Re: Tunnels

[Chris French <cfrench@starwon.com.au>]

The Swan View tunnel in W.A. was built in the 1890s on the original
alignment of the W.A.G.R.'s "Eastern Railway". It is indeed now part of
the John Forrest National Park. 

A number of 'incidents' (accidents really) caused by crews being nearly,
and actually, being overcome by fumes when going uphill through the
tunnel led to the WAGR building a 'deviation' around the tunnel. This
was on the western side of the tunnel, and Down trains (going uphill)
used this, whilst the Up trains (going downhill) continued to use the
tunnel until this was replaced by the all new, singing and dancing Avon
valley route complete with standard gauge (but no tunnels) in 1966.

The floor of the tunnel was even lowered at one stage to allow for the
larger engines being built at the time.

Cheers,
Chris. French. 


Adrian Whichello wrote:
> 
> Geoff Lambert <G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> > WA: Sirling Range, +?
> 
> I'm pretty sure there's all of one tunnel in WA and it's no longer used
> for trains. I've walked through it, it's now in John Forrest NP, along
> with a few bridges at what used to be National Park station. I thought
> it about the same size/length/loading gauge as Clarence tunnel near Zig
> Zag. Perhaps some Westralian can tell me why they felt the need for a
> tunnel in the first place - you do the return part of the walk along the
> formation that replaced it around the side of the hill and there's not
> really a lot of overburden on top of the tunnel.
> 
> --
> Dr A.P. Whichello                                Phone: +61 2 6268 8191
> Electrical Engineering Image Coding Laboratory     Fax: +61 2 6268 8443
> Australian Defence Force Academy         Email: a-whichello@adfa.edu.au
> Australia                       WWW: http://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/~adrianw
> 
> "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by Steam!" C.Babbage
>
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