AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS

INSTITUTED 1852


TRANSACTIONS

Paper No. 1150


THE NEW YORK TUNNEL EXTENSION OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD.

BY CHARLES W. RAYMOND, M. AM. SOC. C. E.[A]




Some time before the appointment of the Board of Engineers which
supervised the designing and construction of the New York Tunnel
Extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the late A. J. Cassatt, then
President of the Company, said to the writer that for many years he had
been unable to reconcile himself to the idea that a railroad system like
the Pennsylvania should be prevented from entering the most important
and populous city in the country by a river less than one mile wide. The
result of this thought was the tunnel extension project now nearly
completed; but it is only in recent years that new conditions have
rendered such a solution of the problem practicable as well as
desirable.

Previously a tunnel designed for steam railroad traffic, to enter New