The Allegheny Highlands Trail shares the tunnel with the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad with only a short fence to remind people to stay off the fence.
The trail only opened today and the official ribbon cutting isn't until next week (14 Dec 2006) so there are no reports of people being in the tunnel when the train comes through. I imagine it would be loud and smoky as the steam engine fills the tunnel with coal exhaust.
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half_fast_biker 77 months ago | reply
I rode down to the tunnel from Frostburg back in 2005 before they started work on that section of trail. from what I could tell they really didn't need to do any work to the tunnel to fix it up for use, other than paving the trail and putting the little fence in.
When I was there in 11/06 the train coming downhill out of that end of the tunnel wasn't really making that much noise, or putting out that much steam or smoke there. I can imagine though it'd be a LOT worse when it's traveling uphill under load.
The train WAS ear-splittingly loud at the road crossings (like Woodcock Hollow) when blowing it's horn. You could hear it for several miles away when the horn blew.
PhotoHop 57 months ago | reply
Don't think I want to share the tunnel with the train...