Building the Otira Tunnel:
The first agitation for a railway to Westland came strangely enough from the people of Nelson As early as 1860 a rail link through the Southern Alps was being discussed in Nelson and by 1873 two years before the abolition of provincial government a practical scheme was being considered
The reason was of course that the Nelson Provincial area included the coal and gold mines of the Grey Valley and the rich quartz gold areas of the Inangahua. The Nelson plans were actually endorsed by Acts of the General Assembly were for a line from Foxhill to Cobden {which were part of Nelson province) across the Grey River and the Alps and then up to the Amuri portion of Nelson
But politics intervened with these great plans and it is rather ironical almost a century later to reflect that whereas Westland has had its complete rail link with Canterbury for nearly forty years Nelson has still no rail connection with the rest of the South Island
It is not necessary to trace the complicated history of various proposals and agitation that went on in both Canterbury and Westland for several years of the demonstrations commissions and leagues that resulted In the end a Royal Commission decided that the best rail route was by Arthur's Pass but there was no real progress until 1885 when the Midland Railway Company was formed with a capital of f500E000 and signed a contract with the Government to construct 235 miles of railway. Springfield to Brunnerton via Arthur's Pass and Brunnerton to Belgrove via Reefton within ten years The inducement to the company was to be the granting by the government of ten shillings worth of land for every twenty shillings of line construction
EARLY CONSTRUCTION:By September 1892 the Brunnerton Reefton section was opened for traffic By the following year the line on the midland route was open to Lake Brunner In the next twelve months the line was extended to Jackson's but that almost ended the Midland company's record of construction
On 25th May 1895 the government holding that the delay in completing the contract was unreasonable took possession of the line During its nine years of operation the Company spent 1,108,628 and received large grants of land which it had sold at an average of about thirty five per cent above the scheduled valuation often shillings an acre
With the Rt Hon R J Seddon as Premier there was ample government support for completion of the east west link but progress remained slow and there followed a further prolonged period of Agitation on both sides of the Alps However by the time of Seddon's death in 1906 completion of the work, was in sight, apart from the Arthur's Pass Otira gap; which involved the construction of tunnel more than five miles long longer than any other in the British Empire.
There had been talk of avoiding the tunnel by various means but were all condemned as impracticable and on 25 April 1906 tenders were call for the construction of the big hole. Three tenders were received and the contract was awarded to J Mclean and Sons whose price was f599,794.. They were required to complete the contract in five years.
The first shot was fired officially on 5 May 1903 by the Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward and hopes were high for rapid progress. The contractors ran into unexpected difficulties and on 3 February 1012 (when work should have been completed) the McLean's asked to be relieved of their contract. There was still three and a half miles to go.
The government took over the work at the end of 1912 but only advance about half a mile by 1914 when the world war broke out. However by 20 July 1918 the barrier was pieced by a iron rod 11 feet long and on 21 August Sir William Fraser (Minister of Public Works) fired the shot at the official ceremony to make a breach in the wall between the Arthur's Pass and Otira ends.
The result was a splendid tribute to those - in charge and the men engaged on this gigantic task - when the headinqs met the discrepancies were only one and one-eighth inches in level and three quarters of an inch in alignment
The work of finishing the tunnel proceeded very slowly due to the lack of suitable labour. On 25 August 1020 the contract for the electrical equipment was let to the
English Electric Co. Ltd and at long last the end of the coaching era' was in sight.
There still remained much work to be done, however the equipping the tunnel plus the Arthur's pass and the Otira approaches it was not until 4 August 1923 that the tunnel was opened for traffic an event which was to have a profound effect on the future of Westland.
Otira Tunnel (No. 17):This 8,554 metre long straight tunnel was atthe time of its opening immediately famous as the longest in the. British Empire, the longest in the Southern Hemisphere, and the seventh longest in the world.
As the other six were all in densely populated continental Europe, it was no mean achievement for a country of just 1.25 million people. It created another first in that electric locomotives were used through it as from opening, this being the first use of electric locomotives on New Zealand Railways.
In 1923 the choice of motive power available to railways was either steam or electric, the development of diesel motors and transmissions had not yet emerged from the experimental stage. Maintaining special crews for just a 14 km section is not economic for today's express freight trains and serious attempts, with less than complete success, have been made in the last few years to do away with the electric's and use diesels through the tunnel.
Rolleston River:This river is fed by streams from the Armstrong Glacier on the eastern flank of Mt Armstrong near the Main Divide and joins the Otira River above the was opened.
From this date it became the western terminus of the first electrified section in the South Island. Railway facilities include a seven track yard on the level (which was the site of the railhead station before the opening of the Otira tunnel), a turning triangle, engine shed for the electric locomotives, original power house, and a runaway track in case of locomotive failure on the 1in 33 grade to Arthur's Pass.
Otira:Located at the eastern foot of Mt. Barron (1,725 metres), this has been a railway town with a resident population of around 45, and the row of houses to the north of the road and railway line was for locomotive and maintenance staff and their families. Most are no longer occupied.
