Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE CONQUEST narrow-gauge railway to transport the materials required for the permanent road. If any one strayed from this narrow belt he was likely to sink up to his middle in the quagmire. To aid the consolidation of the track, parallel drains were cut along each side of the site of the permanent way to extract the water from the intervening mass. The consistency of the material in which they were cut caused these drains to close up almost as fast as made, and it was necessary to reopen them continually. At some peculiarly bad places permanent drains were formed of old tar barrels, laid end to end after their heads had been knocked out. f Upon the surface between the drains the navvies spread heather, grass, hurdles, branches of trees, and cakes of dry turf. Near the Man- chester end of the bog, where the ground was particularly bad, progress was extremely slow. Thousands of loads of dry moss were tipped to form an embankment, which, when it had attained a height of a few feet above the general level, would suddenly be engulfed. This happened repeatedly, and the only visible advance seemed to be confined to the totals of the wages bill. In several weeks the engineers had to report that their efforts were apparently wasted, and that they seemingly lost rather than made headway. The directors of the Company very naturally became alarmed by the state of affairs, and debated whether they should go to the ex- pense of driving down piles or Stephenson s makjng a solicl embankment, Faith. , , , _ or should abandon the route for one avoiding the Moss. Investigation showed that the expense of a solid road-bed would be prohibitive, while to abandon the whole works and start new ones would also cripple the undertaking. Men who had spent their lives in the district prophesied that Stephenson’s method must prove abortive, and that to persist in it would be to throw good OF CHAT MOSS. 369 money after bad. Dark indeed would have been the prospect but for Stephenson’s heroic optimism. They must go on as they had begun, he urged. Though lost to sight, the material dumped was taking effect, as would soon become apparent. Hundreds of men and boys were set to work to skim the dry surface off the Moss for a mile around, and pile it up where needed ; and at last this very Slough of Despond was vanquished, though not until some 670,000 cubic yards of turf had been used. The permanent way was laid as soon as all signs of further subsidence ceased, and on New Year’s Day of 1830 the famous “ Rocket ” steamed across the Moss, dragging a passenger train behind it. While the struggle between man and morass was in progress many rumours were circulated —drivers of stage-coaches being especially industrious as the bearers of bad news. At one time the Complete Success Moss had burst upwards and engulfed men and horses wholesale. At an- other, Stephenson had disappeared into the depths, and the work had been abandoned. Despite the enormous difficulties to be over- come, this section of the railway cost less per mile than any other section, and in practice the theoretical £270,000 dwindled to £28,000, or very little more than the cost of getting the Railway Bill through Parliament. The road- bed obtained is not merely perfectly safe, but by virtue of its slight elasticity gives easy and smooth running. The conquest of Chat Moss was one of the most notable achievements of the father of railways, and afforded a precedent which has since been followed in many parts of the world with equally good results. We may instance the Cockwood section of the Great Western Railway in South Devon, which crosses an unfathomable swamp. Truly, George Stephen- son was a man of genius ! (1,408) 24