The Windsor Star from Windsor, Ontario, Canada • 19

Third Section Third Section fcihe Mather Mitu0 Mux THE STAR GOES HOME THE STAR GOES HOME WINDSOR, ONTARIO, SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1933 to fo) on UU IS Ui lfi)lljy lo) fo) tt io) nn fo) Liu Lo) UU uu 5 rJI jfr- i rtr- p--f- A a -A there shows the boom of one of the big draglines which remove Is one of the channel beacons, high and dry. In the back-the rock after blasting gelatine torn it to bits. The picture ground is the north cofferdam. The distance between coffer-at the right shows an uncompleted section. In the foreground dams is 7,000 feet.

TIE photos above show the scope of the work, the cofferdam the extreme left being the south end of the section. Vh2re water shows, the work has been completed, and at the left New Channel Prepared To Take Bigger Ships Gigantic Livingstone Job Proceeds Steadily Behind Cofferdam; Old Lakes Liner is Power House '1 3 jew if Will Xx i Trlr plr i By H. P. ALLEN Starr Writer or The Border Cities Star TF it were necessary to have a look at the bottom of the ocean, it might be done the way the United States Government is doing it opposite Amherstburg where the Livingstone channel is being deepened in order that lake carriers may transport a prodigious commerce still more cheaply build a wall around it and pump the water out. The trouble would probably be power for the pumps and a place to put the water in the case of the ocean, but that is no bother for the Livingstone channel contractors, who have already bared one section of the channel 7,000 feet long, in order that the hard rock men and those Technocracy machines, the draglines, may remove enough limestone so that vessels having a 28-foot draft may use the channel at all times.

9 rlE old wooden steamer "Indiana," once the pride of th Goodrich Line, is not only a floating boarding house for the men employed on the channel deepening, but a power houss as well. Two 900 K. V. A. turbo-generators furnish power for the electric sump pumps and the air compressors.

There is a bakery and a store aboard and every comfort for the workers. TTWO of the big draglines at work on the Livingstone channel enough so that the bucket clears the dyke, where the spoil is deposited. The big machines are mounted on caterpillar treads. 1 may be seen above. The boom is kept at an elevation high 500 feet wide and 30 feet deep.

and keep it out. It takes a lot of power to run the drills. So the a -V I George Mills Company, of Detroit, which Is doing the excavating in the section now under construction, provided a floating power plant. The power plant is the old steamer "Indiana." Built around half a century ago of stout timbers which still provide a staunch hull, the Indiana was once the pride of the Goodrich line. After many years of service between such ports as Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Haven and others, the "Indiana" was retired to the bone yard.

But the Mills Company found a use for her, and she now bears the firm's name on her bow. On the lower deck of the Indiana, where once freight and baggage were stored, the contractors have installed two 900 K.V.A. Westing-house (1,200 horsepower) turbogenerators, supplied with steam from the ship's boilers. These machines generate electricity at 6,600 volts. A.C., and there are transformers to step it down to 440 volts for use in electric pumps and air compressors, of which the Indiana is equipped with two of In-gersoll Rand manufacture, each delivering 800 cubic feet of air compressed to 150 pounds, every minute.

The air runs the drills and the pumps which keep the cut dry are electrically operated. The Indiana furnishes the power. All very simple. three big electrical pumps In the shed will throw a two-foot stream of water. The discharge pipes may be seen in back of the shed, which is on a scow.

rE' equipment that dried out the space enclosed by the cofferdams and the permanent longitudinal dykes of the Livingstone channel may be seen above. Each of the Started Years Ago The Livingstone channel built many years back, and Its achievement Is one of th glories of Amberstburj. for. though the United States Government paid the hot. It was Amherrtbury men.

mostly, who did the work. At that tune the long dykes which one may see from the Detroit River bank at Amherstburg were thrown up. The rock was drilled and blasted and neatly cut into in order to make a channel for the biggest boats then afloat the lake freighters which carry coal and iron ore and the wheat cf an inland empire, partly in Canada and partly in the United States. Efficiency But the principle which the Technocrats are trying to teach us to fear has been operating In the lake freight fleets. They started making the carriers longer, and when they had reached the limit in length, tney began to make them of greater draft.

They could carry more wheat, more coal or more iron ore aa the case might be. Wonderful terminal facilities with vast machines for the loading and unloading of the bulk, commodities which form the greater part of the lake trade still further reduced costs, and the huge boats mere hampered in the operations only by the shallow waters at such places as the Livingstone channel. Then. too. Canada built the Welland canal, and the diplomatic emissaries of the world's premier neighbor nations concluded an agreement whereby the St.

Lawrence River rapids can be overcome, as soon as the United States Senate and the Dominion Parliament ratify the compact. It became imperative to deepen the Livingstone channel. Always Rosy So much for the economic background. The work, which is costing the United States Government many millions, is being done a. a time when things are none too rosy, but the future, in our America, is always rosy, and not one person ho bewails the present-day depression is anything but the optimist when it eomes to looking ahead.

Even if the flow of commerce that will Justify the Investment in the Liv ingstone channel is not "just around the corner," no one doubts that It is not very many years In the future. So on with the work. Plan tor the future. That planning has always been justified. When It comes to Increasing the depth of the so-called government canal through shallow Lake St.

