CME Expedition 21

Location: Skien, Norway.
Members: 001, 003, 004, 006.
Type: Emergency Tunnel.
Status: Active.

Sometimes we go looking for places that for all logical reasons must exist. It's like you know they're right by, but you just can't seem to figure out it's exact location. Like other things in life, all of a sudden they turn up right under your nose and had been there all along..just waiting, teasing..luring you in.

This was to be one of those places. As mentioned in early reports there is a train tunnel running underneath parts of Skien city centre. We had already discovered at least one, quite possibly two entrances connecting to the main tunnel from surface level. When building tunnels today, it is required to have emergency exits every now and then, throughout the tunnel, but when the Skien Tunnel was built, safety was almost unheard of, or at least not taken into much consideration. But still, I knew there had to be at least one more, considering the length they had to travel to transport the rubble and rocks if they were to exit through the portals at each end. The more logical thing would be to drill holes through the sides of the tunnel to shorten the distance needed to get rid of the stone they brought out.

Either way..one day while out strolling through my neighborhood I for some reason took a closer look at one of the gardens that were "too large" to match the house...turned out that the "missing entrance/exit" had been there all along, in someone's garden (!), right underneath my nose, litteraly 600 ft. from where I live.

Imagine having this beauty in your back yard!

I popped over the fence to have a closer look, and as you can see in the above picture..the gates inside were wide open. Lady luck had struck again! I naturally called up the other cavies and a few of them were quite eager to go exploring indeed. Flashlights were gathered, cameras brought out and into the darkness we delved.

Caveman 004 leading the way.

We swung left around the corner in the far end of the picture above and were met with 50/50 exitement/ disappointment. The steel door in front of us could either be locked or could turn out to unveil something similar to what we experienced in Expedition 10 . Unfortunately this door was locked real tight with no sign of budging. The disappointment could be felt amongst us all.

Here, but no further.

 
On the bright side of things..atleast now we knew where it was. On our way back out..004, managed to step in some foul smelling dog shit that haunted us for a long time. When we get to august, and have our 1st. year celebration..he is a clear candidate for the shit of the year award! Ahh man, that was some nasty shit..just writing about it gives me nausea.

Do not despair for lack of pictures from behind the door..I managed to figure out that this place was to be permanently sealed, so time was of the essence. I sent a formal request to the head honcho of the norwegian state owned railway maintenance something something, along with their property management office. The result being that, long story short, we were granted access for documenting this emergency exit before it is sealed of and gone forever. But I'll leave that report for another day...  

-Caveman 001-
 

CME Expedition 8

Location: Porsgrunn, Norway.
Members: 001, 002, 003.
Type: Train Tunnel.
Status: Inactive / Abandoned.

During our first trip to Porsgrunn, we were just snooping around visiting some of the sites we knew about. One of the targets for the day was an old, abandoned industrial train tunnel which runs underneath most of Porsgrunn. The tracks branch of from the main line, run a total stretch of 1883 meters, or 6177 ft. in tunnel before exiting to a large industrial port site.Caveman 003 had wanted to go to this place for a long time after hearing about it. I had been there previously and knew it was easily accessible. After parking the car, and trying not to attract to much attention from a few youngsters playing nearby, we carefully crossed what once would have been a fence, but was now torn down, halfway concealed by small plants. A few feet later our dissappointment was enormous when we saw they had fenced off the tunnel at this previously open end as well. Still bummed out we took some pictures before moving on.

The Tunnel

Locked Tight

Beyond The Gates

You would just love to see the inside of those gates wouldn't you? Well, we are not the first ones here, probably not the last either. Respect goes out where respect is due, so go check their pictures of this place. BarkUE , Olav XO, 28 Days Later . Great pictures by these guys.

Our journey to Porsgrunn would still turn out to be a major success though, 002 noticed something amazing by chance, but i'll keep that for a later post.   

-Caveman 001-