Nice Shot!! I ´ve a question, the tunnel ´ve a door? why? who is the function of this door?
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haha, Ive gotten a bunch of e-mails asking that same question, so might as well explain to the whole class :-p. The Cascade Tunnel is 7.8 miles long. And as we all know, internal combustion engines need oxygen to function. When a train passes through the tunnel, it burns all hte oxygen and leaves all the gasses and hot air in the tunnel. The purpose of the door is to close one end of the tunnel and 2 huge fans "flush" out the tunnel, which is what that structure off to the left is for. It gets more complicated than that, like different procedures for direction and type of train, but theres not enough room to write about that. Hope this explains it all! -Mike Bjork
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So instead of the tunnel being full of smoke, and fumes, the tunnel is clear. The door closes, and the train is ahead, with clean air. Once the air is used, and the tunnel is full of smoke, the fans drag all that out. This leaves the tunnel clear for the next train. I suspect that this means that they can send trains through at faster rates and not worry about the enginneers of the next train getting asphixiated.
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| Posted by on June 20, 2005 | |
That's a real different view of the east portal. Cool!
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J. Randall Banks pretty much has it. Typically they'll close the door (if a train is coming from the west portal) and blow the tunnel, to keep fresh air flowing over the locos and open it once the train is a reasonable distance away. Then they'll close it back down and blow out the rest of the smoke (an amazing sight as it fills the valley with smoke). Similar procedure for East-> West travel.
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THANKS FOR THE PHOTO. I AM TRYING TO MODEL THIS AREA AND FOUND THE PHOTO A HUGE HELP.
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