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Today is the 90th anniversary of the Church Hill Tunnel collapse

Author and historian Walter Griggs has a great piece on the collapse of the Church Hill Train Tunnel on richmond.com today:

Around 3 p.m. on Oct. 2, 1925 — 90 years ago — engineer Tom Mason kissed his wife, left his home and walked to the corner of the block. For some reason, he turned around, went back to his house, and kissed his wife again. Then he headed to the Fulton Yards and climbed aboard locomotive No. 231 along with his fireman, Ben Mosby. He then released the break, opened the throttle and began to pull a string of 10 flatcars into the Church Hill Tunnel so that the construction workers could load them with dirt. The train was beneath Jefferson Park when a few bricks from the tunnel’s roof fell with a splash into pools of water on the tunnel floor. The falling bricks caused the electrical connections to break and the tunnel was thrown into darkness. As the workers began running out of the tunnel, 190 feet of the 4,000 foot tunnel collapsed onto the train.

See also: Route of the Church Hill train tunnel (3/9/2009)

PHOTO: VT Underground

83 comments

Dean 10/02/2015 at 8:32 AM

Where is this part of the tunnel taken at? Below the Chimbo playground?

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John M 10/02/2015 at 8:49 AM

Yep!

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Etienne LaVallee 10/06/2015 at 9:38 AM

And it’s just past the 10th anniversary of the washout of Chimborazo Hill and Playground that occurred during Gaston… Which ultimately led to a nicer Playground sans the crappy pool that used to be there.

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Guido Girl 08/07/2017 at 3:55 PM

Where’s the other comments???

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