Big Paving Plan Near Acamac Scene of Much Activity - 1934
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Latest Type of Equipment Being Employes in Laying Hard Surface on Westfield Road; Hillside Transformed
The wooded hill of the Clark property on the bend on the Westfield highway between Acamac and Ketepec, a thing of beauty a few days ago, is now a roaring, grinding, chugging scene of industry. Men scattered over its denuded declivily like ants. Great clouds of smoke belch forth and the birds give it a wide berth.
Its the roadmaking contractor's setup for the 12-mile instalment of permanent paving between Manchesters Corner, Manawngonish Road, and the Nerepis Bridge. The plant is that of the Dufferin Paving Co., Ltd., Toronto, a firm that has laid hundreds of miles on Ontario's best highways. 
The area covered amounts to acres. Starting on the side of the road near where the late Peter Clinch had his summer place - where the Toronto firm has established s little office building - to a quarry a thousand feet up the hill, the paraphernalia represents a vast outlay of money and a gigantic movement of freight from Upper Canada.
The Process
Here in the midst of a virgin forest modern machinery is cracking up chunks of rock, sending it down an endless belt to crushers, sifters, sorters, until lt brings up in cooking pot with hot asphalt and sand, carried off in speedy trucks and plastered over the highway.It is one continuous movement. Not a motion is lost. As fast as a large gasoline shovel on top of the hill can sort out pieces of rock dynamited loose from the shoulders of stone, a little railway conveys it to a grinder a hundred feet downhill.
The tiny railway dump-cars deposit their loads into a 12-foot square hopper under which a powerful crushing machine breaks the rock into suitable sizes. The crusher is engined by a four-cylinder motor of great power. After being crushed the rock drops to a large belt conveyor.
From Boulder to Pavement
While the rock has been passed along by these machines and reaches a large revolving drum, it automatically sorts itself into several sizes of material - clean, clear, grey stone delivered mechanically into piles like hard mixtures in a candy factory.
It is only a matter of minutes from the time an electrically detonated blast releases sections of rock on the hilltop until it becomes first-class road-making ingredients to be added to cleanly-sifted sand and boiled together with oodles of asphalt hauled to the siding in tank-cars.You can hardly hear your own ears, as the old saying goes! Each unit of the plant is powered with a sturdy four-cyclinder engine chugging away for dear life. The air compressor is the noisest of them all and by long lines of iron piping sends air-power to the drills at the quarry. The drills are a chorus in themselves.The unit that mixes and heats up the batches of asphalted roadway is interesting. Several "cooks" attend this final stage of the manufacturing. The formula is as exacting as the recipe for a cake.
Like Mixing a Cake
So much crushed stone of this size, so much of that size. Then the correct measure of sand. Add to which the requisite "gubbles" of asphaltum. Steaming like an old fashioned kitchen range over a huge wheeled boiler, stoked with soft coal, this mixer empties its batches into dump trucks and away the trucks go with their steaming loads after being weighed.They say ten miles is the limit for trucking this warm material. Farther than that it would probably cool and be unsuitable for good road-making. So the trucks must lose no time. The process is fascinating. Its progressive, modern to the last notch.Already Clarke's Hill looks as if it had been a centre of industry for years. Grass has disappeared and reddish earth is everywhere. Trees have mysteriously vanished. Massive boulders that nobody ever saw before have been brought to view. A new siding has been built alongside the main C.P.R. line and several tank cars of asphalt rest on it - piped with steam to keep lt running freely.
Modern Smithy
Aproned blacksmiths have a forge shed all to themselves. They keep steel drills sharpened. Not an old-time forge with ringing anvils and clanging hammers but a quiet sort of place where the tools are heated, then shoved into a powerful shaping machine and stood afterwards into a barrel of oil for tempering. Speed and efliciency.Then of course there's the engineer's and bosses' shacks, weighing platform to check in the materials and check them out again. Tool sheds with a nightly turn-in of implements, power-rollers for finishing off the roadway, a fleet of 10 trucks from Toronto, neatly plated in brass with their firm's name. Another but promiscuous fleet of local trucks. But nary a horse. It's no horse's job.Across the tracks the bunkhouses are set up. Many of the workers live at a great distance, others are special workmen who must stay on the job with the watchman. Food will be served soon.
Water From a Lake
An the water supply. That is pumped from a lake nearby. It is stored into a large stave cistern in the centre of the plant, an improvised tank banded about with steel rods, turnbuckled.It is an interesting sight, but no place for curious sightseers. They're too busy there. Furthermore, one might get hurt.
The Fairville-Westfield stretch is the first of the provincial government's several contracts to be commenced.N. M. Brisson, representing the Dufferin Paving Co., stated today the plant on the local job has a capacity for laying 500 tons daily, but until the first couple of miles is laid and specifications finally checked the plant will hardly get into its full swing.
No Time Lost
Location of the equipment between Acamac and Ketepec, Mr. Brisson said, was to reduce haulage distances towards both terminals of the job. At present his firm was engaged on several large contracts in Upper Canada of various types of road construction, grading, asphalt and concrete work. It was not possible yet to arrive at any estimate of the time it might take to finish the 12 mile stretch towards Westfield
All the various processes on this scene must he closely coordinated. No time must lapse in supplying each successive piece of machinery with its "fodder." Trucks must run on schedule, and in case of a breakdown to any part of the plant, competent mechanics are on hand to make immediate repairs. In fact there is a large truck - very like a circus ticket wagon - known to the men., as the stores truck, which carries spare parts for any normal breakdown.