The Milwaukee Road drilled a tunnel into Idaho that was 23 feet high, 16 feet wide, and 1.7 miles long, a damp, dark, dirty project that began after approaches were prepared in 1906, a faltering start came in 1907, and work began in earnest in 1908. East and west crews worked around the clock in wet, miserable conditions and at their best could advance 20 feet a day. A company official recalled that men were hard to keep because the work was disagreeable and hard, and that large veins of water were encountered and conditions were at times almost unbearable. It took 750 men, including 400 tunneling inside, 200 outside removing dirt and rock, and 150 running the dig’s power plant yards, two and a half years to complete the tunnel. A steam-driven electric power plant set up four miles away in Taft, Montana, powered both ends of the dig, and compressed air provided safe, smokeless power to giant steam shovels that loaded blasted rock into electric rail cars for removal.