422 



HAHECASTLE TUNNEL. 



1'AKT VIII. 



less than three years. There were at that time through- 

 out the country plenty of skilled labourers and con- 

 tractors, many of them trained by their experience upon 

 Telford's own works, whereas Brindley had in a great 

 measure to make his workmen out of the rawest material. 

 Telford also had the advantage of greatly improved 

 machinery and an abundant supply of money the Grand 

 Trunk Canal Company having become prosperous and 

 rich, paying large dividends. It is therefore meet, while 

 eulogising the despatch with which he was enabled to 

 carry out the work, to point out that the much greater 

 period occupied in the earlier undertaking is not to be set 

 down to the disparagement of Brindley, who had difficulties 

 to encounter which the later engineer knew nothing of. 

 The length of the new tunnel is 2926 yards; it is 

 16 feet high and 14 feet broad, 4 feet 9 inches of 

 the breadth being occupied by the towing-path for 

 " legging " was now dispensed with, and horses hauled 

 along the boats instead of their being thrust through by 

 men. The tunnel is in so perfectly straight a line that 

 its whole length can be seen through at one view ; and 

 though it was constructed by means of fifteen different 



pitshafts sunk to the same 

 line along the length of 

 the tunnel, the workman- 

 ship is so perfect that the 

 joinings of the various 

 lengths of brickwork are 

 scarcely discernible. "The 

 convenience afforded by 

 the new tunnel was very 

 great, and Telford men- 

 tions that, on surveying it 

 in 1829, he asked a boat- 

 man coming out of it how 

 he liked it ? "I only wish," he replied, " that it reached 

 all the way to Manchester ! " 



CKOSS SECT1ONT OF HARECASTLE TUNNEL. 



