will have to adjust themselves to nautical conditions, for the locomotive will have to fight fog and sea storm very much as a liner would be compelled to battle with the elements.