Industry was prosperous. The Grand Trunk Railway had used time consuming ferries to transport goods across the river and a change was necessary. The St. Clair Tunnel Company opened the first underwater, cross border tunnel in 1891, linking Sarnia, Ontario to Port Huron, Michigan.
The tunnel was twenty feet high, as tall as a two story building, lined with cast iron segments and dug out by hand, using compressed air to prevent cave-ins. Steam engines were replaced by electrical engines and an electrical connection was created along the top of the tunnel to generate electricity for the trains going through. Walter Hall developed fuses to prevent shorting out of the electricity, proving the edict that necessity is the mother of invention.
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Page 13: The St. Clair Tunnel
Length: 13 minutes