CNO&TP tunnels 7, 8, and 9 (image and links)

[E.M. Bell]

On Satruday 01/07/06, Caleb, Butch and myself met at Alpine Ky (a few miles South of Somerset) with the intention of hiking the old CNO&TP grade between Alpine and Sloans Valley to find the three tunnels that are in the valley.  In the 5 or so miles between those two points the old RR grade punched through the hill three times, and had to bridge two large valleys. The hike wouldn't be easy in places, but we loaded up the topo maps and cameras and set off in the cold temps for what would turn out to be almost 5 miles of walking and climbing.

The old CS grade is still intact and a easy walk in most places. The hardest part was climbing down the hillside and back up where the RR crossed the valley at Gut Lick Creek. Besides for a few small washouts and overgrowth, it was in decent shape. We located a lot of small artifacts, including stuff that you would expect to find (spikes, ties, joint bars, bridge parts) and some stuff that we didnt expect (lke a intact signal terminal block, and what we think was the cross arm of a tell-tale for a tunnel)  This makes 10 of the old CS tunnels I have been to or walked through.  Thanks to Buth for being the guide for the day!

In the almost 5 hours we where out, I took over 150 pics, and have created a gallery with 30 or so of the best ones.  With that many pics, I wont be posting them all here. You can visit the Jreb gallery to see the results. Just Click the following link to get to the images. Once there, clcking on any of the thumbnails wil open a larger version...

JREB CNO&TP tunnel pics..  http://jreb.org/v-web/gallery/CStunnels

[Batman]

VERY COOL PHOTOS !!

[Butch]

I added a couple of different looks to my quick-n-dirty Rathole page that is referenced in the Burnside thread.

http://home.insightbb.com/~heyref/index.html

ba

[E.M. Bell]

Thanks for the comments guys..it was a fun day to say the least, even of my legs still feell like Jello...its bad to get old  

One thing that I didnt mention in my first post still stands out in my mind. The old RofW we hiked is fairly close in places to the current NS main. Back there in the peace of the woods, we had a great place to listen to all the NS trains as they worked up the hill towards KD tower. Its kinda freaky standing there in the pitch dark in the middle of a tunnel that hasnt seen a train in over 50 years and hearing the sounds of hard working engines getting closer and louder...makes one look back over the shoulder. To say the least, it was a sureal thing.  The only thing better is to be in the old tunnel 23 down in Nemo tn when a train passes through the new tunnel just a few feet of rock away. You can hear and FEEL it...awesome.  Makes you stop and think what it must have been like to be down in that valley back in the day, listening to a heavy freight working hard up Lancing hill..