Clair, which is going to be done under the present program of providing lake channels for 28-foot draft lake carriers, nothing will be needed but big dipper dredges and sand suckers for the job. But Nature put limestone rock close to the surface opposite Amherstburg and there is only one answer that modern man has for rock when it stands in the way of his going somewhere, or building the means of going somewhere dynamite, plus a means of removal, such as dragline, dipper dredge, or steam shovel, all depending on how the rock lies after the dynamite breaks it up. Dry Work Better Now dynamite carries in its chemical composition its own atmosphere of oxygen for the instantaneous combustion which gives it power to blast and rend, so it will explode under water. But the drilling of rock in "wet" work is more difficult and the tamping of the explosive in the drill holes is equally so. Where large masses of rock are to be removed, it Is easier and cheaper to work in the "dry." That Is why they are doing it that way in making the new Livingstone channel.

The engineering principles involved in the Livingstone work are quite simple. Both ends of a section are closed off with a great, thick cofferdam of clay and rocks and baled straw used in spots where the water is hard to keep off. Then electric pumps tackle the job of pumping out the water. After that the drillers, the powder men, the draglines and the sea-going trucks move in. They drill the rock, blast it and remove it.

That's all there is to the job, but there are a lot of details. Power Plant One of these is the power plant. It takes a lot of power to remove the water from a canal nearly a mile and a half long, more than DRILLERS and powder men work together. As fast as a hole is drilled some six pounds of blasting gelatine are tamped in the six-foot hole. sump, and the rest of the water removed from the canal prism.

With the bottom dry, the rock drills and their accompanying powder men and the draglines were moved In. Building Dykes The name dragline is not exactly descriptive. It suggests long cables, anchored to poles, pulling buckets of.dirt by means of donkey engines. Instead a dragline is a kind of cross between a locomotive crane and a steam shovel, with some cf the characteristics of a claim shell dredge. They are huge, gaunt, machines, with a mighty sweep of latticed steel arm, from which depends, by one cable, the dragline bucket.

Another cable, attached to the business end of the bucket, draws it toward the dragline along the ground to be excavated, and such loose rocks and clay as are in the way soon fill the bucket, which is then hoisted by the cable which depends from the arm. Then the machine turns and deposits the contents of the bucket where the spoil will be out of the way. On the Livingstone channel job, the rock goes big, they pay little attention to it. But should it enlarge, a bale of straw will be thrown in the river and guided to where the leak has its source. The ordinary recourse, in keeping the river bed dry, is to the electric sump pumps.

These pumps are four in number, three big ones and a smaller one. It takes two of them to keep the water from rising in the completed sections of the channel to more than a few inches. Should it gain more, the other two pumps can be set going. They are of the rotary type and they can keep a two foot pipe full of water, after raising it more than 30 feet from the river bed. Drying the Cut The same pumps dried the channel cut.

Placed on a scow, they dropped down as fast as the water level inside the dyke was reduced. When they got near the bottom a sump was built, by means of throwing a cofferdam about a small area of the bottom and blasting down several feet below the level to which the final excavation will be made. Then the cofferdam was removed, the scow floated over the as doughnuts and cookies. Plenty to eat is good business for contractors who have to feed their men, and the Indiana is a place of plentiful eats. The men who live on the Indiana have plenty of nice mahogany to look at, if they are in the mood for appreciating rare cabinet woods.

It is somewhat battered now and the brass work is not kept as well shined as it was when the Indiana was still on her passenger run, but it is still there. Withal, the boat is a comfortable floating boarding house none better on such jobs as the Livingstone channel, where the usual is a tar paper shack. Pipes and Wires From the Indiana, pipe lines and electric wires lead to the job. Moored alongside the dykes, the old ship is static now and couldn't be anything else, unless a tug were hitched to her, as her engines have long since been disconnected from the steam lines. But she can still make things move.

The dykes, though safe, still leak a bit. Here and there along their length one sees a trickling of water, and as long as the trickle is not very A Home as Well There are, however, other for the Indiana. Men on an isolated job like the Livingstone channel and liable to be cut off from the mainland for days and weeks at a time by running ice flpes, must have a place to sleep and eat. They have both in the Indiana. The Indiana is plentifully equipped with staterooms.

There is a bakery on board and a kitchen with one of those big hotel ranges, where meals are prepared a la lumber camp, than which there is nothing better for the man who works out in the open for eight hours. They never insult you with just one kind of meat In such a place. And there is always pie. Maybe the apples come out of cans, but the cooks and the bakers know how to make that pie taste good. Besides which there are such trifles such things as TNT and smokelest powder play a prominent part in war, the destruction they have wrought is as nothing to what they have done in the way of preparing for the builders in time of peace.

For instance, one w-onders how much we would have to pay for coal if the miners could not "shoct it down" in the pits. Tons and tons of blasting gelatins will have been set off in holes drilled into the rock bottom of the Livingstone channel before the job, is completed. Every few 'minute! a man goes to the pewder storage, grabs a 50-pound case of blasting? gelatine and carries it down to th to build higher the longitudinal dykes. These are to be permanent. The draglines the Mills company is using three, of two, four and six cubic yard capacity waddle slowly, from time to time along a ledge which is maintained for them near the bottom of the longitudinal dykes.

This they build up in front of them as they move on their caterpillar treads and remove as fast as they have excavated to the level decreed in the U. S. Government's specifications for the channel. High Explosives Help But before rock can be moved by the draglines, it must first be broken up by that great friend to modem civilization high explosives. One says friend advisedly, for though Continued on Page Two Col.

3, this Section.