They expected, by having relays of horses once in twelve miles, to attain for the passenger cars a speed of nine miles an hour. The track was to be double, with a flat rail, two inches wide and three eighths of an inch thick, fastened by iron pins into stone sleepers or blocks, about six feet in length and a foot square, resting upon a foundation wall two feet and a half in depth. In the actual building of the road the mode of construction was somewhat changed- Experience had shown that when the rails were fastened to stone sleepers the road was too rigid, and it was better to lay them upon a somewhat yielding wooden foundation.

The road was at first constructed only as far as Worcester. Subsequently another corporation was formed, known as the Western Railroad Company, who built a road from Worcester to Springfield, and finally to Albany, though it did not reach the latter city until 1842.

In the fifteen years which had intervened between the survey and the opening of the road, the population of the State had largely increased. The northern portion, disappointed by the failure of the canal project, which was to have opened to it communication with Boston and the West, had not forgotten the promised tunnel, and was feeling the need of it more than ever. The railroad through Springfield and Pittsfield Was built with steep grades, which rendered it a costly route for the transportation of freight. Accordingly, there arose a call for a road along the central or northern portion of the State, and with more feasible grades, which were to be secured by going through the mountain on the west, instead of over it. It is said that when Loammi Baldwin, the distinguished engineer who completed the first surveys for the projected canal, was carrying on his exploration of the valley of the Deerfield, he exclaimed with fervid enthusiasm, “It seems as if the finger of Providence had pointed out this route from the East to the West!” A somewhat less enthusiastic by-stander replied, “It’s a great pity the same finger wasn’t thrust through the mountain.”

The attempt was now to be made to open a passage through this opposing barrier. It was a formidable undertaking. The distance from one side of the mountain to the other, where the Deerfield River strikes against it and is sharply deflected by it, is nearly five miles, and the rock of which the mountain is composed is a tough mica-slate. In 1845, three years after the completion of the Boston and Albany railway, a road had been opened from Boston to Fitchburg; and soon afterwards another was begun, extending from the latter place to the Connecticut River at Greenfield. Finally, in 1818, the Troy and Greenfield Railroad Company, with a capital of $3,500,000, was incorporated, and authorized to build a road from Greenfield through the Deerfield and Hoosac valleys, to connect with a road from the boundary of Vermont to the city of Troy. The length of the road, including the tunnel, was forty miles.

But although the road was desirable, capitalists were slow to engage in its construction. The mountain was a formidable object to attack. Six years passed by, and little money had come into the treasury of the company, and there had been little progress with the road. Surveys for the tunnel were undertaken in 1850, and on the first of January of the following year the directors voted to break ground at once. A few months later they decided to expend a sum not to exceed $25,000 in experiments upon the east side of the mountain, at or near the mouth of the proposed tunnel. The estimated cost of the work was now a little less than $2,000,000, or about double what it was twenty years before, when the canal project was under consideration.