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General Electric – Conquest of the Cascades

6:01 pm

An evening pause: According to this website, this documentary was “made by General Electric between 1928 and 1929 to commemorate the completion of this monumental [8-mile-long] tunnel which took 1800 workers and three years to construct.”

Three years! Today that’s how long it would take just to get the environmental assessment written and approved.

Hat tip Blair Ivey.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

10 comments

  • Jay
    January 30, 2026 at 6:44 pm

    I remember some of this stuff. They got rid of the electrified locomotives in the 1950’s and they now use high powered fans to blow out the diesel exhaust. Amtrak still uses the tunnel from Seattle to Spokane on the “Empire Builder”.
    The original plan was to have it as an electrified line from Seattle all the way to western Montana, but that never happened.

    Three years for an environmental assessment in Washington State? More like 20 years for something like this. It took them over ten years to put the first track down for the light rail from King and Snohomish Counties (Seattle to Microso…err…Redmond). Sound Transit now goes down to SeaTac Airpot, but it has been a bloody battle to get that far. One of my co-workers was an electrical engineer for Sound Transit, so I have heard the horror stories.

  • Jeff Wright
    January 30, 2026 at 7:16 pm

    This should be taken out of local government hands.
    Far too many Greens getting in the way.

  • Blair Ivey
    January 31, 2026 at 5:36 am

    This tunnel replaced a 2-mile long bore further up the mountain. The approaching grade, retaining the original bridges, has been turned into a trail, and you can walk through the tunnel. You will want a couple of good flashlights (per person), and some rain gear. The Cascades are wet, inside, and out.

    Curious that Greens want to improve ‘the masses’ quality-of-life, by preventing the very things that would, in fact, improve people’s lives.

  • Jeff Wright
    January 31, 2026 at 6:10 am

    True. Just the title “CONQUEST of the Cascades” is enough to trigger Greens.

    Progress wasn’t a dirty word back then.

  • Dave in Denver
    January 31, 2026 at 9:54 am

    Another motivation for the tunnel was the Wellington avalanche, 1910. Deadliest avalanche in US history. Amazing what they did 100 years ago. Tunnels, electrified trains, etc.

  • Andi
    January 31, 2026 at 12:00 pm

    And amazing that they were able to bore the tunnel in sections, and they all connected up cleanly.
    Loved the urban scene with all those vintage cars (which weren’t at the time)!

  • wayne
    January 31, 2026 at 12:38 pm

    Blair–
    Good find!
    (Excellent recent Posts at your Blog, btw. I do get your notifications; I just don’t like to sign-in all the time.)

    Dave in Denver–
    -I was not aware of that! Thanks.

    Wellington Train Avalanche Disaster 1910
    “Visiting the Remains of the Snowshed & the old Tunnel”
    Mobile Instinct (December 2020)
    https://youtu.be/y0KMNFpTs7g
    (29:13)

  • Dick Eagleson
    January 31, 2026 at 12:58 pm

    A somewhat more vintage version of the sort of short films that we used to be shown frequently in grade school when I was a boy. Different times.

  • Jeff Wright
    January 31, 2026 at 2:59 pm

    And how–

    There is a new drilling technology from Petra, which uses flames to spall off rock. That could be useful for Boring Co.

  • Dick Eagleson
    February 1, 2026 at 1:08 am

    Jeff Wright,

    Using flames to spall off rock is not exactly a new drilling technique. Natural gas-fired “jet piercers” have been in use for decades to drill holes in taconite deposits for insertion of blasting charges. Taconite is quite a hard rock (6 on the Mohs scale) and quickly wears out even diamond drills or any other type of solid-contact drill bit. I believe a bit of water is also pumped in under pressure to flash into steam, enhance the spalling and flush the chips back up the borehole.

    Perhaps Petra has worked up some sort of new wrinkle, but the basic idea – and real-world implementation – goes back to the 1960s.

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