Long Island Railway Tunnel
The original Hawkesbury River railway bridge was built in the 1880s by the Union Bridge Co. of Pennsylvania, USA. The bridge had seven spans each weighting 1,000 tonnes and extending to a length of 1,265m. As well as steelwork, 10 million bricks, 10,000 bags of cement, 110 tonnes of blasting powder and 10 tonnes of dynamite were used to construct the bridge and its approaches. This was almost as expensive and difficult a task as building the bridge itself. It involved cutting numerous tunnels, including a tunnel through the end of Long Island.By the 1930s, the piers of the bridge had decayed to such a degree that trains using the bridge were reduced to a crawl as a safety measure, therefore it was decided to build a replacement bridge alongside it. The new bridge, which was of a similar design, came into service in 1946 at which time the older bridge was dismantled. The piers of the original bridge remain alongside the replacement bridge. A new tunnel had to cut through the end of Long Island parallel to the original tunnel. The original tunnel was closed and is now used for storage by State Rail.
