A tale of 7 tunnels: The former Tunnel #5! The old V&T Virginia City Branch included 7 tunnels, 5 of which lined the route from Carson City to Virginia City. The last of these, and the unofficial entrance to the city proper, was Tunnel #5, sometimes referred to as "Ward" or "Julia". At a length of just 97 feet, it was the shortest of all of the tunnels on the line. Like several of the others, it was plagued by settling and shifting rock. Still, it lasted almost until the end of operations on this line in 1938, when its structural integrity threatened the adjacent State Route 341 Overpass. At that time, the railroad elected to "daylight" it by cutting away the top of the mountain, leaving the nice, deep rock cut that you see here. The bridge deck and one abutment of the Route 341 Bridge are actually visible in this shot, just above and to the left of the second locomotive in the double-header pictured here. When the V&T's engineers removed this tunnel back in '38, they could not have known that one of their last little construction projects before pulling out of town would actually facilitate the rebuilding of the line, over 3 decades later. When the Gray family began putting down track in the 1970s, rebuilding the interior of this tunnel was one major headache they didn't have to bother with.
