Hobby tunneling

Hobby tunneling is tunnel construction as a pastime. Usually, hobby tunnelers dig their tunnels by hand, using little equipment, and some can spend years or even decades to achieve any degree of completion. In some cases tunnels have been dug secretly, and are only discovered by chance.

Motivations A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through the surrounding soil or rock for the purpose of transport, passage or communication. Tunnel construction is a sub-discipline of civil engineering and usually the domain of engineers and construction companies. When civilians dig tunnels, it may be for criminal purposes (like smuggling or hiding illegal goods), or gaining unauthorised access to an area. Tunneling may be part of the building of underground dwellings. Subterranean construction may be done as an art form, as in the work of Ra Paulette. Dutch graphic designer Leanne Wijnsma digs short, shallow tunnels as an art form and for fun. She has dug thirteen by 2015, three at cultural festivals.

Hobby A few people have dug tunnels as a hobby or for fun, although some have given additional reasons for their activities. Seymour Cray, for instance, said that the work of digging helped him to think about other problems, and Harrison Dyar saw digging as a form of exercise. Some hobbyists started out constructing something useful, but continued digging after completion. This was the case with William Lyttle, who started by digging a wine cellar, and Michael Altmann, who excavated a cooling cellar for a café. A Swiss contemporary of Altmann named Peter Junker dug in his garden, searching for water, but continued digging after finding some, excavating a tunnel length of 220 metres (720 ft). Others maintain that they excavated for a particular purpose, although their tunnelling effort seems out of proportion to the stated purpose. Dyar biographer Marc Epstein thinks it is mainly outsiders that desire a sense of purpose. On Dyar's tunneling for exercise reasons he says that "it’s almost unfathomable, the amount of energy it would take" and that "it still doesn’t add up". Author Will Hunt thinks extensive tunnelling is at least part obsession. Psychiatrist Anton Tölk believes that tunnel digging can be interpreted as a desire to return to the security of the mother's womb, and that as an activity it allows contemplative satisfaction.

Notable cases

Michael Altmann Between 1958 and 2008, Austrian Michael Altmann dug two tunnels of 180 metres (590 ft) combined. At first, he wanted a cooling cellar for a cafe he was to open, but upon completion he could not get a permit. In 1965, he took over another bar, but kept his digging as a hobby. Altmann would mainly use a pickaxe for digging and occasionally explosives, after passing an explosives handling examination at the fire department. He dug a second tunnel branching off from the first one, using a tunnel drilling machine he designed and built himself. In 1962, he installed steel doors on the tunnel system and added a store of emergency rations, with the intention of making it usable as a nuclear bunker. In 2008, Altmann reached a block of granite and, considering his age, gave up tunnel digging.

Lyova Arakelyan Lyova (or Levon) Arakelyan dug a storage cellar under his house on the edge of Yerevan in 1985. When completed, he continued to dig and kept at it for some 23 years, constructing an extensive complex of tunnels, rooms and stairs which extended 21 metres (69 ft) deep into solid rock. Arakelyan stated that he received directions for his work in dreams and visions. The underground spaces were transformed into a museum, called 'Divine Underground', after his death in 2008. Arakelyan never made any money from his tunneling in life, and the museum provides some income for his family.

John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland

The 5th Duke of Portland is known to have been a hobby tunneler, although he did no digging himself that we know of but rather had workmen build his tunnels. An extensive network of underground spaces was constructed at his Welbeck Abbey estate in the 19th century, with a total length of around 24 kilometres (15 mi). It included hallways, a ballroom, a billiards room, a library and a 900 metres (3,000 ft) tunnel from the mansion to the riding house, wide enough for several people to walk in side by side. Some of the spaces were lit by lightwells and at night by gas lighting. Most of the spaces that are known as 'underground' are, more correctly, 'below ground', constructed in a cut-and-cover technique. Few of the tunnels and rooms were ever used for their intended purpose. Towards the end of his life, the Duke lived as a recluse and very few people got to see him. Spaces that were intended for social gatherings, such as the ballroom, were never used. But the Duke did frequently use the tunnels that allowed him to move about his property mostly unseen.

Seymour Cray The American engineer and supercomputer architect Seymour Cray is known to have been a hobby tunneller. Cray built an 8 by 4 feet (2.4 by 1.2 m) cedar-floored tunnel under his house, explaining that the digging helped him to think about computer designs: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."

Harrison Dyar

The American entomologist Harrison Gray Dyar Jr. constructed a network of tunnels on two occasions, with a length of 400 metres (1,300 ft) combined. His first, under his Washington, D.C. home was accidentally discovered during construction work in 1917, without drawing much attention. It was rediscovered in 1924, when a truck sank through the pavement nearby. The tunnel system led to speculation in the press, not in the least because many German newspapers from the war years of 1917 and 1918 were found in the tunnels. After a few days Dyar came forward as the tunnels' constructor, claiming he had dug them between 1906 and 1916, when he relocated to California. Back in Washington a few years later, Dyar dug out a second set of tunnels under his new home. The network had concrete lined walls, steel staircases and electric lighting. Dyar described hobby tunneling as a kind of exercise for him, saying "some men play golf, I dig tunnels".

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.