Perkasie Railway Tunnel circa 1912
Perkasie Tunnel Today
In it's early days the tunnel handled two tracks and was a very narrow squeeze for trains. As the story goes, long ago during the steam era in the 1940's, an engineer stuck his head out of the side of the locomotive at the wrong time. He was decapitated by a passing train.
It is said that late at night,if you travel to the north side of the tunnel and hold your ear to the rail and wait long enough, you can hear a train coming. The longer you wait, the louder the sound will get as the ghost train approaches, manned by the headless engineer. Legend has it that you start running toward the south side of the tunnel to try and out run the train. If you don't make it to the end of tunnel before the train reaches you, the engineer will cut off your head! This could be quite the challenge since the tunnel is a half mile long!
May 18 1944 The engineer, Charles L. Krous lost his head hitting it on the South Portal abutment(Perkasie side)of the tunnle. Engineered Headless, The train traveled all the way up through Quakertown before the firemen took notice where he quickly applied the brakes after passing through Quakertown Train Station. The legend is true because it has happend to me except in a different manner.
ReplyDeleteAugust 10 2006, roughly around noon I was railfanning on the South end of the Perkasie tunnel awaiting East Penn to come through so I could snap a shot of the train coming out of the tunnel. I've railfanned this tunnel plenty of times and even been in it when East Penn has gone through so I know what to expect and listen for. But on this particular day when I was approaching the tunnel I heard the familure sound of a train going through with the feel of the rumble, the sound of wheel grinds, pulsating bell, but a long long short long whistle, not a horn. As soon as I stepped into the south portal enterance, the sound stopped and I walked far enough to peer on the other end and nothing was coming through so disapointed in not catching my train for pics I thought it was a fluke. When I walked away and was about a good 50 meters away from the tunnel it happend again but with the sound alot louder and the rumble more powerful that it made my insides of my heart and stomach vibrate. I sprinted back and checked again and as soon as I stepped into the south portal... nothing... I was pissed because I didn't catch my train for pics, but was very curious and overwhelmed with what I was lucky witness. I've went back plenty of times since then to try and capture another experience but haven't been lucky. So there's my Ghost train experience of the Perkasie tunnel. -Mike Musiowski
walked through today and it was scary!!!!!!!!!!!! every so often you would here the banging of walls right next to u n wen u stopped to look it was nothing. not much but creepy.
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