Hey look, it's what's under 4th and Bryant right now.

I read that book when I was little, and man, was five-year-old me pissed off by the ending. I hadn't thought of it in years but I wandered through the SF Railway Museum a few weeks ago and they had a copy of it for sale, which brought all the childhood "WTF" flooding back.

Spoiler alert: after doing the John Henry thing, in a robot-on-robot kind of way, the fellow and his shovel dig a basement but forget to dig a ramp, so they can't get out. So what do they do? Do they dig a ramp, then fill it back in?

No.

They cut off the anthropomorphic shovel's legs and turn it into a furnace. Human Boss gets to stick around as the building's new janitor. Presumably they lower him a ladder at some point.

I mean really, W the F.

Anyway, as you can see above, the Central Subway crew did not make this mistake. No furnaces will be harmed. I'm not sure if they plan a rescue op for the tunnel boring machines, though, or if they're gonna do a Mars Rover on them.

Previously.