Oh yeah, did I mention that Cincinnati has an abandoned underground subway system. And did I mention that while we were in Cincinnati, my brother and I went into said abandoned subway system?
Alice learned about it over the summer while she was working at the now-extinct Kentucky Post, then she told me. I had to go. I googled it and found out that the project cost 6 million dollars when it was started in 1925. They got the tunnels and platforms built and ran out of money before they could lay tracks. Currently there are two sections still in-tact. One section is about 1000 yards long, while the other section extends about 2.6 miles under Central Parkway. Currently the tunnels are used by the phone and water companies to provide utilities for the suburbs of Cincinnati. They occasionally open the tunnels for tours, but I hear the waiting list is 2,000 people long.
The original plan was to have a section of the subway below ground and a section above. The main entrance to the subway is considered the opening where the tunnel was supposed to switch from below- to above-ground. To keep the cables and pipes in the tunnel safe from thieves and to keep vagrants and vandals out the city put giant metal doors on the tunnel entrance. Jack and I were very disappointed when we walked up, but we managed to find a way in.
We walked into the tunnel, which was full of graffiti (some good and some not so much), until we came to the first platform, which was extremely eerie. We walked for about an hour and had to leave before we got to the second of four platforms because we had to eat dinner. I was pissed. Apparently the last stop is the most developed, with benches and ticket booths. I’ve also read that during World War I, the last stop was used as a fallout shelter and still has cots and survival kits in it.
Tunnels are black, as in zero light, so focusing is difficult. I had the sense to bring a strobe his time, but I didn’t spend much time using it. I’ve seen bad pictures of tunnels that are taken with on-camera flash, and that’s what I was trying to get as far away from as possible. But trying to create dynamic light in the pitch-black with a constantly moving subject while trying to focus and hold a strobe is hard. It’s even harder when you want to be enjoying what you’re experiencing rather than fighting camera equipment. It’s almost like missing the birth of your first child because you’re trying to set up lights. When it;s your first time, you don’t want to miss a thing. Once you get to your fourth kid, seeing it all isn’t as important. When I go back I know I’ll take a camera, but I don’t know how much I’ll be using it.
This shot could have been a lot better, but when you only have one chance to coordinate everything, it can be difficult. This is in the first, shorter tunnel.
Again, taken in tunnel 1. Again, could have been better.
The first tunnel, the one that was 1000 yards long, was completely open and partially covered by low-hanging trees. Naturally it was a place where homeless people slept. In the next section of tunnel over there was a sleeping bag and a pile of ice. Since the ice was still ice and not water, we figured someone had just been there. Jack shuffles through all the malt liquor bottles that littered the entrance.
Jack near the entrance to the first tunnel, the one with the homeless.
Jack in the second, harder to enter tunnel. This is the kind of shot I was trying to avoid.
This is a giant pipe that ran the length of the tunnel. I jumped from the first platform onto the pipe. Jack’s down there somewhere.
These holes led to the storm sewer along the side of Central Parkway, which are another possible entrance in the event that entrance 1 is sealed off.
