From the Times:
"TO many commuters, the two tunnels that connect New Jersey and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan seem so ordinary that they barely give them a second thought - except, perhaps, when their train breaks down inside them.
"Yet when the Pennsylvania Railroad blasted the final pieces of rock out of the tunnels to complete the underground link a century ago this week, they were hailed by many as an engineering marvel and the product of foresight and gumption.
"The Gilded Age tunnels have performed remarkably well and defied skeptics - including some of the engineers who built them and doubted their durability. Each business day, about 150,000 passengers ride the 337 New Jersey Transit trains that roll through the 6,100-foot-long cast iron tubes, which are owned and operated by Amtrak, which itself runs 104 trains. Another 39 empty New Jersey Transit trains use the tunnel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/06RtunnelNJ.html
....100 years is awesome performance for the durability of these tunnels and of course they're still doing the job. Very impressive for the engineering and work it took back then to put them there. Yes, I've been thru them.
Quentin
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