Vermont lawmakers would like to reduce wear and tear on their highways by increasing the use of railroads.
Until now, an historic train tunnel has limited freight options along the Connecticut Valley because its not high enough for bigger cars.
Now, federal dollars in the latest transportation bill are earmarked to fix the problem.
The Vermont Standard's Kevin Forrest has the story.
A massive freight train rumbles through the crossing at Claremont Junction.
Railroad buffs who gather here would probably notice this train has no “double stack†cars.
That’s not for lack of freight.
It's because of what railroad experts call a “chokepoint†17 miles to the south.
That chokepoint keeps those double stacks off the rails that run up and down the Connecticut River Valley.
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Back the mid-1800s, Bellows Falls village in the town of Rockingham was a bustling industrial hub.
It already sported one of the nation’s first commercial canals. But the railroad was coming and needed to get through Bellows Falls village.
Steep hills on one side and a rocky river on the other denied an obvious route.
So In 1851, the railroad dug a 281-foot tunnel right underneath the village square.
Richard Ewald, Rockingham’s director of commercial development, says that builders probably had no idea they were creating a one-of-kind passage.
Ewald - There are no other railroad tunnels that go underneath a village or a town in the state of Vermont. And this one carries freight as well as Amtrak.
The 21 foot high tunnel is on the National Historic Register and has been hailed as a major engineering feat
The continuous archway is comprised of stone pieces fit together like a puzzle.
No mortar is necessary.
Yet the tunnel is so solid Ewald says it doesn’t shake the historic Windham Hotel above it.
Ewald - I’ve been in that building standing directly over the tunnel when freight trains went through and one can hear it, but there’s no physical vibration to the building.
The tunnel served its purpose well for nearly a century and a half, helping to connect passing trains to the rest of Vermont’s 600 miles of railroad. But in recent years, lack of clearance has kept the more profitable double-stack freight cars from traveling through the tunnel.
This means that shipments of automobiles from ports in Montreal to the north as well as southern New England must travel by truck.
Rep. Steve Howard of Rutland is vice chair of Vermont’s House Transportation Committee.
He’s working to create a new rail authority.
One of its aims is to preserve Vermont’s highways by shifting freight from trucks to trains.
Howard - And there is a potential for about 30,000 fewer truck trips a year on our Interstates if we fix that tunnel.
But it’s not just a matter of raising the roof.
No one wanted to disturb the tunnel’s historic arches.
The tunnel floor has already been lowered twice.
And a double-stack car actually made it through the tunnel on a test run, but with little room to spare.
Howard says a greater margin is needed if trains are going to regularly pull the higher cars.
Howard - It just barely misses it. The problem is you can’t take the chance that somehow something might shift and then the double-stack car gets stuck in the tunnel and the system might get shut down.
Designers finally figured a way to reposition the track within the tunnel and lower the entrance and exit to accommodate the higher rail cars.
But Howard says there's still not a lot of wiggle room.
Howard - They lower the floor, basically, or the track. And to do that you have to be cautious of the water that’s below and you can only go down so far. So it’s a tricky engineering situation.
Tricky, but not insurmountable, says Charlie Miller, rail program manager at the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
Miller - The railroads do this all the time. It just ah, it adds cost to it and that’s some of the things we’re looking at right now.
Miller says state and federal funds are in place for the upgrade.
Miller: It could be anywhere between $1 million and two and half million.
But despite the cost, Representative Howard says this tunnel project is a top priority.
Howard - The tunnel’s probably—outside of the Rutland Railyard relocation—the most significant project in all of our efforts to upgrade the rail system.
Work is slated to begin in the spring.
Like the tunnel and the trains that go through it, the project should go on without the people of Bellows Falls even know it's going on.
For NHPR news, this is Kevin Forrest