Before the tunnel was opened, coaches used to load and unload their passengers here for the journey over the Arthur's Pass road. For passers-by the licensed hotel here still serves the same function that it did in coaching days. As well there is a heated indoor swimming pool here.
THE OTIRA TUNNEL
Of all the various kinds of construction work that men undertake, none is more hazardous and difficult that tunnelling. Those who drove the railway tunnel five and quarter miles under the Southern Alps showed a high degree of skill and discipline, physical endurance and courage.
Tenders were called in 1906, three were received, and the job went to J. McLean & Sons, one of the country's best-known contracting firms. The price was f599,794 and the tunnel was to be completed in five years. This proved to be all impossibly short time. The first shot was fired in May 1908 but the two ends did not meet till 1918 and it was 4 August 1923 when the first train went through what was then the longest tunnel in the British Empire. The journey took fifteen minutes.
Constructing tunnels in those days was usually by the "heading and bench" method, by which a small passages, or heading, was driven within the full cross-section, leaving an un-excavated ledge of bench. Sometimes several headings would be driven to different distances1 enabling more men to work on the tunnel at the same time. Only one fatal accident occurred; this was two years after the tunnel commenced, when a large rock-fall killed one man and temporarily imprisoned two others.
February 1912 (when the work should have been completed) there were still three and a half miles to go and the contractor asked to be relieved of the contract. The Public Work Department took over but only another half-mile was added before the Great War began in 1914.
As the tunnel length increased disputes arose over the practice of counting working hours only while diggers were at the work4ace, and for a while the gangs adopted a "go-slow" policy, but things changes when piece-work was introduced, with payment according to the amount of soil removed each shift. Said and eye-witness: "I have seen men carrying heavy machinery, or concrete blocks, not walking along the tunnel but actually jogging, with the sweat pouring down their faces".
The completed arch was formed of concrete blocks, each weighing seventy pounds, which had to be manhandled into exact position. Before this1 the face had to be prepared by the use of * explosives. Rock drills were rigged on a heavy bar of steel wedged across the tunnel. A steady * stream of water was forced on to the site where the drill was working and this was largely successful in damping down the dust which created such a hazard in tunnelling work.
Plugs of gelignite were tampered into the drilled holes, and detonator and fuse added Gelignite *was used to ignite the fuses. It is said that the first indication of the explosion was a feeling of having been struck in the face by a soft pillow. Every lamp would be blown out, and thud after thud would follow, then the heavy fumes would begin to pour down the tunnel. Each shot was *counted by the foreman and when the shift usually went outside until the fumes had cleared Later certain members of the shift, called "prickers" would clamber to the site of the explosions and with long steel rods would prick over the roof and sides of the new excavation too bring down any loose rock.
* Water from the Devil's Punchbowl, a waterfall in the Bealey Gorge, helped to generate electricity for the Otira tunnel work. An electric loco pulled the working shift into the tunnel, taking care that a rake of fully laden trucks was not coming out; lay-byes allowed the in-going locomotive to pass the loaded train.
To illuminate the job a heavy brass acetylene lamp was carried, and the tunneller left this in the lamp-room when he came off shift, The workman all wore knee gumboots, oilskin coats and headgear for the tunnel was very wet. The constant water never ceased to amaze laymen, who imagined the massive mountains above would act as a shelter. But the annual rainfall here is about 195 inches and the water flow in the tunnel sometimes reached a rate of 3000 gallons a minute.
When working parties from both ends met in 1918 the difference between the actual and calculated length was only thirty-six inches over the full distance of 5 miles 554 yards, and in level the difference was only one and an-eighth inches.
0TIRA TUNNEL COLLAPSE
Mr McKeich felt uneasy. He had just come from a week's leave. Back to his job as underground foreman on the 11.5 million Otira tunnel project. Workmen with air drills were
piercing a gigantic passage through the Southern Alps to provide a railway link between the east and west coasts of the South Island that would become the longest tunnel in the British Commonwealth.
It was 2 May 1910. Late autumn rains had been pelting down for weeks, soaking the countryside, seeping through into the tunnel in places. That was why Mr McKeich was looking apprehensively at the slabs of sappy timber supporting the roof. He knew how sodden the earth above it was. He had come on duty with eight men at eight o'clock that morning.
Already he had detected faint creaking sounds in the timber about sixty metres inside the entrance while the men were clearing up the floor.
"Watch out for anything going wrong. The conditions aren't too good," he shouted. To some of the men working further inside. When he had to send two men, Duggan and Doyle, up into the heading of the tunnel be repeated his warning and told them to make for the chute for shelter if anything happened.
Mr McKeich looked up at the tunnel roof again a little later. Then an expression of horror froze his face. Hw was a massive beam in the timber lining break loose and hurtle down, and felt it strike him on the head before he could jump clear. He was knocked down and lay dazed with a broken leg. The same beam flung aside another workman as it fell. Then a whole section of the roof sagged and came down with a deafening roar. Men, choked by the dust, groped amid broken timber, rock and mud.
