Inch-by-lnch

"You've heard of the Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines," said Bob Amberger, a veteran construction boss on some of the world's biggest oil and gas lines. "Well, this one's the Inch-by-lnch."

Foreman Amberger was talking about the $82 million Trans Mountain Pipe Line now being driven through the Rocky Mountains to carry Alberta oil to the Pacific Coast. For 700 miles, from Edmonton west to Vancouver, the pipeline will follow the famed Yellowhead Pass route through the mountains, where the Canadian National Railways line was built 40 years ago, at a cost of millions of dollars and hundreds of lives. The C.N.R. still ranks as one of the great construction achievements in the development of Canada. The building of the Inch-by-lnch pipeline--driving a new road through the mountains, then blasting a 5-ft.-deep trench along the slopes, through swamps and under cascading rivers--may well rival the railroad as an engineering feat.

The new assault on the Rockies was in full swing last week. In the van marched a squad of bushwhackers, armed with double-bitted axes, to clear a 50-ft. right-of-way. Behind them came bulldozers rooting out stumps and blasting crews cutting passes through the rocks for a new heavy-duty highway.

The pipeline ditching crews moved into position as soon as the road was ready. Engineers plotted the course for them, along mountain ledges, through deep swamps, or into the beds of wild mountain rivers as much as half a mile wide. In such terrain the automatic ditching machines used on other pipeline projects were practically useless. It took blasting powder to cut through the rocks, steam shovels to ladle away the quicksands of the swamps, and three-ton concrete clamps to hold the pipe in place in the river currents.

Hydraulic presses bent the lengths of 27-in. steel pipe to fit every bump, dip, peak and ravine along the snaking route. Winches and big tractors swung the 30-ft. sections into position, and welders sealed the joints. The outer covering was finally tested with the pipeliners' "conscience": a machine that uses a 10,000-volt electrical charge, and registers a short circuit at any spot where the covering is too thin. Then bulldozers filled in the trench, leaving only a great scar winding across the forest and the mountains.

A vital artery for the booming Canadian West, the oil line is to be finished early in 1954. At capacity 200,000 barrels a day, worth $164 million a year, will surge through the Inch-by-lnch.

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