For decades, the towering pass has been slowly sinking into the forest as trees and shrubs reclaim the abandoned train track that leads to it. Walk towards its mouth and you can feel the temperature drop. The air turns from a woody to an earthy scent and the sounds of the surrounding forest fade away, replaced by the echoes of water dripping into the cave. WATCHES | Go deep into New Brunswick’s abandoned train tunnel
Explore the vast abandoned 112-year-old Blue Bell Tunnel
Built in the early 1900s, the Blue Bell Tunnel hasn’t seen a train in decades, but explorers are drawn to the structure that is slowly being engulfed by the forest.
This hole blasted through the hill in the community of Blue Bell, near Plaster Rock in northwestern New Brunswick, is all that remains of what was once called the longest tunnel in the province.
“It’s a big, dark hole in the ground,” said Jordan Lloyd, who lives nearby. He and his family have made the abandoned tunnel a destination when exploring the area’s tangle of off-road trails on their all-terrain vehicles.
“It’s really cool, carved out of the rocks,” Lloyd said.
The Blue Bell Tunnel continues to attract the attention of people exploring the area on off-road trails. (Shane Fowler/CBC News)
It’s still easy to walk to the other side of the tunnel, but it’s a harrowing feat down meters of rock that’s not for the faint of heart.
“No, I won’t go through there, no. I’m a little too scared about it,” said Lloyd. “I’m afraid the rocks will fall on me.”
This is a smart call. Despite standing for more than 110 years, there are large piles of stones through some collapses in the decades since the tunnel was abandoned.
This archive photo shows a train passing through the Blue Bell Tunnel when it was still in operation. (Submitted by New Brunswick Provincial Archives)
Named after the community it passes through, the Blue Bell Tunnel first opened in 1910.
“It was almost certainly destroyed with dynamite,” said Josh Green of the New Brunswick Provincial Archives. Provincial records and newspaper articles about the tunnel during its construction have been poured out.
“The papers are full of people dynamiting everything, every public works project in any county, they were just crazy with dynamite,” Green said.
On January 14, 1911, an article in the Daily Mail, a Fredericton newspaper, reported that at a meeting of stockholders of the Willard Kitchen Company, construction of the tunnel and the entire section of the National Transcontinental Railroad in New Brunswick would be slowly completed. summer of that year.
“The Blue Bell tunnel, which is nearly a thousand feet long, is also included in the company’s contract. It is the longest tunnel in the province,” the article states.
But despite the title, the Blue Bell Tunnel didn’t attract much attention during its construction or while it was in operation, according to Green. It was dwarfed by the construction of the nearby Salmon River leg just over five kilometers down the track. This impressive span was the second longest in Canada and dominated the newspapers of the time.
While Green says not much is known about the construction of the tunnel, the entire stretch of the National Transcontinental Railroad, including both the leg and the tunnel, was in operation by the fall of 1912.
He said there are records of inspectors making the trek up the line and returning with a bevy of surprise guests on the return trip.
“Railroad employees going up one way, hunters putting up with deer they’d killed on the way back,” Green said. “Which is New Brunswick’s perfect microcosm of how the railroad was an integral part of the province’s transportation at the time.”
Jordan Lloyd has returned to the Blue Bell tunnel many times. (Shane Fowler/CBC News)
In a testament to the tunnel’s enormity, the Blue Bell Tunnel was noted for being able to carry “the largest rail freight shipment ever made in North America.”
According to the Daily Gleaner on February 11, 1952, “two mammoth boilers” built in Collingwood, Ont., bound for Argentina via the port of Saint John, reached the tunnel “by several inches.” They were described as “standing 19 feet from the rails and over 13 feet wide, weighing 68 tons each.”
Josh Green with the New Brunswick Provincial Archives says the Blue Bell Tunnel may still be one of the largest transportation tunnels ever built in the province. (Shane Fowler/CBC News)
But in the years that followed, the tunnel began to deteriorate. In 1959 a pair of maintenance workers were inducted into the Turtle Club, an honor given to Canadian National Railways employees in Edmundston for being hit on the head by falling rocks, only to be saved by their safety helmets.
According to the Telegraph Journal on December 18, 1959, Aurele LaPointe was inducted into the club for surviving a 12-pound piece of rock that fell eight feet onto his head. And Regent employee Ouellette survived being hit by an eight-pound rock that struck his head from a 12-foot drop while working on a box car in the tunnel.
An article in the Telegraph Journal, dated 18 December 1959, reports that workers survived a rockfall in the Blue Bell Tunnel and were admitted to the Turtle Club. (Submitted by New Brunswick Provincial Archives)
So, despite its impressive size, trains stopped using the tunnel shortly after. Eventually a bypass was built around the hill and the tunnel was abandoned.
To this day trains still run through the spectacular Salmon River Triangle, but the Blue Bell Tunnel has been left to decay. The land it rests on is now owned by Northern Construction, an asphalt company that operates nearby pits.
And it remains a local attraction. There is a makeshift fire pit where tracks were once laid. You can still find pieces of the old track, such as rotting ties and rusted rail tops, surrounded by empty beer cans and graffiti.
It’s easy to feel dwarfed by the vastness of the abandoned Blue Bell Train Tunnel. (Shane Fowler/CBC News)
Green is believed to be one of the few people who have ever heard of the Blue Bell Tunnel. He grew up about four kilometers away in the Crombie settlement community. And it still holds a certain attraction for him.
“It was a place that we just went back to as kids and as teenagers, and then I went back to as an adult many times,” Green said. “It’s really impressive and scary.”
“It’s a pretty scary, scary place.”
