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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Anybody making last chance photos at Coopers and
the other tunnels being daylighted? See attached article from BD Telegraph
below:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Jim Cochran</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=storyheadline style="MARGIN: auto 0in"><FONT face=Verdana><STRONG>Light
at the end of the tunnel:</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN class=storycredit1><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><STRONG>By Bill
Archer</STRONG></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 7.5pt; COLOR: #3c470b; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><BR>Bluefield
Daily Telegraph<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana size=2>COOPERS — When the workers laboring to raise the
roof of the old Cooper Tunnel on the Norfolk Southern mainline in Mercer County
see daylight, it’s about time to call it a day.<BR><BR>NS is on the home stretch
of the Heartland Corridor project that started in the fall of 2007 and is on
track to be finished later this summer. When it’s done, the Heartland Corridor
will enable NS to move double-stacked freight cars from Lambert’s Point (near
Hampton Roads, Va.) on the Atlantic coast all the way to Chicago on the Lake
Michigan shore.<BR><BR>“When people ask, I tell them we’re clear in Virginia as
far as Belcher Bridge in Bluefield,” James N. Carter Jr., PE, chief
engineer/bridges and structures with NS said. “When they ask me when it will be
done, I tell them August.”<BR><BR>Carter, 57, is an old-school railroader who
was born in Piedmont, near Mullens when his father, a Virginian Railway
locomotive engineer, was serving in the Korean War with the U.S. Army. After the
Virginian merged with the Norfolk & Western Railway in 1959, the family
moved from Mullens to Bluefield, where the senior Mr. Carter worked with the
N&W. The family picked out a home on the Virginia side so young Jim could
pursue his lifelong dream of attending Virginia Tech. “As an in-state student,”
Carter said.<BR><BR>Each structure — tunnel, low bridge or narrow cut — along
the 1,200 mile-plus long Heartland Corridor has its own set of challenges.
Before crews with LRL Construction of Tillamook, Ore., started work, Carter had
to hammer out the details of the project with his brother NS railroaders. Both
mainline tracks needed to be shut down for a while, but with as many as 18
trains moving through Bluefield over a 12-hour period, Gary Shepard,
superintendent of NS’s Pocahontas Division headquartered in Bluefield would have
his hands full.<BR><BR>“The hardest thing about doing a job like this is having
to run trains every day on one of the busiest sections in the NS system,” Carter
said. “I worked at the coal load-out in Lambert’s Point for 15 years, so I know
how important it is. I wanted as much uninterrupted time as possible to work on
the structures, so the transportation planning people worked with people on the
coal traffic side and we figured it out.<BR><BR>“Gary asked me: ‘Does it make
any difference if you work in the day or night?’ I told him it’s always dark in
the tunnel, so it didn’t matter,” Carter said. “They close the track down from 2
a.m., until noon every day. We get a section done, clean everything up and get
back to it when we go in the next day.” Since coal traffic is traditionally
heavier late in the week, the Cooper Tunnel crew works Saturday through
Wednesday.<BR><BR>Initial construction of the Cooper Tunnel was a significant
moment in the history of the N&W Railway’s development of the McDowell
County coalfields. Keystones at both ends of the tunnel bear a 1902 date, but
the start of the tunnel triggered the development of the vast metallurgical
coalfields in McDowell County. Pioneer coal baron Jenkin Jones was in the first
wave of McDowell County coal developers, but Samuel A. Crozer, John J. Lincoln,
L.E. Tierney and others soon ignited the McDowell County coal boom of the early
20th Century.<BR><BR>The crews who built the Cooper Tunnel in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries built it to last. The 680-foot long tunnel has a huge void
above the roof that appears on maps to extend more than two-thirds the length of
the structure. The void is listed at as much as 18 feet on some of the maps, but
Bill Hawk, an inspector with Jacobs Associates laughed and hinted that the
charts may not be entirely accurate.<BR><BR>The roof of the old tunnel was lined
courses of bricks set in mortar, topped with another 4-foot layer of concrete.
“Some huge rocks fell on the top in that void over the years, but didn’t come
through,” Carter said.<BR><BR>“They originally had wood stacked up in there,”
Jared Beeler, superintendent on the tunnel job for LRL said.<BR><BR>“One place
up in there, we found lead buckets that they used to carry grout up there,” Mike
Downs of LRL said. “They built this back when men were men.” The LRL crews
donated the lead grout buckets and some other artifacts to Bramwell Mayor Louise
Stoker to display at the Bramwell Depot.<BR><BR>Carter said crews are replacing
the arched brick roof with curved steel I-beams, topping them with 48-inches of
concrete and moving the top up from its former 19’6” to a new height of 20’3”.
After everything is in place, workers will top the steel interior of the roof
with shot-crete.<BR><BR>In addition to the Cooper Tunnel, crews are also working
on the Big Sandy 1, 2, and 3 tunnels. When the project is completed, crews will
have completed expansion of five miles in total length of 28 tunnels. Crews
lowered the track in five of the tunnels, but all the rest involved raising the
roof.<BR><BR>Safety is a priority on the job site. So far, one contractor died
as a result of injuries received on the project. Larry Dale Hunt, 28, of
McDowell County died Oct. 22, 2009, while excavating broken concrete at Tunnel
#3 near Gray Eagle. NS Spokesman Robin Chapman said that approximately 160 ton
of materials fell on the excavator Hunt was operating. Hunt was working for
Johnson Western Gunite.<BR><BR>When the project is finished, it will cut the
mileage double-stacked trains travel from Hampton Roads to Chicago by about
1,000 miles.</FONT></P>
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