Mr McKeich and the men with him were fortunate in being clear of the main danger area. But others who had been working not far away now lay trapped beneath the fallen rubble. Men at the construction camp outside, hearing the ominous roar, were peering in at the tunnel entrance through the thick dust by the time the noise had died away, they could see three men pinned under the debris.
"Where's Charlie?" It was George Pins speaking, one of the tunnellers off duty at the time. He sprang into the entrance and began to pull aside the rubble to try to reach his hut mate Charlie Beamish, whom he knew to be somewhere inside. Charlie! Where are you?
There was a faint answer, and "Where's Charlie?" It was George Pins speaking, one of the tunnellers off duty at the time. He sprang into the entrance and began to pull aside the rubble to try to reach his hut mate Charlie Beamish, whom he knew to be somewhere inside. Charlie! Where are you?
There was a faint answer, and Pitts fought his way further until he reached where Beamish lay with a badly injured back. Pitts began pulling him clear and had almost succeeded when disaster struck again. A fresh fall of rock and mud caught Pitts and trapped him.
The miner's acetylene lamp he had been carrying probably saved his life. He had placed it on one of the buffers of a tunnel truck to leave his hands free so that he could crawl round the track. The fall of timber bent him over one of these buffers but the lamp proved enough to prevent the timber from crushing him too death.
Rescuers were working desperately while all this was going on, reaching as many victims as they could. They had pulled James McKeich out, but he seemed to be at the point of death.
His son was working with the tunnel gang as a "carbide boy". "Come here, son, and see your father for the last time," one of the men called to him. The boy looked sadly, - then told the men that his father's upper set of false teeth was missing.
Someone pushed a pair of blacksmith's tongs down the man's throat and pulled a broken upper dental plate from where it had been wedged in the gullet. "Then I started to breathe again and came to," Mr Mckeich recalled afterwards.
Back in the ruins, Pitts, pinned across the truck, managed to reach Beamish's face with his hands. He kept scraping the mud away from his mate's mouth so that he would not suffocate. This went on for eight hours before rescuers burrowed through to rescue the two men. Pitts had worn his fingertips away keeping his friends alive, but Beamish died on the way to hospital. Then the rescuers pressed onwards, towards others known to be trapped along the tunnel.
Doctors arrived in a special train which took away the injured, Mr McKeich among them. As the emergency train rattled along, Mckeich recalled having sent Duggan and Doyle deep into the tunnel. He had a message sent back urgently to Otira to warn rescue squads to look out for them.
Next morning engineers at the tunnel mouth were discussing how to reach the remainder of the trapped men. The blacksmith with them, himself an old miner, suddenly caught the sound of distant tapping on metal.
"Listen," he shouted. "The miner's knock". There came the faint sound of two strokes, then three more. It was apparent that someone was using the twelve-centimetre compressed-air pipe to tap out a signal An engineer loosened a joint in the pipe and called down it.
I"who's down there?" he asked. Back came the answer. Duggan and Doyle were still alive.
A line was now attached to an empty tin, which was inserted in the pipe. As soon as the air was turned on again, it blew the tin through. A stouter line was now attached and soon food, hot drinks, tobacco and dry clothing were being dragged through the pipe by the two men. A plan to sink shaft from the hill above down to them was ruled out as too risky. Instead a small tunnel was to be cut for twelve metres until it intercepted the main tunnel.
By half past nine that night all the men had been reached except Duggan and Doyle. The tunnel digging continued, but at the twelve-metre mark there was no sign of the main tunnel.
Plans were rechecked and it was discovered that the tunnellers were, by a miscalculation, passing right over the original tunnel. A shaft was now sunk to connect the two, and after tour days' imprisonment in the darkness Duggan and Doyle were bought out, little harmed by what they had gone through.
A terrible ordeal had ended with only on death, although a number of men had been seriously injured. Mr Mckeich's injuries kept him in hospital for six months, but he went back to the job and later served as underground foreman on big tunnelling jobs elsewhere. When he was in his eightieth year in 1955 he gave an account of his terrible experience that day at Otira fifty years before.
"To this day," he said, "I have a clear recollection of looking up and seeing that massive beam in the timber lining smasn out of position and coming hurtling down".
After this temporary setback, the Otira project continued. It took another eight years to complete it during which time tunnel workers and their families brought a whole town into being.
60,000 men had worked at one time or another in the Otira Tunnel in the fifteen years it took to build. They cam and went, sometimes more that a hundred quitting their jobs in a single day. Men worked in shifts through the whole twenty-four hours.
One night a serious landslip buried a row of workers' huts. A cross beside the railway line today marks the grave of one of the workmen killed in that side. The tunnel had been driven from both sides of the Alps and when the two headings met the alignment was found to be only nineteen Millimetres out. So straight is the tunnel that if you stand at one portal you can look right through its length of 8.456 kilometers to the - pinhole of daylight at the other end. When completed it was not only the longest tunnel in the British Commonwealth but also the longest south of the Equator.
