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Wow. Yes, and Virginia is coal country. Lots of tunnels there. Springfield, Mo. New cave discovered there during building of road. I wonder if the terrorist have congregated where the tunnels are, in this Country. Hum. I know there is a nest of them in Virginia. Chicago, Il has a network of caves, too.

This website tells the story about a 60-mile, two-foot gauge electric railroad that operated 149 locomotives and over 3000 freight cars in small tunnels forty feet below the streets of downtown Chicago.

Welcome To The Chicago Tunnel Company

The Illinois Tunnel Company ( later known as the Chicago Tunnel Company) started operating trains through the freight tunnels in 1906. The small four wheel electric locomotives hauled pony freight cars between stores, office buildings, post office facilities, warehouses, factories, and railroad stations. The tiny cars carried packages, goods, mail, food, coal, cinders, and occasionally people!

The History of Chicago's Freight Tunnels
Construction on Chicago's unique freight tunnel network began in 1899 in the basement of a tavern in the heart of the Loop near LaSalle and Madison Streets. Workers dug a small access tunnel from the basement down to the center of the intersection forty feet below grade. There, they continued to carve tunnels by hand out of the blue clay under nearly every street in downtown Chicago. Excavations were quietly removed through the tavern and other small access tunnels during the night. Forms were put in place and the tunnels were lined with non-reinforced concrete about one foot thick. The finished tunnels were roughly six feet wide by seven and a half feet high.

Typical segment of the Chicago Tunnel Company system - 40 ft. down

Two supposedly "lost treasures," the safe of the lost Italian oceanliner the Andrea Dorea and "Al Capone's Safe." I would assume that Al Capone had a number of safes where he kept his ill-gotten loot, but this one was supposedly special in that as of the early 1980's, it had remained un-opened for all those years since Capone finally died of syphallis. Both "treasures" were a bust, an absolutely unabashed bust. In the oceanliner's sunken safe, all that was located were several billion soaked and defunct Italian Lira, and in Capone's safe all they found was an empty Coke bottle. However, one thing that did come out of one of those shows that still intrigues me today is the story of the miniature freight railway that ran under Chicago for roughly sixty years from 1899 to 1959. As a report released in the early 20th century by the New York City chamber of commerce, detailing the various transportation solutions undertaken by great cities, both American and European said, "Chicago unlike other cities has chosen to put freight rather than people under the ground."