Skip to main content

Brockville Railway Tunnel

Image
By
Recently, I had found out about a neat tunnel called the Brockville Railway Tunnel that was used for trains in Brockville, Ontario, located in the Thousand Islands region of the province. By chance, I decided to visit the tunnel on my way to Ottawa this past weekend.

An engineering marvel at 1730 feet in length, the Brockville Railway Tunnel happens to be the first railroad tunnel constructed in present-day Canada. The tunnel was built between 1854 and 1860 for the Brockville and Ottawa Railway to connect the Brockville waterfront on the nearby St. Lawrence River with the Ottawa River near Arnprior, Ontario to the north. Part of the tunnel is lined with brick, whereas natural stone forms the walls of the tunnel around its center portion. It should be noted that the plans to construct the tunnel was not without some public disagreement, as a number of people felt that it would be easier and more cost effective to build the rail line along the riverfront instead of building the tunnel under downtown Brockville. Supporters of building the tunnel prevailed, and as a result, trains traveled through the tunnel between 1860 and 1970.

The City of Brockville now owns the tunnel and it is used for recreational and tourism purposes. Recent renovations that took place in 2016 and 2017 (to coincide the Canada's 150th anniversary celebrations) to allow people to traverse the tunnel from end to end, as well as connect downtown Brockville and the city's waterfront with the Brock Trail system. With the renovations, there is a synchronized light and music show running every day of the year that you can enjoy if you are visiting the tunnel.

Historical plaque.

South entrance to the tunnel.

An alternate view of the south entrance to the tunnel.

Inside the brick lined part of the tunnel.

A section of the tunnel where natural rock is used for the tunnel wall. You may be able to see the transition to a brick lined portion of the tunnel wall in the distance, along with a change in the color of the light as well.

A section of the tunnel where natural rock is used for the tunnel wall.

Looking out towards the south portal of the tunnel.

Here are also a few YouTube videos to check out about the history and modern day renovation of the Brockville Railway Tunnel.



Sources and Links:
"The History of the Brockville Railway Tunnel" --- Brockville Railway Tunnel
"Brockville Railway Tunnel" --- Philips "The newly restored Brockville Railway Tunnel illuminated with Philips Color Kinetics dynamic LED lighting opens to the public this Saturday." --- Cision
"Railway Tunnel 2017 Preview" --- YourTV Brockville-Smiths Falls
"Brockville Railway Tunnel was Canada's First Railway" --- RailwayTunnel Brockville
Labels:
Location: 1 Water St W, Brockville, ON K6V 3L5, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more