My daughters went camping with my sister for a week and my
wife Rebecca suggested that I take her out and show her some of the railroad
tunnels that I’m always running off to look at. While I really wanted to work on the
yard and clean out the garage, she finally beat me down and I gave in. Since I had taken her to most of the
interesting places around
We started out Saturday morning at
A friend hooked me up with a place to park and by 9a Saturday, we were out in nature. I don’t know the tunnel names, or even which way to number them, so in the order we reached them, here are some pictures.
Looking through the first tunnel at the second tunnel.
Rebecca in front of the second tunnel.
Rebecca in front of the third tunnel.
Zooming through the third tunnel, the fourth tunnel, and the fifth tunnel.
Looking through the fourth tunnel.
Looking back at the fifth tunnel.
And from a previous
After we finished exploring
The tunnel at Morley is easily viewed from the highway bridge.
There is a tunnel at Holton on the north leg of the wye going up Clear Fork; here is how it looked last summer.
The are two tunnels along Hickory Creek south of Morley. Hickory #1. Hickory #2.
And there is a tunnel at Vasper that comes out underneath the Elk Valley NS branch. The NS is not visible in this 07 summer shot, but trust me; it’s in the trees just above the tunnel.
Now, to the real reason for piddling around Vasper. If you’ve ever wondered about whether or not the big railroad cut through Indian Gap ( I-75 just south of Caryville) had been a tunnel at one time, the answer is no. Sort of… The cut actually bypasses a tunnel that is still there between the tracks and the interstate. My friend Brent gave me directions on how to find this tunnel and it was still hard. It’s much longer than it would seem and is way back in the bushes.
Rebecca really enjoyed exploring the Indian Gap Tunnel.
It had interesting keystones on the North and South portals.
It was mid-afternoon at this point, but on a beautiful but scorching hot June day, we still had plenty of time to get to Nemo. What we didn’t count on was thundershowers moving in. By the time we got there, the rain was down to a drizzle, the temperature had dropped from 95° to 78°, and we still had a couple of hours before dusk. Not the best picture taking weather, but we saw five trains in less than two hours, checked out two abandoned tunnels (CNO&TP 23 & 24), in general had a good time.
Rebecca by south end of Tunnel 24 at Nemo.
It was still raining when this train approached Tunnel 24.
CNO&TP Tunnel 24 is long, sweeping, and very dark in the middle. Rebecca was grateful for my halogen flashlight.
CNO&TP Tunnel 23 goes up along the
Found this little critter on the trail between the tunnel and the old bridge.
Look closely at the red areas in this photo taken from the portal of the old Tunnel 23. That is a train passing by in the drizzle-did I mention that there was also steam (fog) from the cool rain hitting the hot ballast?
We saw our last train of the day at Tunnel 22; at least it had about quit raining.
It’s been a good day, let’s go eat a steak.
Sometime before bed on Saturday night, Sunday’s plans totally changed. Something about sleeping in at the hotel and then going to a huge flea market.
By noon, we were back looking at important stuff. I wanted to show Rebecca Oakdale and there was a train sitting in the yard.
As I was turning the van around, this train exited Tunnel 25 and slowed to a stop.
We went up on the bridge to survey the area.
If I had been five minutes quicker, I could have caught the Conrail engine coming out of the tunnel.
Now for the real fun. We headed back to Nemo. Rebecca had agreed to hang out by Tunnel 24 while I hiked back to the old Bridge 89, waded the river, and explored CNO&TP Tunnel 22. The location falls into the category of “you can’t get there from here”, and it doesn’t really matter where “here” is. Here is a map showing the Nemo Tunnel locations.
It was a beautiful day and I figured Rebecca would have plenty of trains to watch. Well, it was a beautiful day at least.
It took me close to a hour to make my way to CNO&TP Tunnel 22.
Less than 100 feet from the south portal, the tunnel doesn’t exist.
But, cut the distance in half and there it is.
It was still in excellent shape, dry, clean, and no trash.
I decided to follow a game trail on the old ROW to see how hard it would be to reach the north portal of the current Tunnel 22.
There were still some old rails.
There was a small concrete structure.
I also ran into a decent sized rat snake.
While I was taking pictures of the snake, I heard train hit
the horn for Tunnel 22. After a hour
and a half, the first train has finally come through, though it sounded pretty
short. To jump ahead, when I got
back to the van, Rebecca commented on the unusual train that had come through
while I was gone, one locomotive, one passenger car, and a caboose.
“Interesting” I said.
“I got it on tape,” she said. Later, at home, I was paying homage to
www.jreb.org and I notice a thread in the forum describing what sounded like
the same train. I checked out the tape
Rebecca made and there it was ; J. Young (the forum poster) had taken the
train from
Anyway, I finally made my way around to Tunnel 22 and CW Tower. Spent 30 minutes hoping for some traffic, but everything was red and stayed that way.
And between the sun and the shadows, I only got a half decent shot of the tunnel.
It was 5p and I had over a hour’s worth of hiking, sweating wading, drying, hiking, and sweating to look forward to; so I headed back. One noteworthy thing on the return trip. Just as I’m about to hike through the old Tunnel 24, only the second train in three hours comes through. It’s as if NS was out to get me. Stack’em up and run’em through in the rain on Saturday, but let the sun come out on Sunday and the traffic drys up.
As we are packing up to leave, we do get one last train. Without even realizing it, I picked up the reflection in the puddle.
Links to other
Railroad Tunnel pictures