Abandoned Rathole Tunnels

[nsgelocos]

Next time i'm down at #22, i'll try to get a picture of it for you, Butch.

[nsgelocos]

Ok, gotz me a little bit of news. After talking to my Uncle Mark. I found out there's a tunnel north of Oneida. I believe that 13 is not 13 and 14 is not 14 near Helenwood. The one north of Oneida is probably 13 and the one in Helenwood is probably 14. The Tunnel with the creek running through it is just a culvert. This is what my uncle said. I could be wrong, I hope to go up there and get pictures of it.

[butch]

Early Cincinnati Southern documentation shows tunnels 13 & 14 less than .5 mile apart south of Helenwood.  T 14 is immediately followed by bridge 80.  If you have seen the tunnels, the old bridge supports, and the re-route of the creek, this all fits.  Maybe your uncle is refering to the tunnel just out of Oneida that was daylighted in the early 70s shortly after the Southern took over the Tennessee Railroad (or Railway-I'm not sure on the name)
-Butch

[nsgelocos]

Well, looking at 14, it doesn't seem possible that a 5' gauge line could fit into it. My other uncle  has seen 14 in person, he says it's too small for rail traffic and was bored to divert the stream. I will have to talk to my uncle some more. The tunnel that was on the Tennessee Railway I knew about for a while now, but this one my uncle is referring to I believe is between signals "Bear Creek" and "Cross". This is a little bit confusing, but I'm going to try to get with my uncle to try and find the "tunnel".

BTW, I finally went through my photos and found a nice photo of the south end of old Tunnel 22, this is in fall so the vegetation isn't as dense

[ssmith1627]

Guys, this is eating me alive.   I'm trying to read through it all and absorb everything I can.  But all the broken links......I could cry !  haha

Is there any way I could organize this so we could have it as reference for anyone who wants to look ?  I'd be glad to do anything I could to help.   Everyone has posted different pieces of information and it sure would be great to put that all together into something before it's lost. 

Such awesome stuff.  Thanks everyone for sharing.  It's great reading and looking through it.

Steve

[nsgelocos]

Someone could make a web site with all 27 tunnels location references or make a forum topic that has all the references there.

[ssmith1627]

I think one idea would be a handheld GPS.   That way someone could record the exact position of each portal when visiting it.    I think it was google maps that you could put a pushpin in for a given location and name it.  We might be able to use clickable links from there to a website for each tunnel with pictures past and present and whatever information we had on that tunnel.   That could include maps past and present as well.

Steve

[E.M. Bell]

Last weekend Carmon and myself killed a little time looking around old Burnside again, and I snagged a couple of new pics. The lake is down as far as it usually is, but the boat dock has made a new gravel parking area, and that gave us access to DRIVE on old US 27 from the marina, South down to the causeway for the new road that goes over to Gen. Burnside park.

This was a real treat for me..we had had the chance a few years ago to spend a afternoon walking around down there, but now I can say I have driven that stretch of road...that has been underwater for almost 60 years now. 

Seeing as how we have a LOT of cool info in this thread, I thought I would bump it back up a bit for all the new folks that might have not found it yet.  I still say we need to consoladate all this stuff from Butch and others into something more useful than a forum topic (hint) ..

http://www.pbase.com/kd4jsl/burnside

The Matrix, pointed South on old US 27...the last cars to drive here would have been a bit larger.





And this sad little scene, a dirty little ducky, floating in a puddle next to the old road..maybe I am weird, but this gave me cold chills..

[Batman]

very cool pics !

[E.M. Bell]

Thanks Mike..

We where back down there yesterday (Saturday 03/12/11) and with all the rain that KY has had the past few weeks, the lake level was WAY up. That whole area we where driving around in was back under several feet of water, and the new parking lot the boat dock had put in was simply gone... All the new gravel sidewalks they had put in to reach the floating part of the docks where under water, cutting the entire place off unless you had a boat to take you to your boat..

[GAllenStorey]

Very late response...The Tennessee Railway tunnel was daylighted not long after Southern bought it.  It is my understanding that the Southern maintained ownership of abandoned ROW, including the tunnels,  so there are some tresspassing issues to consider.. for a second or two 

[The Olivers]

Tunnel 25

[The Olivers]

Tunnel 26 from north end. South end is not acceptable due to being in gated community, and north end is full of water.

[The Olivers]

Everyone says that tunnel 27 is caved in, however some local old timers say its only the ends that are caved in and that if you hike up the old bed you'll come to a portion of the tunnel still standing. Does anyone know if this is true??? Thanks

[butch]

Interesting pix, did you have any trouble hiking through T25 to get to T26.  The old T26 is full of water on the south end too. 

I've seen both ends of T27-met a gentleman who grew up around the south end and remembered ice skating on the pond that formed in the cut that lead to the south portal.  He also showed me a place where part of the middle of the tunnel had fallen in, but I didn't see any part that was open.

