Rathole Tunnels

[Butch]

Disclaimer:  I enjoy reading the railfan trip reports that others post so I thought I would try my hand at it.  This is from a couple of weeks ago.
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Having recently visited the last eight of the 37 tunnel locations on the former L&N line between Covington and Corbin, I decided it was time to finish visiting the last of the twelve Kentucky tunnel locations on the old CNO&TP Rathole.  In the process, I revisited several tunnels that I had already found.  

Tunnel 1 between Wilmore and High Bridge was not on the agenda because I have been to it a couple of times and it?s hard to catch someone home to get permission to go see it.  

I ran by Tunnel 2 at Kings Mountain to try to get some portal pix before all of the spring foliage filled out, but there was a crew that looked liked it was repainting a work train on the siding, and I was too shy to cut through their party.  But I did get some good pictures of the redbuds blooming along the back roads to Waynesburg.  

So it was on to Burnside.  Tunnels 3 and 4 are back-to-back below Grove where Pittman Creek enters into Lake Cumberland.  It was beautiful day to hike through the trees above the lake as I started walking down the old ROW.  It starts out as a lane and about halfway to Tunnel 3, an access road has been cut up to the current ROW.  That?s were I saw my only snake of the day.  A three foot king snake was out for a crawl.  There are still a number of old ties along the side of the lane which is probably where he had been hanging out.  The northern portal for Tunnel 3 goes into the rock where it is only about 70 feet high, but the rock goes to the edge of the gorge which is probably why the 1,167 foot tunnel was built.  The tunnels are in remarkable shape considering they were cut through rock, never lined, and have been abandoned since 1950.  The floor of the tunnel is a mix of rocks and mud as you would expect, and showed signed of recent travel by a truck or something.  The occasional cave salamander seems to enjoy the environment.  Coming out of the southern portal of the Tunnel 3, there is a big rock blocking the trail.  My guess is that it was put there to prevent a vehicle from driving into the gulley that used to be spanned by CNO&TP Bridge 53.  It is about eight feet across and the rocks drop immediately down to the lake.  From this point, the old ROW is just a trail that winds around the side of the hill above the lake for about a quarter mile.  

Approaching the northern portal of Tunnel 4, the terrain is similar to Tunnel 3, except the rock face has a noticeable angle to it.  This tunnel is 1,165 feet long and has a couple of springs empting in to it near the south end.  The resulting pool of water was easy to navigate around without getting my feet very wet.  Stepping out on to the remains of the old concrete bridge support brings to mind the various pictures I have seen of CNO&TP Bridge 54.  Standing on the old support about 60 feet above the lake level I can look 1,327 feet across the lake and see the corresponding concrete remains of the south end of the bridge, located in the trees just to the right of a boat house.  To the right is the Burnside Marina, and looking to my left I can see the US 27 highway bridge, and behind it, the current Norfolk Southern span.  After taking an excessive number of pictures because who knows if I will ever get back to this spot (and thank goodness for the capacity of a digital camera), I start my return trip through the tunnels.  But the fun is not over because I heard a rumbling sound that was increasing in intensity.  A few quick steps back to the edge of the lake confirms my suspicions as a mid-afternoon southbound is heading across the bridge.  I only had time to get a halfway decent picture, but it was cool to take a picture of a train crossing the new bridge from the remains of the old one.  Then it was time to head back up the hill and further down the old tracks.

Tunnel 5 at Sloan?s Valley has easy access to the southern portal from the Cathy Crockett Memorial Trail.  This tunnel was by-passed by the line relocations that were completed in 1963.  However, the last 100+ feet to the tunnel has standing water over knee deep muck.  Today?s visit was to be to the northern portal of the tunnel if I could find someone to give me permission to hike though the cow pasture to get to it.  Luckily, when I stopped to talk to a fellow on a tractor, he turned out he was the land owner and he told me I could go ahead and hike up the old railbed.  It was not quite a half mile to the portal, and it kind of snuck up on me because there apparently had been a slide at some point that blocked the old ROW just short of the tunnel.  This tunnel was interesting in that it was partly brick lined.  The bricks started at ground level and went up varying heights depending on where the rock slab was.  My uneducated guess is that the top part of the tunnel was cut through a pretty stable slab of rock, while the bottom part of the tunnel was not very stable and needed to be lined.  

I made a quick stop at the Alpine Recreation Area to revisit the site of the old daylighted Tunnel 6.  At 189 feet, this tunnel had been the shortest tunnel on the Rathole and it was daylighted in 1901.  I had been able to narrow down the location to a small area using an old track profile and engineering chart.  And on an earlier trip to Tunnels 7-9 with Emmett and Caleb (see Emmett?s trip report); we had been able to figure out the cut that once contained the old tunnel. However, I was not happy with my pictures from that day, so I made the short hike down to try again.  It is easy walking because the old ROW is now used by ATVs.  I did a little better, but I decided that there is only so much you can do when taking pictures of a cut on an abandoned ROW.

Next on the docket was Tunnel 10.  This 270 foot tunnel was daylighted in 1907, and it is the only one of the twelve Kentucky Rathole tunnel locations that is still used by the current railroad.  Again using an old track profile and engineering chart, I had narrowed the location down to a stretch of track between Greenwood and Parkers Lake in McCreary County.  I stopped by a large stack of new ties off of one of the old US 27 loops and walked up the track a little ways.  I passed a section of ground that looked like it had been burnt recently.  I also found what I bet is a great waterfall during the rainy season which would only be accessible by climbing down the backside of a 150 foot fill.  And, I believe I confirmed the location of the old Tunnel 10.  There was only one cut in the area that was big enough that it could have contained a tunnel at one time.  It is located just north of MP 181.

Finding the Tunnel 10 location completed my goal of visiting all twelve Rathole tunnel locations in Kentucky.  I have previously visited Tunnel 11 at Parkers Lake.  Or more accurately, the southern portal of the tunnel, since US 27 expansion has taken out the northern half of the tunnel.  And I have also been to Tunnel 12 which is back in ATV country near Wiborg.  Both of these tunnels were also victims of the 1963 line relocations that created the big cuts south of Tateville.