This is the last tunnel in Tennessee as the CSX heads east to North Carolina. This is Indian Ridge tunnel, in Johnson City. It’s 1.023′ long and centers at 36.345467, -82.424185. This is looking westerly.
It was a sunny day, so the ballast and the ties (or “sleepers”, as they call them in the UK) overexposed a bit. Notice that the ties are concrete. And a fair number of them were badly cracked.
It was hard to get to this tunnel. We had to park about a half-mile away and carefully walk down the side of a fairly busy road that had no generous shoulders. Then we had to scramble (there’s a lot of scrambling when it comes to getting to tunnels and bridges) down to the cut. The date is 1912 on the facing. Squint hard, you can see it.
Blogging the Railroad Tunnels 
I have a photo of this tunnel my great grandfather made in 1914 with a large format bellows camera. you can see it @tonyblackstudio on instagram.
Really interesting picture. When you figure in the relatively crude lenses then, combined with a slow, grainy film (maybe ASA 10)(ISO 10), your granddad did a fine job!
There are 4 graves above this tunnel from a premature blast that killed the men.
Sometimes I think every tunnel on this line has one or more graves near it. It was a dangerous business, this early railroading.