A general catalog of pictures of tunnels and train-related items in Southwest Virginia, Kentucky and East Tennessee. The main focus is on the original Clinchfield line from Elkhorn City KY to the Tennessee/North Carolina state line, but we’ve got our eyes on that remarkable 6-tunnel looped line near Little Switzerland NC.
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.
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.
I want to make a few comments:
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>.
Next tunnel coming up: Russell.
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.
Blogging the Railroad Tunnels 