I know they exist, but where?
The Union Pacific’s Sunset Route near Indio, CA. Then there are the various tunnels, too many to mention individually (i.e. Hudson River and East River Tunnels to Penn Station in NYC).
Lowest that is not in an undersea tunnel or mine tunnel is the Union Pacific (former SP) main line adjacent to the Salton Sea, about 233 feet below sea level. It’s a nasty place – hot, humid, windy, overrun with flies, and it smells terrible.
RWM
UP (formerly SP) Sunset Route line by the Salton Sea, somewhere between 220 and 230 feet below sea level. The original 1877 route got down to 278 feet below sea level, that spot is now under water. In addition, the Imperial Valley trackage north of El Centro is also below sea level.
For further info, see Myrick’s Railroads of Arizona Vol. I.
Not under the rivers, but well below sea level - the lower level trackage of Grand Central Station in New York and a considerable percentage of the subway tracks under Manhattan.
Japan has a number of undersea tunnels, including one monster 31 miles long that bottoms out at a depth that would have crushed a WWII submarine.
The link between Sweden and Denmark is partially bridge, partially tunnel.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - well above sea level)
And south and west of El Centro as well. The former SD&AE line west to Plaster City gets above sea level just a bit west of Dixieland, about three miles east of Plaster City. Going south from El Centro, the UP gets above sea level around Heber and is only a few feet “out of the water” by the time it gets to Calexico.
I thought RWM was talking about some of the feed lots down in the valley, which met his description of flies and smell. There’s a big one now next to the aforementioned SD&AE line just east of Dixieland.
The map shows 42nd St and Park Ave around 55 ft above sea level, so I’m guessing no New York Central track got below sea level.
RWM was probably referring to the Salton Sea itself, which is getting increasingly brackish.
Feedlot smell is nothing remarkable, and there are seemingly a zillion of them along railways, including quite a few along the Sunset Route from Maricopa to about Mohawk. The Salton Sea smell and flies, however, strike me as more insidious.
RWM
In my youth, I waterskied there. Not too bad then, but had to take a prompt shower.
Don’t forget the Chunnel between France and Great Britain !
Nicely put…
Considering that the Salton Sea is being loaded up with dissolved solids from the Colorado River, fertilizer and other agricultural runoff along with sewage from Mexicali via the New River, there’s most likely a lot of weird junk in that body of water. To make matters worse, the salinity is already higher than ocean water, which limits the kind of life forms that can live there, but not salty enough to kill off most life forms.
I kind of wonder if there are some commercially valuable chemicals in the sea, e.g. nitrates from fertilizer runoff.
As for other tracks below sea level, BART’s trans-bay tunnel and a good portion of the trackage under Market Street qualify.