 The Elroy-Sparta Tunnels |
| Dynamite blasts echoed throughout the
valley as workers excavated the tunnels. All tunnels were dug from both ends and the
workers used hand tools, horses, mules and oxen to remove the freed rock. Springs seep through the limestone walls and ceilings of all three tunnels and make them more prone to seasonal freezing and thawing. To prevent rocks from collapsing around tunnel entrances, double doors were built at each end of the three tunnels to seal in warmer temperatures during cold winter months. When the train operated here, the railroad hired tunnel watchmen to open and close the doors. The watchmen would stay in a small shack near the end of a tunnel. They worked 12 hour shifts between November and April, and their jobs were to open and close the large tunnel doors as many as 50 times a day, as there were that many trains passing through. They also were responsible for preventing collisions between eastbound and westbound trains. To stop a train they would hang a red flag or light outside the shack. To send a train through they would hang a white flag or light outside the shack. They had a telegraph in the shack to communicate with the watchmen at the other tunnels.
Sidetracks were placed all along the main line and allowed trains a safe waiting place while an oncoming train passed. One sidetrack had a water tower and potato warehouse. While they were waiting for a train to pass crews refilled the steam engine tenders with water, checked in with the telegraph operator or chatted with area farmers who frequented the potato warehouse.
As you walk through the tunnels, note the arched doorway-like indentations in the wall. This is where tunnel watchmen and repair workers stood while trains pulled through the tunnel. Tunnel walls remain blackened by the soot from hundreds of passing trains. To keep soot out of trains, windows were closed before entering tunnels, and engineers and crew members wore handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. In the days before air brakes and two way radios the railroad brakeman would have done some of his work on top of moving train cars turning large circular hand brake handles to slow or stop the train, and pass signals between the locomotive at the front of the train and the caboose at the back. Warning poles or "telltales" were placed at both ends of each tunnel. As the train passed under a telltale, the dangling wires would alert the brakeman to climb down before the train went through the tunnel. These were also called "Hobo Poles" because during the 1930s homeless men often hitched free rides on top of trains.
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