Blue Ridge Tunnel and Stonewall Jackson

USS ALASKA

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Joined
Mar 16, 2016
163879pv.jpg

NORTHEAST PORTAL. - Blue Ridge Railroad, Blue Ridge Tunnel

http://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/habshaer/va/va0200/va0253/photos/163879pv.jpg

The Blue Ridge Tunnel was built by Claudius Crozet for the Blue Ridge Railroad in 1858 by the state of Virginia for the Virginia Central Railroad. It was the longest in the US at the time. Designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Stonewall Jackson and his troops used it to move quickly in Blue Ridge Mountains. His knowledge of the tunnels and gaps in the area and their speedy movement through them got them the epithet 'foot cavalry'.

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USS ALASKA

 
Jackson very wisely relied upon young officers with local knowledge in conducting his campaigns. He pulled them out of the line, listened to them carefully and kept them by his side until it was time to move to a new place.

My lunch money says a local Lieutenant explained and showed this tunnel to General Jackson. Excellent pic, thanks for posting.
 
Love that picture! Has a warm but ghostly feeling to it

Who knows - maybe there are a few of those floating around there...

It was replaced by another tunnel right next to it in 1944 and abandoned.

New_and_Old_Blue_Ridge_Tunnels.jpg


upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/New_and_Old_Blue_Ridge_Tunnels.jpg

There is a plan to use it for a rail trail but that is not finished yet.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Last edited:
Oh
Who knows - maybe there are a few of those floating around there...

It was replaced by another tunnel right next to it in 1944 and abandoned.
N7
View attachment 182502

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/New_and_Old_Blue_Ridge_Tunnels.jpg

There is a plan to use it for a rail trail but that is not finished yet.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
I love these sort of pictures, in fact any picture that shows abandoned railroads. What is a rail trail, I’m guessing that it’s similar to what we do with abandoned rail lines here in the U.K, we normally use them as cycle paths and nature trails. Also, what is that next to the track?
And finally, I see telegraph poles and wires, are they left over from when the original tunnel closed.
Great picture, many thanks for posting.
 
Oh

I love these sort of pictures, in fact any picture that shows abandoned railroads. What is a rail trail, I’m guessing that it’s similar to what we do with abandoned rail lines here in the U.K, we normally use them as cycle paths and nature trails. Also, what is that next to the track?
And finally, I see telegraph poles and wires, are they left over from when the original tunnel closed.
Great picture, many thanks for posting.
You guessed right
 
Standard gauge, I think narrow gauge track in the U.S is 2.6 ft

Track_gauge_svg 1.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Track_gauge.svg

From what I can find, US Narrow gauge ran from 1' 11 5/8" to 3' 6". Most were started after the ACW. A lot of them were private industrial / mining / logging roads.

From reading @DaveBrt 's web site, major southern roads preferred Standard Gauge or wider.

Railroad_of_Confederacy-1861.jpg


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Railroad_of_Confederacy-1861.jpg

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Claudius Crozet's Comparative Estimate of the Five Lowest Bids Offered for Blue Ridge Tunnel No. 1, January 21, 1850

Claudius Crozet offers the Board of Public Works his assessment of the bids for one section of the Tunnel project.

Comparative Estimate of the five lowest bids offered for the Blue ridge tunnel No. 1 Jany. 21st, 1805

Quantities of Work Jno. I W. Rutter. Richard Fox. John Kelly & Co. Jonas H. More G. B. Manby.

http://railroads.unl.edu/documents/...Stop=&keyword=&publication=&id=rail.blue.0006

Had to post the link, can't figure out how to copy and paste the whole chart so that it looks right...

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Who knows - maybe there are a few of those floating around there...

It was replaced by another tunnel right next to it in 1944 and abandoned...
Much like what happened to this one on the Western & Atlantic at Tunnel Hill, Georgia:

DSC01620.JPG


The "new" still-used tunnel is deliberately out-of-frame at the left; note the W&A logo on the iron gate.
 
Sir, not sure if this answers your question any better than the post above...
View attachment 297859
http://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/habshaer/va/va0200/va0253/sheet/00002v.jpg
873

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
Thanks for that, I can see from the diagram that the track gauge would probably be the standard 4ft 8 1/2 inches. I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with the quality of stone work, it wasn’t just thrown up, some thought went into the design, I think our own Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have approved of the work.
 
1646929958398.png


The Blue Ridge Tunnel in Nelson County, VA, boasts an elliptical arch at its western portal, framed in limestone. (Leslie Middleton)

Walk through a mountain in VA's Blue Ridge
Leslie Middleton
Feb 8, 2022


In the 1850s, though, it was here that the Blue Ridge Railroad tunneled 500 feet under Rockfish gap, right through the mountain. The long, straight tunnel linked communities on either side of the mountains and served as a strategic site in the Civil War. In the 1940s, it was abandoned in favor of a new nearby tunnel that could accommodate larger, modern locomotives.

Just last year, the tunnel gained a new purpose: foot travel. In November 2020, the historic route through the mountains, known as the Blue Ridge Tunnel or Crozet's Tunnel, opened as a public trail. Since then, more than 100,000 visitors have experienced its cool, dark ambience, marveling at what was once the longest tunnel in the United States.

