Tunnel artifact replaced with care
BRADYS BEND TWP, Armstrong Co. — The new sluice that will carry runoff over the old Brady Tunnel's south portal is being installed with particular attention to history.
“It is our history,” Chris Ziegler, president of Allegheny Trails, formerly the Allegheny Valley Land Trust, said of the tunnel. “A lot of men worked very hard on this tunnel, and we want to honor their vision and hard work.”
Jeff Christy, project engineer with Young & Associates Engineers and Surveyors, was at the site along the Armstrong Trail Wednesday while a crew from Palo Construction of Clarion installed the huge steel legs — known as “bents” — that will hold up a series of rubber-lined wooden boxes where the water will flow down diagonally for 125 feet over the south portal.
A sluice is a water channel controlled by a gate at the head of the channel. Water at the old railroad tunnel will then drop onto natural rocks along a bank beside the trail, into a pipe underneath the trail and, finally, into the Allegheny River below.
Christy said the easiest and least expensive method of diverting the runoff from the 25 acres above the 2,468-foot tunnel would be an elevated vertical pipe.
But Ziegler aims to retain the look of the old wooden sluice torn down last week.
Engineers discovered the old concrete on top of the tunnel was in good shape, so the bents were bolted in.
A crane then placed the steel supports the wooden boxes will be attached to.Christy explained that a special paint will be used on the steel structure that will create just enough rust to provide a historic appearance while protecting the steel.He said two fewer legs were needed for the sluice's new structure, which also helped keep costs down.The sluice should be complete within three weeks. Contractors will then add more liner to the entrance of the tunnel's south portal for a total of 75 feet of new liner.Allegheny Trails is working to restore the 1915 tunnel so it can be used by walkers, joggers and cyclists as well as close a gap in the Erie-Pittsburgh Trail.Ziegler said funds are lined up to pay the $1.5 million cost of Phase II, which is the current phase placing the new sluice and liner at the south portal.She said the $6 million tunnel repair project is being broken into phases as grant money becomes available.Phase I saw the addition of liner and a hole repaired at the tunnel's north portal.
