CSX $250m tunnel under Washington DC is over half done (1872 Virginia Avenue Tunnel)

Satellite + Paint

Washington DC had a Capital Hill Tunnel under First Street for passenger trains and a Virginia Avenue/Navy Yard Tunnel for freight trains. Both tracks join near 2nd and E Streets SW.
On the satellite image to the right, I show the Capital Hill Tunnel that carries passenger trains to Union Station in blue and the Virginia Ave./Navy Yard Tunnel that helps bypass freight trains around Union Station in yellow.


Below, the signal on the passenger tracks near the south portal looks like B&O. Before the Chessie was formed in 1972, B&O and C&O had already merged in 1963. (The B&O Chicago Terminal and Western Maryland were added to B&O-C&O in 1972 to form the Chessie system. [Parks])

American-Rails.com posted
Having just left Washington Union Station, Chesapeake & Ohio E8A #4003 exits the tunnel beneath First Street in Washington, D.C. with train #1, the westbound "George Washington," on December 6, 1970. Roger Puta photo/Marty Bernard collection.
[Update: this is probably a different tunnel in Washington, DC.]

Old Satellite, east portal

Old Satellite, west portal

The Virginia Avenue Tunnel was designed by Penny's chief engineer and opened in 1906 to replace the Navy Yard Tunnel, which was completed in 1872. The original Virginia Avenue Tunnel was double track. But it was converted to signal track down the center in 1936 to gain more clearance for electrification. By 1981 when Conrail turned off electrification for freight traffic, freight cars had grown tall enough to preclude going back to two tracks. But even with one track down the center, the tunnel was still not high enough to clear double-stack containers. So, not only does it reduce the economies of container traffic, the single track has become a congested choke point on the CSX system. Furthermore, it is not unusual for passenger trains to be blocked by freight trains since the two routes join west of here. Congestion also means idling diesel engines with their noise and pollution. Unlike the south suburbs of Chicago, when CSX screws up near Congressmen and Surface Transportation Board people, things happen to fix the problem.

They are using two 48-foot movable forms to construct the tunnel lining. Rubber mats are used under the concrete ties and under the granite ballast to protect the concrete floor of the tunnel and to stop vibrations from bothering the neighbors "Project-related utility work has substantially reduced the potential for the existing tunnel to be flooded during heavy rain events." Rather than driving steel piles into the ground, the contractor is drilling holes that are filled with steel and concrete. This avoids disturbing the neighbors with the noise, vibrations and dust of pile driving.

[Trains Magazine, February, 2017, pp38-45]

I found a video of a pile driver that lets you hear the banging rather than replacing the audio with muse.


The new tunnel is built south of the existing tunnel. When it was completed in December, 2016, the track was shifted to it so that the old tunnel can be removed and replaced with a second tunnel. Then CSX can double track this stretch. The tunnels are being built with cut-and-fill. That means that at least parts of Virginia Avenue is unusable for years. Decades ago the subways in Washington DC were built with cut-and-fill, and I remember when I visited my aunt that she complained that it was really hard driving around town because so many streets were closed.

ProgressiveRailroading

The Progressive Railroading article says the tunnel will cost $250m. In 2010, it was estimated to cost $160m [ggwash]

This tunnel will finish the 61 clearance projects that were needed for CSX's National Gateway project that supports running double-stack trains from east coast ports to the heart of the Midwest including their largest intermodal terminal in North Baltimore, OH.

Update: I noticed a Nov 2019 image has caught the construction in progress.

Satellite

Ghost Rails and Forgotten Highways posted

For more than 140 years, CSX freight moving between the Northeast and the South through Washington funneled onto a single track inside a masonry bore finished in 1872. The Virginia Avenue Tunnel ran beneath Capitol Hill from 2nd Street SE to 11th Street SE, less than a mile from the Capitol dome. In 2014 the Washington Post reported 20 to 30 freight trains a day using that one track. The tunnel's interior measured 28 feet wide and 17 feet 8-7/8 inches tall — wide enough for two tracks, too short for a container stacked on a container. The Historic American Engineering Record photographed the structure in December 2014, months before demolition began.

The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad built the first section between 1870 and 1872, and it was known as the Navy Yard Tunnel for what stood nearby. That original bore ran about 1,500 feet. Between 1903 and 1906 the Pennsylvania Railroad, which controlled the line, extended it westward to remove grade crossings of rail lines and roads from Virginia Avenue SE — work tied to the new Union Station and to the McMillan Commission plan for the city. The District gave the railroad five years to finish and ceded a five-acre tract in Garfield Park. Finished length was about 3,788 feet. The completed tunnel carried freight only, a bypass around Union Station that the record calls the gateway to the south.

It was built for two tracks and did not keep them. As equipment grew and the line was electrified in the 1930s the second track came out; the removal is usually dated to 1936. What remained was one track on crushed stone over a dirt floor, under brickwork that leaked. In 1985, with Conrail operating the line, a section near 5th Street SE gave way. The HAER survey puts the collapse at roughly 250 feet, contemporary reporting at 300. Crews worked around the clock and 600 feet of tunnel was rebuilt. In 2009 water weakened the floor again, a rail split, and two locomotives derailed underground.

The tunnel was one half of a two-part chokepoint. On the Virginia side, the Long Bridge of 1904 carries two tracks and is still the only railroad crossing of the Potomac between Washington and Virginia; the Federal Railroad Administration counted 76 CSX, Amtrak and VRE trains on it per weekday. CSX rebuilt the tunnel by cut-and-cover between May 2015 and the fall of 2018, running trains through the construction the whole time. The result is two bores, roughly 4,100 feet long and about 21 feet tall. The first double-stack train went through on December 23, 2016. The 1872 stonework is gone. Did you ever stand at 2nd Street and watch a train come out of the old portal?

The HAER photographer also documented the arched safety niches cut into the tunnel's north wall — pockets in the masonry where a track walker could stand while a train filled the single-track bore. The retaining wall on the north side of the tracks near the east portal was Seneca sandstone dating to 1872, the same red stone quarried along the Potomac in Montgomery County that faces the Smithsonian Castle. The east portal itself was Potomac bluestone; the west portal and the 1903–06 extension were ashlar granite.