Church Hill Tunnel

Church Hill Tunnel

The sealed western portal to the Church Hill Tunnel
Overview
Line	Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O)
Location	Richmond, Virginia, U.S.
Status	Unsafe, sealed
Start	37°32′10″N 77°25′24″W / 37.5361782110294°N 77.42324092557604°W / 37.5361782110294; -77.42324092557604 (West Portal)
End	37°31′38″N 77°24′54″W / 37.52714727530222°N 77.41498622454112°W / 37.52714727530222; -77.41498622454112 (East Portal)
Operation
Opened	1873
Closed	1925
Owner	CSX Transportation
Technical
Line length	approximately 4,000 ft (1,200 m)
No. of tracks	none at present
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)

Church Hill Tunnel is an old Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) tunnel, built in the early 1870s, which extends approximately 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) under the Church Hill district of Richmond, Virginia, United States. On October 2, 1925, the tunnel collapsed on a work train, killing four men and trapping a steam locomotive and ten 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 have been destroyed by sinkholes 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 portal, the tunnel is owned by the C&O's successor entity, CSX Transportation.

The tunnel, which is still considered dangerous, was featured in a 1998 newspaper article by Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Mark Holmberg and photographer P. Kevin Morley, who explored portions from the eastern portal with professional caving personnel and equipment.^[1] Efforts to unseal the tunnel and extract the buried work train have been unsuccessful.