Stephenson was called upon to cope with another critical situation upon the same railway. The great tunnel at Kilsby was in course of construction, but work had not proceeded very far when the contractors struck a large pocket of water and quicksand. They combated this adversary for several months, and then, unable to make any appreciable headway, threw up the contract. Efforts were made to induce other firms to accept the task, but in vain. At last Stephenson was called upon to rescue the undertaking from failure. The outlook was far from promising, for the shaft was being sunk through material which the engineer always regards askance--a shale--while the fault in which reposed a large volume of water and sand was of large proportions. Stephenson concluded that the best way to cope with the problem was to pump out the water first, and accordingly he rigged up an elaborate plant capable of handling 1,800 gallons per minute, and this was kept going day and night. Even then, however, it was only by superhuman effort that the water was kept down. One day after Stephenson had been on the scene about six months, the water got the upper hand and flooded the tunnel to such a depth that the men and materials had to be floated in on rafts. This undertaking, however, served to demonstrate to those anxious to participate in railway-building speculations how estimated expenses for definite work might be sent astray seriously, and how formidable and ubiquitous was the unexpected factor in such work. The original contractor offered to complete the burrow, 7,169 feet in length, under the Kilsby Ridge for some £90,000. By the time the last brick of the lining had been laid and the tunnel was ready for use over £300,000 had been expended. The attempt to pierce this tunnel at that time, however, was a far more difficult enterprise than it would be to-day. The engineers had not the powerful marvellous appliances such as serve the contractor’s purposes now. Electric energy was unknown, the hydraulic shield for driving tunnels had yet to be invented, the steam shovel had not been thought of--in short, the contractor was handicapped on every side by the crude character of his tools. Some of these appliances which the modern railway-builder uses are little short of wonderful, both in time- and labour-saving qualities, and the majority have been born of necessity. For instance, in the early railway days on the American continent too much time would have been occupied in building lofty earthen embankments among the mountains. Accordingly the rifts and gullies were spanned by timber trestles. But the woodwork was perishable, and there was always the risk of fire demolishing the structure and precipitating disaster to a passing train. The obvious remedy was to replace the wood by metal, but the expense was a deterrent factor.