When an engineer has to construct a railway up a hill having a still steeper slope, he must secure practicable gradients by laying out the line in ascending spirals, if necessary tunnelling into the hill, as on the St Gothard railway, or in a series of zigzags, or he must resort to a rack or a cable railway.
The water is not brought to the surface, but is carried over long distances by an underground channel or drain, which is constructed by sinking shafts at intervals along the required course and connecting the shafts by tunnelling.
But the survivors returned to the spot, and by digging down and tunnelling were able to remove all the objects of value, even the marble facing slabs of the large buildings.
The total strength of the army was raised by ro,000 British and 20,000 native troops, at an annual cost of about two millions sterling; and the frontier post of Quetta, in the neighbourhood of Kandahar, was connected with the Indian railway system by a line that involved very expensive tunnelling.
Where the depth to rail-level was too great for cut-and-cover methods, ordinary tunnelling processes were used; and where the trench was too shallow for the arched roof, heavy girders, sometimes of cast iron, bridged it between the side walls, longitudinal.
