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9 Obras 45 Miembros 3 Reseñas

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Obras de Walter S. Griggs

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Filled with plenty of good information. I found the writing a bit flowery at times, but appreciated learning about some unknown spots of historical significance.

Edited to add: last weekend in the car, my husband and I happened to pass the old Richmond Auditorium. I recognized it from this book and filled my husband in on its history.
 
Denunciada
klnbennett | Oct 7, 2020 |
Deep within Church Hill in Richmond, Virginia, underneath a city park, C&O Railroad steam locomotive #231 and two workers are entombed -- victims of the collapse of the Church Hill Tunnel in October of 1925. This slender volume is the fruit of a 50-year fascination by the author, who learned about the disaster from his grandfather and who did his college graduation thesis on the subject many years ago.

It's a subject about which I knew nothing until I visited the C&O Heritage Center in Clifton Forge during a trip to Virginia last Thanksgiving weekend. I was sufficiently intrigued by what I learned that I purchased this little book published by the History Press. It's a quick read -- 120 pages plus a bibliography. It tells a little about the history of Virginia railroading in general and the C & O (Chesapeake & Ohio) Railroad in particular. It talks about the construction of the tunnel, its relatively brief time of usage, and the disaster which finished it off. It gives a day-by-day account of the rescue/recovery efforts. We also learn a bit about the state of race relations in Virginia both at the time of construction and the time of the disaster. And it provides many interesting photos.

The book included much discussion of the railroad routes relating to why the tunnel was needed, how it served during its lifetime, why it was largely abandoned for a number of years, and why the railroad was trying to re-open the tunnel when it finally collapsed for good. I have to agree with another reviewer that maps would have been most helpful in understanding what the author was talking about. Without giving the reader a view of the specific geography, all that talk was pretty meaningless. The book contains one tiny and virtually unreadable diagram on page 100, but nothing else to help the reader understand the many geographical references.

In all, the book was reasonably informative regarding what happened and why. I think I would have liked a little more info about the construction techniques discussed, since they relate so directly to the disaster. This is another area where some basic diagramming would help the reader understand what happened. I wish the author had shown me a diagram of block arching, and compared it with a diagram of another construction technique that might have been more appropriate.

I did like how each chapter began with an epigraph -- some of those little readings from various literary sources were very interesting, and I may look up some of the sources to read them in their entirety!
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tymfos | otra reseña | Dec 16, 2013 |
As a Richmond native I was quite familiar with the old C&O tunnel under Church Hill. My Dad had taken me to the entrance (western one) several times and recounted the story. He had worked briefly with several folks who had worked on the rescue/recovery efforts.

Intrigued by hearing his recounting of the story of the day in October 1925 when the tunnel collapsed on the work train and crew inside, I wanted to know more. But there was no BOOK on the topic - a glaring hole in both Richmond's history (the collapse was arguably the worst natural disaster to strike the city since the Theater fire of 1811) and local railroad history.

When I learned that a book had finally come out on the topic I poured over it eagerly. The Collapse of Richmond's Church Hill Tunnel, by VCU Professor Walter S. Griggs, Jr., (History Press, 2011) looks at an important episode of Richmond's post-Civil War history. However it didn't fulfill my expectations, for several reasons. First, there is NO MAP. I am a map guy - a book can never have too many maps. There is but one map in this book, on page 100 no less, and it is a VERY shoddily-reproduced one that shows not the location of the tunnel in relation to the rest of the city but instead the location of the rescue shafts dropped into the tunnel after the collapse. A reader not familiar with Richmond's geography would be absolutely lost as to where the tunnel is located and why it was even needed, due to the local topography. This is a glaring omission that should never have been allowed to happen.

Second, it is poorly written and edited (something that seems to plague many of these History Press works, in addition to poor graphic quality). There is much repetition by the author, and too much first-person usage by him in the text as well. Despite being very well researched, Griggs gets bogged down in inane details in spots while glossing over other important details that are left unexplored. Despite interviewing witnesses and participants over a period of 50 years, the apparent depth of this research does not come through in the text.

But Griggs' work is not without merit. As noted above, it is quite well researched. After the collapse occurs, Griggs devotes a chapter to each successive day of the rescue efforts - a much more understandable and readable approach than combining all into one or two chapters (although some of the resulting "chapters" are literally one or two paragraphs). And needless to say the book fills a void in Richmond history. Griggs even tackles the popular story of the "tunnel vampire" - most authors, if they even mentioned such at all, would likely have only in passing mentioned the birth of that legend arising from the tunnel disaster.

At 120 pages, Collapse is a quick read (I read it in a single afternoon). But sans maps it can't really be deemed a "field guide" (although most folks know NOT to venture around that area, especially the east portal). The length is typical, though, of similar works by the History Press.

This is one of those books that crosses subject lines and would appeal to several audiences: Richmond history folks, railroad buffs - C&O folks in particular, and those with an interest in engineering history as well (although details on the actual structure of the tunnel itself are sparse, despite the author's harping on the unstable composition of Church Hill).

While Griggs has at least given interested audiences a book to turn to for more information, the definitive work on the subject of the Church Hill Tunnel remains to be written.
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reenactorman | otra reseña | Jun 10, 2012 |

Estadísticas

Obras
9
Miembros
45
Popularidad
#340,917
Valoración
½ 3.4
Reseñas
3
ISBNs
14