The Hoosac Tunnel
The Hoosac Tunnel traces back to 1819 when it was originally proposed as a piece of a canal system running from Boston to Albany. A civil engineer by the name of Loammi Baldwin was hired in 1825 to survey a route. Baldwin’s began to survey a desired route and his predictions and plans of the project were shot down for being too costly because the tunnel was predicted to take 24 years to build and $21,241,842 dollars to complete. However despite Baldwin’s plan being denied, there was no other route in the northern portion of the state that could be found.
At first the tunnel was to be assembled using a 70-ton steam machine that was initially designed to cut a groove around the circumference of the tunnel, thirteen inches wide and twenty-four feet in diameter, by means of a set of revolving cutters. When the groove had been cut to a correct depth the machine was to be run back on its railway and the center core blasted out by gunpowder.
*For more information concerning the history of the
Hoosac Tunnel please see A History of the Hoosac Tunnel *
