A WONDERFUL RAILWAY.

Waikato Times, Volume XL, Issue 3260, 20 May 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

A WONDERFUL RAILWAY.

The London Echo says:—A very remnrkablo engineering enterprise, begun in ISBB and now approaobing completion, is the Chignooto ship railway, which will transport vessels noross the isthmus separating the Gulf of St, Lawrence from the Bay of Fundy, enabling them to avoid the circuitous nnd dangerous pnssngo round Nova Seotin. Tho distance is 17 miles, nnd tho timo estimated far transporting a ship, including the processes of lifting and lowering, is two hours, At either end there will bo a bnßin nnd a lifting donk containing 20 hydraulic presses, The ship will bo floated into position between the presses and a " gridiron" and "cradle" will bo gently raised from the bottom of the dock, nnd both ship and cradle lifted to tho level of railway, where on a doublo track of steel rail's vessel and cradle will bo dragged by locomotives al the rate of ten miles an hour, Tho machinery is capable of lifting a ship of 2000 tons displacement. At tho ather end tho vessel will be lowered in a similar manner, tho: cradle sinking beneath her and leaving hor floating on tlio water. Tho scheme of transporting ships by hnd is by no means a novel one. In 427 R. 0., Greek vessels, and some of them huge triremes, 150 ft long and 18ft beam, were convoyed across the Isthmus of Corinth: Move than eighteen centuries afterwards, iu .1438, wo hear of the Venetians dragging thirty galleys from the river Adigc to Lake' Garda by means of 1000 oxen, assisted by windlassos, But tho most celebrated historical instance of a fleet cruising on land occurred in 1453 at the taking of Constantinople, when the Turkish vessels wero dragged from the Bospborus over the bills, on timber ways greased and laid on trestles, and launched in tho upper waters of the Golden Horn, tho seaward entranno to which the defenders had barred by a chain stretched across it. In. Cornwall, tho system of transporting vessels has been employed since the early, part of the century. On the Bude canal there nre several inclined planes along which boats nro convoyed by an endless chain, Iu America, in Germany nnd Japan, ship transport is omployed, But it has never boon attempted on & scalo like IhatntChignceto, although similar works of still greater magnitude have been projected. Two schemes were proposed for carrying ships across tho Isthmus of Darien, and in ISGO Sir James Bmriloes. submitted to the Emperor Napoleon plans of a ship railway across the Isthmus of Suez, whieh was to be only one seventh of the cost of the canal, and would carry ships at tho rato of twenty miles an hour, M, de Lcsseps, however, carried everything before him, and bis canal was made. Nevertheless if tho Chiguecto railway proves success* ful it is by no means improbable that it may be imitated between tho waters of the Gulf of Mexico and : tho Pacific,