Ex-Great Northern tunnels in Montana... Wayne Tunnel, a few miles west of Belt, MT on the active BNSF Laurel Sub, Laurel-Great Falls (GTF) line, MP 200: Tunnel 5 just north of Sieben, MT on the out of service BNSF Helena Sub, GTF-Helena line, MP 183.7: The only tunnel on the GTF-Havre line, a few miles north of Ft. Benton, MT, now abandoned:
Nice! Interesting progression from shiny rails, to rusty rails, to no rails. Perspective, contrast and lighting can lead to fun optical illusions - that tunnel looks like it was painted on by Wile E Coyote to trap the Road Runner. Right before being run over by a train... meep-meep...
On the Great Northern railway (not that one!) section of the East Coast main line there not many tunnels. This famous Race track where Mallard set the Steam loco speed record and Flying Scotsman ran the first ever non stop train from London to Edinburgh in just over eight hours in 1928 was always my Dad used to go with his Camera He only ever visited Askham Tunnel in May 1960 and only took three photos. Which is a pity Peppercorn A1 4-6-2 60130 Kestrel is on an Up Express bound for London My favourite A1, 60148 Aboyeur on the Sunday Harrogate Pullman I've got all the wheelcastings and the patterns for the valvegear to make a gauge 1 A1 some time in the future and I've also had the nameplates etched! The third picture doesn't show the tunnel Kev
Nice pictures! Moffat Route this time, Tunnel 30, near Rollinsville, CO. This was once known as Sphinx Head Rock: On the Milwaukee Road North Montana Line 25 miles east of Great Falls, MT, we see Belt Creek Trestle, and the east portal of Red Coulee Tunnel 6:
BNSF's Kootenai River Subdivision - Tunnel 6 Tunnel 6 on the Kootenai River Subdivision is 1,400 feet long and has a speed limit of 13 miles per hour. It's located on the BNSF Railway's Kootenai River Subdivision, which runs through Idaho and Montana.
I'm reading a book on Wisconsin railroading and was surprised to learn that the MILW had a tunnel near Tomah in a place called Tunnel City. It's still in service I think.
Jeremy (Hemi): I'm not familiar enough with all of the tunnels pictured in this thread, but I think you may be able to point out one or two of the specific tunnels in these modern pictures that were also in the railroad picture books my grandfather bought when he vacationed in the Rocky Mountains over 100 years ago (and which I've downloaded into my RailImages Albums: Denver & Salt Lake RR's Moffat Road and the Colorado & Southern Rwy and Argentine Central Rwy). Tunnel-philes: If you try to find these picture books by searching RailImages for the RRs or my name with the Search Pictures or Search Forums features, you may not have much success; however, if you click on my avatar and then on My Albums pages, you'll see them on my first page of albums (Over the Loop, and Trail of the Olympian). Enjoy!!
Plan A: Links to Sphinx Head Tunnel pages: This is a link to a picture of the tunnel near Sphinx Head in one of my grandfather's picture books, and a link to the page of text about the Sphinx Head formation. Plan B: Pictures of Sphinx Head from one of my Grandfather's railroad picture books. Picture of the text describing Sphinx Head Rock from one of the pages in my Grandfather's railroad picture books:
My grandfather's railroad picture book of the Moffat Road has a picture of Tunnels 2, 3, and 4 from Rainbow Cut; individual pics of Tunnel 3, Tunnel 7, Tunnel 27, and Tunnel 29; and a pic of Tunnels 35, 36, and 37 in Gore Canyon. If someone has modern photos of any of these tunnels listed above and posts them in this thread, let me know if you would also like to see in this thread, an image of the same tunnel that railfans might have seen one hundred years ago, and I'll try to post here in this thread a copy of the relevant tunnel image(s) in my RailImages album. PLEASE NOTE: I don't want to one-up or steal the limelight from anyone else's pics! I'll add the older image in this thread for comparing and contrasting, but ONLY if the poster requests it. If the poster declines but someone else still wants to compare and contrast the pics, they can go to My Albums to see the older pics...and it will just be a little more cumbersome to compare and contrast in two different locations instead of in one thread.
I posted my photo of Tunnel 30 earlier in this thread. Although I misidentified it. Jeremy caught that real quick. Here it is again, only I kind of cleaned the bug splats off the window in photo shop.
No one-upping is perceived, or necessary. I love seeing the historical context of the same area a century apart! The Tunnel 30/Sphinx Head Rock shots are neat because the as-built era shows South Boulder Creek crossing in front of the portal, while my image a century later shows the creek relocated to the south side of the tracks, from a 1960 project.
68 017 'Hornet' snakes out of the Eastern portal of Dalton tunnel with a short train of JNA-Z stone hoppers bound for Shap Summit Quarry In steam days this stretch was a real challenge Kev
