Last month I was lucky enough to be able to take some time off of school and work to railfan in the PNW. I went to attend the Autumn Leaf Slide Show in Centralia, WA., and was lucky enough to be given a tour of some of the area by the organizers of the slide show, Robert Scott and Steve Eshom. Being a full time student, and a part time worker and railfan, I often get tunnel vision. In school I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, about a year left to go and I will be done! In work, I think we all get tunnel vision in the last hour or two of a shift or even the last day of the week. As railfans, the light at the end of the tunnel can be a joyous sighting or a horrific sighting! For those people who stay off the property and never walk through tunnels, its joyous, the anticipation builds up until the head end pops out of the tunnel. But, for those people who may be “adventurous” enough to walk into a tunnel, if the light looks like the one in this photo, you are in trouble!
Very good, Ryan! This is the way to see a train in a tunnel, unless you should be on one in a tunnel (and, then, you can’t see much of it, even if you are in a dome).
Nice shot! It would be a good picture to use in one of the “demotivation” posters, with a caption of “The light at the end of the tunnel may be the headlight of an oncoming train…”
For those of us here or near the East Coast, it appears that we can see something similar at the Natural Tunnel State Park in far Southwestern Virginia. See the park’s website at: http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/nat.shtml
And, the writer of the Wikipedia article does not know that the South Atlantic and Ohio was operating through the tunnel in 1893, with two through trains between Bristol and Double Tunnel, which is 3.0 miles beyond Big Stone Gap (check this in your June, 1893, Guide). One train left Bristol in the morning, running as #1, and making the trip in 3:55. It returned, as #4, making the trip in 3:55. The other train left from Big Stone Gap as #1 1/2, ran to Double Tunnel and then ran to Bristol, as #2, making the trip in 3:25. It returned to Double Tunnel as #3, again taking 3:25, and then went back to Big Stone Gap as #4 1/2. Apparently, the Bristol-based engine was not as powerful as the Big Stone Gap-based engine.
