provisions for a tunnel through Hoosac Mountain. The first chief engineer of the tunnel project was A.F. Edwards. In 1854, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provided $2,000,000 in credit to Edward Wellman Serrell and Company, which began work in 1855. In 1856, Herman Haupt took over as chief engineer. The Western Railroad, led by Chester W. Chapin, which ran a southern route through Springfield and Pittsfield, opposed the Hoosac Tunnel and its northern route through the state. It successfully lobbied to block state funding of the tunnel in 1861, which bankrupted Haupt and temporarily stopped the project. Haupt had excavated , or about a fifth of the distance, at that point. He left and became a Union Army railroad engineer and general in the American Civil War. Completion In 1862, the Troy and Greenfield Railroad defaulted on its loan from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which foreclosed on the mortgage and took control of the railroad, including the tunnel project. The state sent engineer Charles Storrow to Europe to study modern tunneling techniques, including the use of nitroglycerin and compressed air. In 1863 the state, with Alvah Crocker now superintendent of railroads, restarted the project and made Thomas Doane the chief engineer. In 1868, the Massachusetts state legislature appropriated $5 million to complete the project. Canadian engineer Walter Shanly (sometimes spelled Shanley) and his brother Francis took over the project from the state and remained through the completion of the tunnel boring. Among the consulting engineers at the time was Benjamin Henry Latrobe II, a noted civil engineer who was serving as the chief engineer of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The final chief engineer was Bernard N. Farren, who took over on November 19, 1874, and on Thanksgiving Day that year, the last of rock was removed beneath the town of North Adams. Farren completed the work, including enlarging sections of the tunnel, reinforcing weak areas with arching, completing drainage systems and completing the east tunnel facade. The first train passed through the tunnel on February 9, 1875. Technology The tunnel construction project required excavation of of rock. On March 16, 1853, "Wilson's Patented Stone-Cutting Machine" (a tunnel boring machine) was used; it failed after excavating of rock. Tunnel builders resorted to hand digging, and later used the Burleigh Drilling-machine, one of the first pneumatic drills. Construction also featured the first large-scale commercial use of nitroglycerin and electric blasting caps and