Claudius Crozet, a French engineer who had emigrated to the United States, was hired in 1850 by the state of Virginia to oversee the construction of the 17-mile Blue Ridge Railroad over terrain that Crozet, an experienced public works engineer, called "dangerous ground." He said had never seen "any section of the same extent more complicated and rugged." Though Crozet predicted he would finish the railway in three years, it took more than eight. Four tunnels were needed. The Blue Ridge Tunnel was the longest, boring 4,273 feet straight through the mountain under Rockfish Gap. Crozet's workforce was almost entirely composed of recent Irish immigrants who had fled poverty and the Great Famine only to find a hardscrabble life along the railroad line. Along with wives and children, they lived in crude shanties huddled against the mountains. Wages were barely enough to purchase the workers' boots and clothing, and families foraged and gardened to feed themselves. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, and, in 1854, cholera ripped through the working communities. The Irish Catholic immigrants were a rough and scrappy lot, prone to fighting, and often in conflict with Crozet, who had little patience for anything that slowed the project. They repeatedly went on strike to protest poor working conditions. Often, the Irish simply headed west for other work, but they were easily replaced by a steady stream of newcomers and at times by enslaved workers "leased" from nearby plantations. Contracts between Crozet and plantation owners required the enslaved workers to tackle only the least dangerous job: removing stone from the tunnel. At $150 per leased worker, neither plantation owners nor Crozet could afford to lose these men. Teams of Irish men, and boys as young as age 10, worked from both sides of the mountain, blasting stone, driving mule teams, and measuring their progress in yards-per-month. Managing the seep of water through the overlying rock was a constant problem. At times, when the novel but temperamental siphon system that Crozet designed couldn't keep up, workers had to wade through waist-deep water. While most tunnel excavations of that era were ventilated through vertical shafts to surface air, this tunnel was too far below the surface for this option. Instead, Crozet devised a system to purify the air by pumping it through water-filled barrels. Even so, the tunnel bores were often thick with smoke from black powder blasts and the fires at blacksmith sheds.

Though the Blue Ridge Tunnel remained closed and unused after it was abandoned by the railroad, it wasn't forgotten. In 1975, it was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It is recognized today as the longest tunnel in the United States dug by hand using black powder blasting techniques without ventilation shafts. Even so, it remained closed to the public until the early 2000s, when the Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation urged its restoration and public use. Then came grants, consultations and construction to repair the tunnel and rebuild the trail bed. Now the tunnel is fully open to the public and increasingly popular. It's an engineering marvel, where students learn about the techniques that Crozet invented and employed here. It's a testament to the spirit and struggles of the laborers. And it's a place where all curious visitors can literally walk through a mountain.


Full article with pics can be read here - https://www.bayjournal.com/travel/w...cle_8555f4da-74b1-11ec-97e1-e7e760e5da22.html

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Lynchburg News and Advance
Blue Ridge Tunnel among nine sites added to Virginia Landmarks Register
Emma_Martin
Oct 5, 2022

The Blue Ridge Tunnel, which runs between Nelson and Augusta counties, was recently recognized for its historic significance. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources announced Sept. 22 the tunnel and eight other historic sites have been added to the Virginia Landmarks Register. Reopened to the public in 2020, the restored Blue Ridge Tunnel spans 4,279 feet from Afton to about three miles east of Waynesboro and was bored 700 feet below the Rockfish Gap in the Appalachian Mountains. It now functions as the centerpiece of the 2.25-mile Blue Ridge Tunnel Trail. Construction on the railroad tunnel began in 1850, according to the VDHR nomination form, after the French engineer Claudius Crozet was hired to design and oversee construction of a 17-mile section of railroad over the Blue Ridge Mountains. This Blue Ridge Railroad included four tunnels, the Blue Ridge Tunnel being the longest. Construction of the tunnel took eight years and was completed by a workforce of primarily Irish immigrants, aided by enslaved people. Workers dug the tunnel with hand tools and by blasting black gunpowder, without the use of ventilation shafts or dynamite.

Charlottesville author Mary Lyons has written three books on the tunnel and the Blue Ridge Railroad and transcribed an e-book of letters between Crozet and the Board of Public Works in Richmond. Her most recent book is "Slave Labor on Virginia's Blue Ridge Railroad," published in 2020, and focuses solely on the labor of enslaved people. Lyons said in a Sept. 29 phone interview she first started researching Irish immigrant labor on the railroad in 2009, and within four months had uncovered the names of 500 immigrants who worked on the Blue Ridge Railroad.

According to the nomination form, laborers worked on the tunnel 24 hours a day in shifts, boring from both ends simultaneously to meet in the middle. Progress averaged 26 feet on each side per month, and was slowed by yearly labor strikes and a cholera outbreak in 1854. Lyons said one labor strike in 1853 lasted three weeks. Enslaved workers were contracted out by their masters and completed less dangerous work like hauling debris, blacksmithing and laying rails, while Irish workers did the more treacherous work of blasting and drilling — not out of concern for the enslaved people but because contractors would have to pay the slave owner if an enslaved worker lost his life.

These immigrants lived in simple shanties around railroad work sites that were abandoned after the job was complete — background provided in the nomination form describes the unsanitary and mean conditions in shanty towns. Lyons said many Irish workers on the Blue Ridge Railroad settled in Staunton, where there was a Catholic church. Others moved north or west with railroad construction, or returned to Ireland.

The Blue Ridge Tunnel opened for use in 1858 and was the longest tunnel in the U.S. at that time. It remains the longest hand-excavated and black powder-blasted tunnel in the U.S. and is one of the earliest efforts to cross the Appalachian Mountains by rail. Its atypically elliptical shape was part of Crozet's design; he calculated the shape would be stronger, prevent collapse and be cheaper to blast. During the American Civil War, the Blue Ridge Railroad and Blue Ridge Tunnel became very important to Confederate forces for transporting troops and supplies, and the tunnel was a target for Federal troops. Confederate forces successfully defended it until the Battle of Waynesboro in 1865. The federal government continued to consider it a vital transportation system and placed guards at the tunnel during World Wars I and II. It was abandoned in 1944 when a larger tunnel was constructed running parallel to it.


Full article can be read here - https://newsadvance.com/community/n...cle_66d5d91c-403f-11ed-a70e-d7716bb66b76.html

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
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