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Rays Hill Tunnel

Tunnel on the original Pennsylvania Turnpike

Summary

Tunnel on the original Pennsylvania Turnpike

Field	Value
name	Rays Hill Tunnel
image	Rays Hill Tunnel at night 1942.jpg
image_size	300px
caption	Rays Hill Tunnel at night in 1942, photographed by Arthur Rothstein
line	South Pennsylvania Railroad abandoned
location	Rays Hill,
Bedford / Fulton counties, Pennsylvania, USA
coordinates
status	Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike
Currently Pike2Bike Trail
startwork	1881 - railway
1938 - highway
opened	October 1, 1940
closed	November 26, 1968 - Interstate 76 (aged 28 years)
owner	South Pennsylvania Railroad abandoned
Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission abandoned
Pike2Bike Trail
character	Hiking, biking, and skateboard trail
construction	1881–1885 - railway
1938–1940 - highway
length	3532 ft - highway
lanes	2
crosses	Rays Hill

Bedford / Fulton counties, Pennsylvania, USA Currently Pike2Bike Trail 1938 - highway Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission abandoned Pike2Bike Trail 1938–1940 - highway

Rays Hill Tunnel is an abandoned tunnel, formerly part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Rays Hill Tunnel is 3532 ft long. It was the shortest of the seven original tunnels on Pennsylvania Turnpike. Due to its short length, its ventilation fans were installed only at its western portal. Its eastern portal is the only one of the 14 tunnel portals on the original turnpike that has no ventilation fan housing. This difference could be seen by westbound traffic on the Turnpike.

The tunnel connects Bedford and Fulton Counties in South Central Pennsylvania.

Replacement

Rays Hill Tunnel during construction of the railroad tunnel in the 1880s. [[Andrew Carnegie]] is present in the middle of the photo

From the Turnpike's opening in 1940 until the realignment projects, the tunnels were bottlenecks due to reduced speeds with opposing traffic in the same tubes. Four other tunnels on the Turnpike - Allegheny Mountain, Tuscarora Mountain, Kittatinny Mountain, and Blue Mountain - each had a second tube bored, as it was determined in these instances to be the less expensive option. All of the original tunnels were part of the never-completed South Pennsylvania Railroad which history has dubbed "Vanderbilt's Folly."

Current

At the present time, the tunnels remain unlit and unimproved since their closure in 1968. The entire length of the bypassed section is now commonly known as the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Trivia

The tunnel was prominently featured in the 2005 music video for the song Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo by American rock band Bloodhound Gang.

Notes

References

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

transportation-buildings-and-structures-in-bedford-county,-pennsylvania transportation-buildings-and-structures-in-fulton-county,-pennsylvania pennsylvania-turnpike-commission former-toll-tunnels-in-the-united-states tunnels-completed-in-1940 former-toll-roads-in-pennsylvania road-tunnels-in-pennsylvania

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