Here we are near Clinchco in Dickenson County, looking toward Elkhorn City (we’re about 16 miles now from that storied site). This is Sykes Mill tunnel, 752′ long, through a rock spur that runs down to the Clinch McClure River. This is convenient tunnel to photograph, since it’s practically sitting in your lap when you pull off 63 onto a side road that crossed the tracks. Not like Squirrel Camp, and I’ll tell you why later (it’s #15).
And thank you to Rodney Adkins, who corrected the error on the name of the river. He also added that this tunnel is near Clinchco.
And thanks to Jeff Brouws for catching my error on the miles from EC. Sykes is actually 16.78 miles…I had 11. Lost in the ozone again…
I originally had Clinchport as the locator…Jeff caught that. See above.
This is the longest tunnel on the old CC&O. That little white dot in the lower middle of the tunnel is 7,854′ away. The other portal is actually refurbished, but I like this portal. It resembles the original facing that the Southern used on some of its tunnels…they’re usually dated about 1908 or so. Since this is another line, it may be more recent. This tunnel is just south of Trammel in Dickenson County, approximately 33 miles south of Elkhorn City. There is another Sandy Ridge tunnel, on the N&S, just 6+ miles to the northeast of this one. It also goes from Dickenson into Russell County.
Between Burdine and Elkhorn City KY beside Highway 197 stand these monuments to a rail line long gone. They look freakishly like a pop art version of Stonehenge. The one on the left is not leaning precariously, that’s lens distortion. These are located at approximately 37.229696, -82.524684. The reason they line up like this is that the railroad crossed this highway at a sharp angle, but the piers had to allow for the roadway. This bridge was intact in 1996, but gone in 2000. It appears to have originally connected a mine area (later a strip mine) some miles to the north with an interchange near Burdine. The earliest image Google Earth has of this area was taken in 1995 (enable “historical imagery”). You can clearly see where this line went.
16 miles south of Elkhorn City, 1,359′ from portal to portal. The refurb date has eroded away on both sides. We’re just south of Goff Tunnel, very near what turned out to be the now-lost town of Steinman. We had accessed the tunnel down a semi-private one-lane road, which went past a couple of houses. We pulled up to the railroad (CSX has access rights to the property, as we found out), got out and took some pix. On our way out, we saw a stern looking man watching us from the side of the road, near one of the houses. Judging this to be the property owner, we slowly stopped and Lee jumped out of the car with the topo map and began to explain what we were doing and pointing to the tunnel on the map. The man, surprisingly, looked relieved. “I thought y’all were hunting ginseng!”, he said. After that, things went swimmingly, with the man telling Lee that his mom (the man’s, not Lee’s), who lived right next door, was a amateur historian of the area. They proceeded on to the other house (I stayed in the car…this was Lee’s show and I wasn’t hearing any tunnel chatter) and had a ten-minute or so talk with the woman. That’s how we came to know about Steinman and the cable car system that brought coal from across the valley to be dumped into a tipple there at the town and later dumped into coal trains heading south to feed the mighty industries of the blah blah blah. On to Sykes Mill Tunnel.
Well, there we were, hiking along a little-used line that runs from Appalachia to the strip mines above St. Charles. We’d parked at the location where a small town called Delvale once stood and started walking west to check out the four trestles we’d spotted along a two-mile or so stretch. These trestles are often dated with plates from the manufacturer, American Bridge Company. We were probably a mile or so from Delvale when Lee spotted this: two medium-size grist stones embedded into a concrete pedestal. There are no markings we could see on the pedestal. Lee’s foot is resting on the remains of a foundation, perhaps of the mill, but this location is, say, 50′ above the Powell river and there are no streams around…and no roads, either. And why were they mounted up like this? Enquiring minds want to know. In case you’re interested (yeah, right), this location is 36 48′ 40.2″ N 82 57′ 32.3″ W, more or less. (later: Lee, who has the topo for this area, happened to mention that “Mill Creek” runs right down by this location. Well, that makes sense.)
