Engineers

The American Society of Civil Engineers meets four times yearly. Last week it convened at Denver. A local news scrivener described the Society's board of directors: "Coats off, collars loosened, the 20 men plunged into deliberation and piles of papers. For three hours they worked as only engineers can work--with a minimum of talk and a maximum of thought." A less exciting impression of what civil engineers do at a convention was given by John F. Stevens, the Society's stern-faced president: "The principal reason for the convention is to establish a bond of brotherhood. . . . We will consider routine business-aside from that nothing remains." But what John F. Stevens would call

"routine business," another man might call extraordinary exertion. Long, closely-written technical papers were read on city planning, surveys, irrigation, highways, topography, etc. Among the notables present were Engineers Morris Knowles of Pittsburgh (city planner), President Arthur E. Morgan of Antioch College (flood control specialist), President George S. Davison of "that good" Gulf Refining Co., Pittsburgh; Willard T. Chevalier, manager of the Engineering News-Record (the profession's "Bible"). For President Stevens, aged 74, the trip to Denver had personal aspects. He was paying a visit to his brother E. C. Stevens, headmaster of a Denver school. Also he was revisiting the scene of his engineering apprenticeship. So in his annual address to the Society he permitted himself to touch upon part of the "routine business" of his own career. This part was not his feat of discovering Stevens Pass through the Cascade Mountains for the Great Northern R. R., or any part of his pioneer work for the Canadian Pacific R. R., or any of his experiences as chief of the War-time board to improve trans-Siberian travel. His talk was about the Panama Canal, of which President Taft named him the "father" for his. services as its presiding genius from 1905 to 1907. And there was good reason for Mr. Stevens to talk about the Panama Canal. Last winter he quietly went down to Panama to see how the big ditch looked after 20 years. His talk was his first publication of his impressions, which were, chiefly, that a $500,000,000 sea-level canal through Nicaragua, as some propose, will not be needed to supplement the Panama Canal, because: 1) water shortage in the Panama locks, which might threaten if the traffic increases much more, can be averted by building an $8,000,000 dam to store flood waters on the Chagres River; 2) the sea-level canal would be no easier to defend in war-time than the Panama locks since the narrow sea-level channel could be blocked by one sunken ship. "Routine business" over, many of the engineers left Denver for Colorado Springs and recreation. Others traveled west instead of south, to see something up in the Rockies, something which made Denver a most appropriate spot for this year's convention--an engineering project of magnitude and importance second to none in the U. S. Last fortnight, under the granite groins of the Continental Divide, workmen blasted out the last headings in the main bore of the six-mile Moffat Tunnel which Colorado has been digging since 1923. Another eight weeks, officials predicted, and the first train would go through. The desirability of sending trains under rather than over the Continental Divide at that point was first discovered by a Denver banker, David Halliday Moffat, after he had spent a fortune building and trying to operate the Denver & Salt Lake R. R. To climb James Peak and thread a pass 11,660 ft. high, his tracks had to climb 30 miles up 4% grades, describing in 23 miles curves totaling 28 full circles. It was--and is--the highest standard-gauge railroad in the world, far above timberline. It takes four locomotives to haul a 22-car train over the top. And the first winter he operated the line, David Moffat discovered that blizzards and snow avalanches would make it totally impassable for six months every year. He was trying to raise money for a tunnel when he died in 1911.

The tunnel that David Moffat wanted to build, now nearly finished, will do the following things: ensure year-round train service, on two tracks, by burrowing under the snow-blockade line of the Continental Divide, replacing 23 miles of 4% grades with six miles of 2% grades; make Denver 44 miles nearer Salt Lake City than via the Union Pacific, 174 miles nearer than via Pueblo on the present Denver & Rio Grande Western route; it will carry motorists under the Divide, on flatcars the year round; carry oil, power and water lines through the Divide in a special eight-foot bore parallel to the 16 x 24-ft. one.