(The following article by Mark Holmberg was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on August 9.)
RICHMOND, Va. — There she is, ol’ 231, the locomotive buried in one of Richmond’s best-known tombs — the infamous Church Hill Tunnel.
The 4,000-foot-long tunnel has been a menace since digging began 134 years ago. Cave-ins during construction consumed workers and a house.
It spectacularly collapsed on Engine 231 and its work crew in 1925. Afterward, smaller cave-ins shifted homes and even gobbled part of a park.
And just last month, the venomous tunnel nipped again when a history-sniffing team tried to bore into the water- and muck-filled tunnel for a video-camera peek.
“We didn’t see anything,” contractor Wesley Blankenship said.
But they heard plenty. Curiosity seekers and even relatives of the long-ago tunnel workers gathered on the North 20th Street site below Jefferson Park. Several Church Hill neighbors kicked up a fuss, saying the drilling of the spy holes could cause a shift in the water table and perhaps cause more damaging cave-ins. Once the bore penetrated the tunnel, water started gushing out of the concrete-plugged western portal. The city shut down the probe because of a lack of permits.
The operation galvanized neighbors, who have now formed the Friends of Jefferson Park to clean up and protect the long-suffering hilltop vista and offer a unified voice about the tomb’s fate.
But we can take a peek at Engine 231 using some scientific tunnel vision.
Robert G. Kelly, professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Virginia, studies how metals decay.
“The fact that it’s [immersed in] a mixture of soil and water helps somewhat. It limits the amount of oxygen” that would speed the decay of the metal.
He figures it’s pretty safe to estimate that the metal has decayed at the rate of about a thousandth of an inch per year — roughly a tenth of an inch overall. He envisions it wrapped in a cocoon of rust and earth that has been impregnated by the decaying metal.
“It would be in pretty good shape, but it would be very, very fragile. There will be components that will be eaten through,” Kelly said. “If they want to preserve it, they need to approach this like an archeological dig.”
Engine 231 is an American type 4-4-0, a smaller style locomotive (about 150,000 pounds) with four small pilot wheels, four big driving wheels and no rear wheels. Made for pulling just a few passenger cars, it was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia in 1903, according to our friends with the C&O Historical Society.
Initially, it was Engine 54 for the Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville Railway. C&O changed its number.
The little engine represented the last push for that smaller-style locomotive, which was why it was in the cramped tunnel, pulling wooden flat cars that served as platforms for workers whose job was to widen the tunnel.
Passions are split about the attempt to expose Richmond’s deep-down legend. Many believe it would be violating the tomb of the man (or men) buried there.
But others, such as a relative of Engine 231’s engineer (whose body was recovered after the collapse) want the tunnel opened.
“To actually stand next to, and look at, the engine where my great-grandfather lost his life and to look at the same things he saw, this is what makes me personally want to have the engine brought back to the light again,” David Mulligan said.
Pete Claussen, a history buff and Gulf and Ohio Railways CEO and chairman, is driving the recovery effort, with help from others.
Engineers are plotting the next step, Claussen said yesterday. “We’ll get back to it here as soon as the smart guys do their work. Stay tuned.”
One thing is certain: Any attempt to open this old wound will have to be done perfectly. Otherwise, the tunnel of misery will strike again.