A 275-foot tunnel, ingeniously constructed under the Square in 1851, is the most striking reminder of the decade in which three railroad lines were brought through Bellows Falls, creating one of the most important railroad junctions in New England. Partially cut through solid rock, the tunnel is lined with rough-cut stone blocks. The portals at each end are decorated with radiating voussoirs around round-arch openings. By the 1880s, a large rail complex on the Island included two semicircular locomotive roundhouses, large switching yards, and numerous warehouses and storage sheds. Into the 20th century, the railroads enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the village's tourist hotels and its thriving paper and farm machinery manufacturers.
Southbound Vermonter squeezing through
the tunnel, 2005. 953 KB movie in wmv (Windows MediaPlayer Video)
format. I tried to save it in MPEG format, but my software
couldn't compress it enough for my web space. Probably, you shouldn't link to
the movie; I'll probably have to take it down after a while. By the way, the
camcorder was on a tripod. I wasn't standing insanely close to the passing
train.
Christian
Science Monitor article about the lowering of the rail bed, Sept. 8, 2005
