3-052-491 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The St. Gothard Tunnel: air-compressing machinery at Airolo, 1880. 'Compressors made from the design of Professor Colladon were employed, each capable of supplying about 700 cubic feet of air per minute...Sixteen compressors were employed at each end of the tunnel supplying air for working from eighteen to twenty rock-drills and for ventilation...[View of] the hall which contains Professor Colladon's improved machines for compressing atmospheric air. This constitutes the power of expansive elasticity by which, as a substitute for steam-power, all the perforators and other mechanical instruments are kept in motion...The air-compressing department...[may be] regarded as the heart and the lungs; for it supplies the ventilation, the needful air for the workmen to breathe in the tunnel, as well as that which remains, in a highly condensed state, in the long tubes or conduits, or in the reservoirs, to form the motive power of the boring apparatus. The great hall of the compressors contains twenty of those powerful compressing cylinders, most of them being arranged in sets of five together upon each stand, and worked by hydraulic force...The turbines are shown in our Illustration, fixed on the top of their respective sets of compressors'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.