Page:Walker (1888) The Severn Tunnel.djvu/165

96 material and to keep up the supply of bricks, cement, and timber; and as soon as the first length of half a mile of tunnel was completed, I put down a hauling-engine at the top of the Sea-Wall Shaft, to take out the skips and bring in the bricks and cement. This hauling-engine had two cylinders, each 12 inches in diameter, and worked a large pulley, round which three turns of a wire-rope or bond were taken; the two ends after leaving the pulley descended the shaft, and there passed round other pulleys to change the direction. They then ran down the tunnel, first for half a mile, and eventually for a distance of rather more than a mile from the shaft, and at the extreme end passed round another pulley, and the roads on which the skips travelled were laid as far apart as the diameter of this large pulley. Steel rollers were fixed on the sleepers of these roads several feet apart, over which the ‘bond’ ran; and at the top of the shaft there was attached to the rope a heavy trolley, carrying a considerable weight of iron placed upon a sharp incline, the weight of this trolley on the incline serving always to keep the wire-rope sufficiently tight. When the engine was started there was an endless wire-rope constantly in motion at a speed of about 2 miles an hour; the one line of wire-rope running down the tunnel and the other line up. The skips were brought out by ponies or men to the end of the rope, and there attached by the ‘hookers-on’ by means of a clip to the wire-rope, without stopping it.