Haunted Church Hill Tunnel - Richmond - Virginia - USA. hurch Hill Tunnel is an old Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O;) tunnel, built in the early 1870s, which extends approximately 4,000 feet under the Church Hill section of Richmond, Virginia. In 1925, the tunnel collapsed on a work train, killing four and trapping a steam locomotive and some 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 were destroyed 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 end, the tunnel is owned by CSX Transportation. The tunnel, which is still considered dangerous, was featured in a 1998 newspaper article by Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Mark Holmberg, who explored portions from the eastern end with professional caving personnel and equipment. The Church Hill Tunnel was completed in 1875 for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O;) which was seeking to extend its trackage (of the former Virginia Central Railroad) from a terminus in the Shockhoe Valley section of downtown Richmond to connect with the new Peninsula Subdivision extending approximately 75 miles southeast down the Virginia Peninsula to reach Collis P. Huntington's new coal pier at Newport News on the harbor of Hampton Roads. 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. The east end of the tunnel appeared just north of Williamsburg Road near 31st Street below Libby Terrace Park. The Peninsula railroad line was completed and opened in late 1881, and the coal flowed eastward for export in massive quantities. Over the years, portions of the tunnel have collapsed, once claiming several houses. The line of the underground tunnel can clearly be traced by dips in some of the north-south streets crossing its path. The largest cave-in to date resulted in creation of a park on Broad Street between 24th and 25th where a church once stood. The western end is covered with a concrete plug, but for years, the eastern end was used as part of a turning wye for a connection with the Southern Railway's line to West Point and could be entered by venturesome trespassers. Based upon a 1998 exploratory expedition by Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Mark Holmberg, who explored portions from the eastern end with professional caving personnel and equipment, it is believed that most of the western portion of the tunnel which has not caved in is filled with water. The western end entrance of the collapsed tunnel can still be seen at the south-east end of an alley off of 18th Street, just north of Marshall. A Virginia historical marker was placed at the site in 2012. The eastern end is hidden in a small, dense jungle just north of the intersection of E. Franklin Street and N. 31st Street. This end of the tunnel is still open for some distance, but its floor and the area outside are swampy. In June 2006, the Virginia Historical Society and other parties announced that they were investigating the possibility of recovering the train and bodies; the Society planned to keep the train for preservation. The History Channel expressed interest in participating in the project. However, when a hole was drilled through the tunnel's seal and a camera was placed inside, the tunnel was discovered to be filled with silt and water, meaning that an excavation of the tunnel would likely cause it to further collapse and cause several homes on Church Hill to be engulfed by massive sinkholes. The project has been put on hold until a way can be found to reinforce Church Hill against any further collapses in the tunnel. The Church Hill Tunnel also has a connection to the urban legend of the Richmond Vampire. All images are either in the Public Domain or on Google images labeled for reuse. All music is credited to with kind permission to Kevin MacLeod and his website incompetech - Royalty free music - http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/ Text by wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Hill_Tunnel My Website - http://buttersnicholas.wix.com/disused-tube-lines Subscribe to my channel here. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsPhdtvW8by-ux_P-0GRx5g Thanks.

• published: 17 May 2015
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