Chief engineer Claudius Crozet divided the Blue Ridge Railroad into sixteen construction sections over time, with section one consisting of the Blue Ridge Tunnel and 1,000 feet beyond each portal. Sections two, three, and four extended east from Nelson County to Albemarle County, and section four included the still operative Little Rock Tunnel and man-made embankments as high as eighty feet. Farther east, earth slides and roof cave-ins made the Brooksville Tunnel on section five the most dangerous of the railroad's four passages to build, while Kelly's Cut just east of it suffered repeated slides and was finished only seven months before the railroad opened for business. The Greenwood Tunnel on section six was the first passage completed; finished in 1853, it served as the end of the line for westbound passengers until the railroad fully opened five years later. Sections seven and eight crossed rolling farmland as the grade leveled out the east side of Rockfish Gap, then joined section sixteen through what is now the community of Crozet to Mechum's River Bridge, the eastern end of the Blue Ridge Railroad. Sections nine through twelve ran from 1,000 feet beyond the west portal of the Blue Ridge Tunnel down to the South River Bridge in Waynesboro, which marked the railroad's western end. Although the Virginia Central Railroad built sections thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, the state partly financed them and Claudius Crozet executed the construction contracts. When the Blue Ridge Railroad fell behind schedule in 1853, Virginia Central directors chose to build a temporary track around the unfinished Brooksville and Blue Ridge Tunnels and Kelly's Cut, and when it opened to passenger and light freight traffic in April 1854 it immediately reduced travel across the Blue Ridge Mountains from days to hours before being dismantled after the permanent line opened in April 1858.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Afton, Virginia · USA