The Brookville Tunnel (also Brooksville Tunnel) was a historic railroad tunnel engineered by Claudius Crozet during the construction of the Blue Ridge Railroad in the 1850s. The tunnel was part of a series of four tunnels used to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia for the Virginia Central Railroad of the United States. The Brookville Tunnel was the second tunnel used to cross the mountains from the east (the easternmost being the Greenwood Tunnel), and was located approximately west of the village of Greenwood, Virginia.
During its construction, numerous cave-ins and landslides occurred because of the fragile and weak rock the tunnel passed through, and at one point, an outbreak of cholera forced work to stop. By October 1856 the tunnel was completed at a cost of $114,600, having been lined with a thick elliptical brick arch to hold back the earth. The Brookville Tunnel was used by the Virginia Central Railroad, and after 1868, the line's successor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. After the reorganization of the line in 1878 as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, the tunnel continued to be used until it was demolished and replaced by a cut during the construction of Interstate 64 in the 1960s and 1970s, at which point it was one of only two of Crozet's original four tunnels still in use.
History
On March 5, 1849, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act to incorporate the Blue Ridge Railroad. This railroad was to construct a rail line over the Blue Ridge Mountains for the Louisa railroad (renamed as the Virginia Central Railroad in February 1850) from a point near Blair Park at the eastern base of the mountains to Waynesboro in the Shenandoah Valley via Rockfish Gap. Claudius Crozet was appointed as chief engineer of the Blue Ridge Railroad and developed a plan to cross the mountains using a series of four tunnels. The first tunnel from the east was the Greenwood Tunnel, built through a difficult and insecure ridge near Greenwood. Brookville tunnel was located west of the Greenwood Tunnel, also built through a small offshoot spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Construction on the Brookville Tunnel, or the "middle" or "second tunnel" as it was then called, was begun sometime between 1849 and 1851. The earth encountered at Brookville was of a much weaker quality than at the Greenwood Tunnel, rendering the digging of the tunnel both an extremely dangerous and difficult task. Although the eastern section of the ridge was composed of firm and sturdy rock, the majority of the tunnel passed through a mixture of frail slate that was formed at a steep angle, soapstone, and clay. When exposed to air, this mixture would often disintegrate causing large amounts of earth to fall into the tunnel bore. On two occasions during the tunnel's construction, though great care was taken to provide temporary support, major cave-ins occurred forming craters on top of the ridge, as much as above the tunnel. Another slide occurred on the outside of the western portal that blocked the entrance to the tunnel and prevented workers from repairing the damage from the two internal cave-ins. Rocks often fell down upon the timbers under which the men worked, creating sounds described as "resembling that of distant thunder". The weakness of the earth, especially in the western sections, necessitated the implementation of a strong arch throughout approximately of the tunnel and a durable brick lining. Crozet described the nature of the work on the tunnel in an 1854 letter:
The Brooksville Tunnel is the most difficult work of the kind, I have seen any record of: at the Western entrance, the pressure of the big slides actually causes the bottom to surge up, as is sometime the case in coal mines; in view of the sliding tendency and immense pressure of this ground, it will be advisable to enter on that side with an invested arch to prevent a collapse...This work is vastly more difficult than the Greenwood Tunnel was, though it was not, by any means, an easy safe job.