Church Hill Tunnel
Church Hill Tunnel is an old Chesapeake and Ohio Railway tunnel, built in the early 1870s, which extends approximately under the [Church Hill, Richmond, Virginia|Richmond, Virginia|Church Hill] district of Richmond, Virginia, United States. On October 2, 1925, the tunnel collapsed on a work train, killing four men and trapping a steam locomotive and ten flat cars. Rescue efforts only resulted in further collapse, and the tunnel was eventually sealed for safety reasons.
Portions of the tunnel have continued to wreak havoc above in the years since, and several houses and a wall of a church have been destroyed by sinkholes near 25th and Broad Streets. More recently, tennis courts and the wall of a house seem to have been victims farther east. Long the subject of community speculation and trespassing incidents at its eastern portal, the tunnel is owned by the C&O's successor entity, CSX Transportation.
The tunnel, which is still considered dangerous, was featured in a 1998 newspaper article by Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Mark Holmberg and photographer P. Kevin Morley, who explored portions from the eastern portal with professional caving personnel and equipment. Efforts to unseal the tunnel and extract the buried work train have been unsuccessful.
History
Purpose
Church Hill Tunnel was completed in 1873 for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, which was seeking to extend its trackage from a terminus in the Shockoe Valley section of downtown Richmond to connect with their new Peninsula Subdivision extending approximately southeast down the Virginia Peninsula to reach Collis Potter Huntington's new coal pier in Newport News, Virginia. The tracks to the new tunnel left the old Virginia Central line west of 17th Street and curved southeasterly to enter the tunnel east of N. 18th Street and north of E. Marshall Street under Cedar Street, on the western slope of what is technically Union Hill. The east end of the tunnel appeared just north of Williamsburg Road near 31st Street, below Libby Terrace Park. The Peninsula Subdivision was completed and opened in late 1881, and the coal flowed eastward for export in massive quantities.Construction problems
The construction of the tunnel was problematic. Unlike the bedrock through which the C&O carved its western tunnels, Richmond's blue marl clay shrink-swell soil tended to change with rainfall and groundwater, causing deadly cave-ins during the construction. The tunnel has remained troublesome throughout its life due to groundwater seepage and safety concerns, even after abandonment in 1925.Safer alternative
In the 1890s, the C&O acquired the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad which had been built east from the Blue Ridge Mountains along the towpath of the James River and Kanawha Canal, proving an alternate "water level" route to Richmond following the north bank of the James River and avoiding a more circuitous route which crossed the North Mountain and Afton Mountain via the Blue Ridge Tunnel and reached Richmond via the former Virginia Central Railroad. However, the R&A terminated at Richmond's Byrd Street Station in the downtown area, and did not have a track connection to the C&O which ended at Shockoe Bottom at Broad Street, some distance away. The Virginia State Capitol and its grounds were directly between the two terminals, so creativity for a less direct connection was needed.To utilize the new "water level" line to ship coal to Newport News, and to avoid the troublesome tunnel as an added benefit, the C&O constructed a double-track elevated viaduct along the riverfront extending between the area of Hollywood Cemetery east past downtown Richmond, the Shockoe Valley, and Church Hill to join the Peninsula Subdivision at what became Fulton Yard east of the tunnel. With a connection just south of the new Main Street Station, it was now possible for traffic to come off the old Virginia Central and enter the Peninsula Subdivision without using the Church Hill Tunnel.
Portions of the viaduct became known as the Rivanna Subdivision Trestle and Peninsula Subdivision Trestle. The viaduct is believed to be the longest in the United States and is still in use by CSX Transportation, the successor entity to the C&O, which also owns the abandoned tunnel. The viaduct is also the highest level of Richmond's famed Triple Crossing, with railroads at three levels, believed to be only one of two such places in the world, near where it crosses Richmond's flood wall.
Tunnel disuse, rehabilitation turns tragic
After completion of the viaduct in 1901, the Church Hill Tunnel fell into disuse for over twenty years. In 1925, to add capacity, the railroad began efforts to restore it to usable condition. On October 2, while repairs were under way, a work train was trapped by a collapse of of the tunnel near the western end, below Jefferson Park. The authorities shut down the streetcar line to the area for several days. At that time there were no homes in the area, as most buildings were around 25th and Broad near Nolde Brothers Bakery where the tunnel crossed the middle of Church Hill.Approximately 200 workmen crawled under flat cars and then escaped out the eastern end of the tunnel, including the fireman Benjamin F. Mosby, but the engineer Thomas Joseph Mason was killed; initial reports claimed that, besides Mason, six black laborers were unaccounted for, although the missing number of men was later scaled down to two, identified as day laborers Richard Lewis and "H. Smith". During the next week, the community anxiously watched rescue efforts, but each time progress was made, further cave-ins occurred; only the body of Mason was recovered, on October 10. At that point, only Lewis and Smith were still unaccounted for. Their bodies were never found.
The following spring, the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulated the state's railroads, ordered the western end of the tunnel sealed for safety reasons. Left inside was the work train, complete with a 4-4-0 steam locomotive and ten flat cars.