Kind of Creepy

Bud wanted to go into Clarksburg for groceries yesterday. He said he’d seen something about a trail nearby that went through an old train tunnel.

So I did some research and found the North Bend Rail Trail State Park stretched 72 miles from just east of Clarksburg to Parkersburg. The trail has 10 tunnels, and we would pass an access point just a short distance from Tunnel Number Two. This was originally part of the Western Virginia Railroad, a subsidiary of the B & O Railroad and this 1,084 foot long tunnel was built in 1868. I tried to find what the initials J.W.E. stood for but couldn’t find it. I think perhaps the firm that either designed or built the tunnel.

On approach it didn’t look like we’d even need the flashlight we brought.

Oddly, as we got closer, the tunnel seemed to get longer.

Once inside those seepy old brick walls didn’t look as impregnable as I would have liked.

Major slime, how sturdy was this anyway?

This was getting downright creepy.

The periodic “manholes”, where workers (or anybody else) could escape if caught in the tunnel by a passing train, only added to the uneasy feeling of the place.

We came out the other end and came almost immediately to a bridge. There was a lot of engineering to get a railroad line through these mountains with a maximum grade of only 1.5%.