This tunnel, on a CSX line from a large strip mine in Myra KY, is in Virgie KY. I backed off to show the chimney above the tunnel. The tunnel itself has been sprayed with quick-setting concrete and has rock bolt reinforcements all along its length. The line goes from here to the big rail yard at Shelbiana. Once, the line went south of Myra, but it’s just empty railbed now. There were plenty of short trestles on this line…every blessed one of them made by American Bridge Company in 1911. The company is still in business…and so are the trestles on the active line. The trestles on the dead line that don’t go over the 2-lane highway have been removed, but the locals say that, even though the railroad has to carry insurance on the extant trestles, they’re just too expensive to move, since they’d have to somehow reroute the traffic when the crane comes in to haul out these hunks of tonnage.
There are three tunnels on the Norfolk and Southern line between St. Paul northwestward to Coeburn. They’re all old tunnels and faced and dated at time of construction. This is Big Bull tunnel, centered at 36.917577, -82.359635. It’s about 1,500′ long. Date’s 1904. I particularly like how these tunnels were finished up. Nice stonework.
Non-continuous steel rails were often dated when forged or extruded or whatever the hell they were. The date isn’t stamped into the rail, but is a bas relief, like this one on a siding rail between the old Holston Glass and Holston Distributing buildings in Kingsport. The date is 1920. Trust me.
In Dante yard, in the old area around the turntable, the track was more recent. 1927, t’be exact.
This is near to the earliest we’ve seen. The Kingsport track, assuming it was laid down within a year or so after it was forged/extruded/whatever, dates to near the time that the city was re-chartered in 1917. I stand there and wonder what the area looked like then. Pretty thin on the ground, I’ll bet.
This is Goff Tunnel, 784′ long and 15.59 miles from Elkhorn City, in Dickenson County. I’m correcting my notation of Red Ridge as #9…it’s #10 as we move toward Tennessee.
We were up in Dickenson County on Sunday tracking down two tunnels I’d missed in our last sweep and we happened to turn onto Stratton Creek Road and found these two locomotives, CSX 105 and 439, unlocked and unguarded. Both were heavily damaged. I clambered up into 105 (all the usual steps were stripped away) and carefully walked to the engineer’s control room and took a couple of pictures (and nothing else). The second seat’s windshield was blown inward, but that could have been done by vandals. I did a little research later and found that 105 had been the lead engine in a derailment, but where I don’t know. I couldn’t find anything about 439.This is the front of 439.This is the engineer’s control area…not badly damaged at all.
But whatever happened to these two engines must have been scary to be in.
Just for fun, we stopped at the old Dante Yard to check out the locomotive turntable that used to operate there.
This is it. It’s a large circle and the interior part turns on a track. The track in the area (which is no longer used) is dated 1927. This whole complex must have been a happening place back in the day. We’re going to do some investigating of other rail operations in this area, including numerous narrow-gauge lines that serviced both the coal mines and the timber industry. Sounds like fun to me.
This is Hewitt Tunnel, about 13.6 miles from Elkhorn City. This was the most difficult tunnel for us to reach, since we opted not to wade the McClure River (it would have been easier to do that…the river’s not really deep in that area), but to drive in on a road I’d spotted on Google Earth. The gravel road was about a mile downhill with drainage berms cut across the road a regular intervals. I got my Honda Civic over them with minimal scraping going down, but coming back was a white knuckler as the car spun in the gravel and failed to gain traction. With my buddy’s pushing and the little car’s gutsy (!) front wheel drive, we managed to get the job done, but my hands were shaking from adrenaline when we got back to the main road. I also found out later that all that spinning and stuff had basically destroyed my tires. It was time for new rubber, anyway.
This is McClure Tunnel, the 7th tunnel south from Elkhorn City…11.77 miles, to be exact, and 331′ long. Slightly curved, as you can see. The next tunnel is Hewitt.
This is Russell Tunnel, seen from the south side, with the impressive bluff above it. It’s 11.52 miles (at the other portal) from Elkhorn City. The tunnel is 448′ long and was refaced in 1921. We met an older man who was parked there on the road on the right. He said he just came up there to watch the trains go by. He’d worked on the railroad when he was younger. We wished him well and good train spotting. We’re still in Dickenson County, a little away now from Haysi. Next up: McClure Tunnel on the McClure River.
