Landmark passageway is 120 years old|[3/11/06]

Published 12:00 am Monday, March 13, 2006

This year is an anniversary for the Washington Street tunnel.

It was 120 years ago that work neared completion on a tunnel through the hills south of downtown, but just who built it is not known.

A brief history of the Illinois Central Railroad gives clues about the tunnel and its origin. After the railroad was founded in 1851, the ICRR began a number of acquisitions and mergers that produced a rail company that truly lived up to its slogan &#8220Main-Line of Mid America.”

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The company had north-south lines from Chicago to New Orleans with branches all along the main tree.

During the acquisition phase, the ICRR acquired the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad and the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad.

It is possible that either the Y&MV or the LNO&T constructed the bridge/tunnel before their acquisition by ICRR in the early 1880’s. Even Gordon Cotton, curator and director of the Old Court House Museum – Eva W. Davis Memorial, has no information of which company built the tunnel.

But for years, even before ICRR owned the tracks and ran the trails, there has been trouble just west of the tunnel at the Oak Street-Mulberry Street crossing. Modern rail cars are larger and are hooked together in longer trains than were used in 1886 and frequently derailed between the crossing and the tunnel.

Some years ago, the Kansas City Southern Railway bought the east-west tracks through Vicksburg and inherited the problem. But in late 2003 and early 2004, KCS took action to alleviate the problem.

The first thing KCS did was buy the nearby Mississippi Lumber Co. property just to the north of the tracks. They began work in 2004 to demolish the old buildings on the site and started to move in fill soil to raise the surface of the ground.

Finally, the railroad company built new trackage to change the radius of the curve.

The work appears to have been effective.

&#8220I can assure you with almost 100 percent certainty there has been nothing significant there since then,” said L.W. Callaway III, Warren County Emergency Management director.

The fact was confirmed by Deputy Fire Chief Rose Shaifer.

&#8220The last derailment there was more than two years ago,” Shaifer said.

The fact was confirmed by Doniele Kane, the spokesman for KCS.

&#8220KCS has not had a derailment at the location of the Vicksburg tunnel since it was repaired November 2004,” she said.