Another one bites the light

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Tue Jan 26 17:02:40 EST 2010


I don't think they mean daylighting the tunnel. I think they mean that
hen raiseing the roof of a tunnel when you start seeing light at then
end it means you are almost to the end of the tunnel. Therefore almost done.

Nathan Simmons
trainman51 at gmail.com
http://www.t-51.org
KI4MSK



NW Mailing List wrote:

> Anybody making last chance photos at Coopers and the other tunnels

> being daylighted? See attached article from BD Telegraph below:

> Jim Cochran

>

> *Light at the end of the tunnel:*

>

> *By Bill Archer*

> Bluefield Daily Telegraph

>

> COOPERS — When the workers laboring to raise the roof of the old

> Cooper Tunnel on the Norfolk Southern mainline in Mercer County see

> daylight, it’s about time to call it a day.

>

> NS is on the home stretch of the Heartland Corridor project that

> started in the fall of 2007 and is on track to be finished later this

> summer. When it’s done, the Heartland Corridor will enable NS to move

> double-stacked freight cars from Lambert’s Point (near Hampton Roads,

> Va.) on the Atlantic coast all the way to Chicago on the Lake Michigan

> shore.

>

> “When people ask, I tell them we’re clear in Virginia as far as

> Belcher Bridge in Bluefield,” James N. Carter Jr., PE, chief

> engineer/bridges and structures with NS said. “When they ask me when

> it will be done, I tell them August.”

>

> Carter, 57, is an old-school railroader who was born in Piedmont, near

> Mullens when his father, a Virginian Railway locomotive engineer, was

> serving in the Korean War with the U.S. Army. After the Virginian

> merged with the Norfolk & Western Railway in 1959, the family moved

> from Mullens to Bluefield, where the senior Mr. Carter worked with the

> N&W. The family picked out a home on the Virginia side so young Jim

> could pursue his lifelong dream of attending Virginia Tech. “As an

> in-state student,” Carter said.

>

> Each structure — tunnel, low bridge or narrow cut — along the 1,200

> mile-plus long Heartland Corridor has its own set of challenges.

> Before crews with LRL Construction of Tillamook, Ore., started work,

> Carter had to hammer out the details of the project with his brother

> NS railroaders. Both mainline tracks needed to be shut down for a

> while, but with as many as 18 trains moving through Bluefield over a

> 12-hour period, Gary Shepard, superintendent of NS’s Pocahontas

> Division headquartered in Bluefield would have his hands full.

>

> “The hardest thing about doing a job like this is having to run trains

> every day on one of the busiest sections in the NS system,” Carter

> said. “I worked at the coal load-out in Lambert’s Point for 15 years,

> so I know how important it is. I wanted as much uninterrupted time as

> possible to work on the structures, so the transportation planning

> people worked with people on the coal traffic side and we figured it out.

>

> “Gary asked me: ‘Does it make any difference if you work in the day or

> night?’ I told him it’s always dark in the tunnel, so it didn’t

> matter,” Carter said. “They close the track down from 2 a.m., until

> noon every day. We get a section done, clean everything up and get

> back to it when we go in the next day.” Since coal traffic is

> traditionally heavier late in the week, the Cooper Tunnel crew works

> Saturday through Wednesday.

>

> Initial construction of the Cooper Tunnel was a significant moment in

> the history of the N&W Railway’s development of the McDowell County

> coalfields. Keystones at both ends of the tunnel bear a 1902 date, but

> the start of the tunnel triggered the development of the vast

> metallurgical coalfields in McDowell County. Pioneer coal baron Jenkin

> Jones was in the first wave of McDowell County coal developers, but

> Samuel A. Crozer, John J. Lincoln, L.E. Tierney and others soon

> ignited the McDowell County coal boom of the early 20th Century.

>

> The crews who built the Cooper Tunnel in the late 19th and early 20th

> centuries built it to last. The 680-foot long tunnel has a huge void

> above the roof that appears on maps to extend more than two-thirds the

> length of the structure. The void is listed at as much as 18 feet on

> some of the maps, but Bill Hawk, an inspector with Jacobs Associates

> laughed and hinted that the charts may not be entirely accurate.

>

> The roof of the old tunnel was lined courses of bricks set in mortar,

> topped with another 4-foot layer of concrete. “Some huge rocks fell on

> the top in that void over the years, but didn’t come through,” Carter

> said.

>

> “They originally had wood stacked up in there,” Jared Beeler,

> superintendent on the tunnel job for LRL said.

>

> “One place up in there, we found lead buckets that they used to carry

> grout up there,” Mike Downs of LRL said. “They built this back when

> men were men.” The LRL crews donated the lead grout buckets and some

> other artifacts to Bramwell Mayor Louise Stoker to display at the

> Bramwell Depot.

>

> Carter said crews are replacing the arched brick roof with curved

> steel I-beams, topping them with 48-inches of concrete and moving the

> top up from its former 19’6” to a new height of 20’3”. After

> everything is in place, workers will top the steel interior of the

> roof with shot-crete.

>

> In addition to the Cooper Tunnel, crews are also working on the Big

> Sandy 1, 2, and 3 tunnels. When the project is completed, crews will

> have completed expansion of five miles in total length of 28 tunnels.

> Crews lowered the track in five of the tunnels, but all the rest

> involved raising the roof.

>

> Safety is a priority on the job site. So far, one contractor died as a

> result of injuries received on the project. Larry Dale Hunt, 28, of

> McDowell County died Oct. 22, 2009, while excavating broken concrete

> at Tunnel #3 near Gray Eagle. NS Spokesman Robin Chapman said that

> approximately 160 ton of materials fell on the excavator Hunt was

> operating. Hunt was working for Johnson Western Gunite.

>

> When the project is finished, it will cut the mileage double-stacked

> trains travel from Hampton Roads to Chicago by about 1,000 miles.

>

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