1) My hiking buddy and I are pretty practiced at slogging along railroad lines chasing down tunnels (well, finding them….after all, tunnels aren’t in the habit of moving around a lot). We’re skirting legality, too. Railroad companies are nervous lately, for good reason, I suppose, since they’re a critical infrastructure and there are pockets of really crazy people lurking out there. Anyway, all CSX property is posted. We’re careful, we never touch or move anything, and we get the hell out of the way of trains.
2) Speaking of which (trains, in case you lost track…lost track, get it…), trains are crazy heavy, run pretty darn fast most of the time, and on either side can extend around 12″ from the end of the ties, or sleepers. Give them plenty of room. The wheels squeal and a wheel with a flat place is noisy. The ground moves when the locomotives come by. They also include engineers, who know that if they see something ahead on the tracks, there isn’t even a teeny chance they’ll be able to stop that train quickly. Don’t let a train surprise you. They blow their horns often, though, and you can hear a train coming a quarter of a mile away, unless you’re on the opposite side of a bend (nervous, nervous).
There are plenty of rails-to-trails you can hike or bike…The Creeper in Abingdon or Damascus, the stretch of old L&N line that goes from Appalachia to Big Stone Gap (rails still there), Guest River Gorge Trail (fun going down…a beast coming back up), and various remnants of the old ET& WNC line from Johnson City to Cranberry NC, where the iron mines are that furnished the metal that was forged into the big guns of the Confederacy, way back when. The ore is magnetic, too. Wonder if you stood near one of those cannon with a compass, it would point gun?
I would never suggest that you go running the tracks taking pix. Anyway, in this area, we’re just about finished doing just that. Get your own project <grin>.
Built into the remnants of an ancient sea floor, this is Hills Mills Tunnel in Dickenson County. It’s 448′ long and was faced up in 1920. However, as you can see, the years haven’t been kind to the right side of the facing. Note the old power line draped over the portal. Most all these tunnels once had working lights in them, probably for work crews. We’re now 9.05 miles from Elkhorn City, moving south. Next up, Russell Tunnel.
Here we are at Skaggs Hole (or just Skaggs or Skeggs) Tunnel, all 519′ of it. This one’s near Bartlick in Dickenson County. It was faced up in 1931. It’s centered at 37.256862, -82.327199. A trestle comes into the tunnel over the Russell Fork River…we’re about 7 miles, trackwise, from Elkhorn City. It was a long side road drive to get access to this one. We’d parked our car and were standing at the track kind of looking down the line when a motorcycle came up. Lee flagged the guy down and asked him about the tunnel. The guy knew where the tunnel was and gave us great directions. He worked in Kingsport, it turned out, but he lived in Bartlick, with his new bride. Nice guy.
The other portal of Skaggs Tunnel. Stand here, turn around, and you’ll be looking down the track as the old Clinchfield rolled south. We’ll be rolling south, also, as we head on down to Hills Mills and Russell Tunnels. Did I mention how cool, temperature-wise, these tunnels are on a hot day? And they’re bloody freezing in winter…literally freezing. And Skaggs Hole, by the way, is a feature in the river near the tunnel’s Elkhorn City portal.
This is the Elkhorn City portal of the Stateline Tunnel, which crosses under the Kentucky-Virginia State Line at The Breaks Interstate Park. It’s 1,523 feet long and that’s a locomotive light there in the tunnel. It was a pusher locomotive for a train that had just passed by.
Here’s the surprise. A little over halfway through the tunnel, we found this: a side portal opening out into The Breaks. The picture doesn’t show it, but it has a definite cut shape. I’ve read that it was opened as the result of a rock fault.
This is the first tunnel from Elkhorn City. It’s near the entrance to The Breaks Interstate Park. This is Pool Point Tunnel, 642′ long. It’s just a short hike down from State Route 80 out of Elkhorn City.
And here is the trestle over the Russell Fork River at the other end of the Pool Point Tunnel. The river forms a pool just about 50′ (or so) below this trestle. It’s really pretty here. Going across this trestle and on down the track for about a mile we’ll hit State Line Tunnel… and find a surprise.
This is it. It’s a large circle and the interior part turns on a track. The track in the area (which is no longer used) is dated 1927. This whole complex must have been a happening place back in the day. We’re going to do some investigating of other rail operations in this area, including numerous narrow-gauge lines that serviced both the coal mines and the timber industry. Sounds like fun to me.
Blogging the Railroad Tunnels 