[The Olivers]

No... no problem at all getting to 26 through 25 (my wifes family works for railroad in Oakdale). We must have spoke to the same gentleman on tunnel 27. He said they use to go down there to ice skate in winter and look for arrow heads in the summer. Whats the best approach to the cave in from both ends do you remember?? We are going to today to look at a WOODEN tunnel that goes under Roosevelt Mountain between Rockwood and Westel. Believe it was owned by Tennessean Central. Heard of it???

[The Olivers]

Heres a few pics of tunnel between Rockwood and Westel. Its lined with wood. If you look at the last pic you can see where the tunnel calapsed and the mountain fell into the tunnel. Its since been cleaned out patched and is still in use. Anyone got any history on this one. Not really a part of the rat hole but still interesting none the less.

[The Olivers]

A Pass Key would make things a little easier. My family and I try to get out and explore every weekend but its getting harder to do. We live in a complex time... vandals are defacing and littering everything they can and in turn property owners are putting up fences and no trespassing signs... which really really sucks for those of us that simply want to get out and explore a little history and a little nature.

[nsgelocos]

I find it interesting the differences in the brick work on the lined Ratholes. Notably, Tunnel 24's facing has mesh wire looking stuff with concrete and bricking behind it. Tunnel 26 has just solid bricks on the face with no mesh wire. Also that Tunnel 24 has bigger stones for the walls and then the curved arching is the smaller bricks. Tunnel 26 appears to have smaller bricks all the way from the floor to ceiling. Tunnels 19 and 20 have stone faces instead of the smooth brick or concrete facings. The large stone tops above the proper are generally the same on most of the lined tunnels along with the entrance arching with the notched stones to fit the curvature.

I don't know if you guys have seen these but with my ridiculous amounts of free time in Calculus class after assignments allows me to look up stuff on the internet. Here are some old old old photos I found...

Old tunnel 24 and depot

Orignal C.W. Tower

DB tower with a rathole in the background... Don't know what tunnel that is.

Tunnel 26 in its day


Note these aren't my photos but i figure i would link them to here out of curiosity.

[butch]

First, nsgelocos, please share where you found the old pix, they are great!

And here are some pix of the south end of the T26 tunnels from several years ago.  Short version is I ran into someone at the gate who gave me the code so I could go take the pictures.   Got some good pix, though nothing great of the signals.  And the orginal T26 is grown-up, snakey, and full of water that looks waist deep.  Made a return trip last year and the code still worked.  Of course the gentleman who is responsible for the gate firmly told me that they like their privacy, was very unhappy that someone had shared a code, and asked me to leave.

[The Olivers]

Very cool pix nsgelocos and butch. I love historic pics. Funny how things change. Use to hate history in school... now I love it... lol.

[nsgelocos]

Butch, http://www.tngenweb.org/morgan/photoalbum/index.html there are a few other old railroad pictures on here towards the bottom.
http://www.nps.gov/obed/historyculture/stories.htm This is where the old tunnel 24 photo came from.

I'm sorry to hear your last visit didn't go so well with the gateman. I get kind of paranoid railfanning around here myself and I live here. I was asked by a man at Andy Cooper road what i was doing and explained and he said "oh, that's cool! My son likes railfanning too. It's just a neighbor that knows me said that there was someone odd standing at the crossing and wanted me to go and see what was going on." The more isolated locations is where i feel more secure from being confronted.

And even at those isolated locations sometimes...
Me, and friend of mine, and my dad were confronted at old Bridge 89 by a couple of hunters and we told them of course what we were doing there and they said it was cool. Though I still feel like maybe one day I wont be able to hike the ratholes without getting confronted or even shot at (as a couple of people I know had gunfire on a trip).

Besides the negative talk above, Thanks for the photo posts. It's very very interesting to see these old bores still around. I'm almost tempted to buy an industrial water pump and sneak down at night to Tunnel 24 and pump it out just to see what's in those lakes    Pretty sure there's a muffler or two. I still haven't seen tunnel 1 and the cuts of 27 yet.

And lastly Morgan County Topo from 1893 : http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/tennessee/txu-pclmaps-topo-tn-wartburg-1893.jpg
And Harriman from 1891 Including Tunnel 27: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/tennessee/txu-pclmaps-topo-tn-kingston-1891.jpg

[GP30Rider]

I believe you will find that DB Tower was located in the short section between Tunnels 25 and 26. 

[butch]

Thanks for the links, I've looked enough to know I'm going to look a lot.  

Most folks are pretty good after they understand what your interest is.  And the ones that aren't, that's ok too.  I've not run into anyone who really made me feel threatened...ok, one NS police guy tried to, but some folks have had bad experiences or just like their privacy.

And DB Tower shows up as mentioned on this 1913 [according to my notes] document.

[E.M. Bell]

Butch, you never cease to amaze me with the stuff you come up with. I must ask..do you have something like the map you just posted, for the rest of the RR?? It would be rather neat to put something together will all of the old Tower locations and call letters.