Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

WATER-POWER STATIONS OF NIAGARA FALLS. 305 SCENE IN CANADIAN NIAGARA FALLS POWER COMPANY’S STATION. GENERATORS OF 10,000 HORSE- POWER EACH. (Photo, Orrin E. Dunlap, Niagara Falls, N.Y.) alternators are installed. The distributing cables are taken up the bank in wire towers built into the concrete between the penstocks. Many special features, hydraulic and elec- trical, are found in the plant of the Ontario Power Company, the most recent and largest of all. The promoters and engineers of this enterprise, for which a charter was granted by the Dominion Government in 1887, and acquired by the present owners three years later, found themselves in the very beginning faced by a knotty problem. Where could they tap the waters of the upper river without interfering with the rights of the two other Canadian companies, and without defacing natural beauties ? and where find room for the intake canal, tail-race (1,408) ( The Ontario Power Company. or tunnel, wheel-pit, and power-house—all to be of unusual proportions, suitable to the magnitude of the project ? In the end was devised a plan, by which water is taken from the Niagara River at a point more than a mile above the Falls, and conveyed through underground steel conduits, the largest in Huge i.i x ; Conduits. the world, to a great power- house, built in the canon below the Horse-shoe cataract. Thus 55 feet were added to the head which would have been available had the Falls themselves been harnessed ; hori- zontal turbines directly connected with the main generators take the place of vertical turbines placed in a deep wheel-pit; and a long tunnel to carry off the tail water is dispensed with. The scheme at first en- voi,. ii.