miner's pick and shovel, which advanced at the rate of about ten yards
per week, a machine known as the Beaumont boring machine will be brought
into requisition in the course of a day or two, and it is expected to
carry on the work at the rate of fifty yards per week, so that this year
it may be possible to walk through the drainage heading from Liverpool
to Birkenhead. The main tunnel works now in progress will probably be
completed and trains running in the course of 18 months or two years.

The workmen are taken down the shaft by which the debris is hoisted, ten
feet in diameter, and when the visitor arrives at the bottom he finds
himself in quite a bright light, thanks to the Hammond electric light,
worked by the Brush machine, which is now in use in the tunnel on both
sides of the river. The depth of the pumping shaft is 170 feet, and the
shaft communicates directly with the drainage heading. This circular
heading now has been advanced about 737 yards. The heading is 7 feet in
diameter, and the amount of it under the river is upward of 200 yards on
each side. The main tunnel, which is 26 feet wide and 21 feet high, has
also made considerable progress at both the Liverpool and Birkenhead
ends. From the Liverpool side the tunnel now extends over 430 yards, and
from the opposite shore about 590 yards. This includes the underground
stations, each of which is 400 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 32 feet
high. Although the main tunnel has not made quite the same progress
between the shafts as the drainage heading, it is only about 100 yards
behind it. When completed, the tunnel will be about a mile in length
from shaft to shaft. In the course of the excavations which have been so
far carried out, about 70 cubic yards of rock have been turned out for
every yard forward.

Ten horses are employed on the Birkenhead side for drawing wagons loaded
with debris to the shaft, which, on being hoisted, is tipped into the