| As
discussed in the "Quest for
the Labyrinth" section, the telephone tunnels
were the first of the Labyrinth tunnel systems that Action
Squad discovered. This is kind of weird, since they are
one of the hardest to access of all the systems that make
up the Labyrinth, and had not been discovered by any known
earlier explorers.
The
tunnels of this system are very diverse, architecturally.
Most passages are carved through the naked sandstone,
although some areas are lined with cement, and others
with brick. A standard tunnel segment has an arched
ceiling and brackets supporting telephone cables on
one or both walls. The Telephone unnels are almost all
high enough to walk comfortably in, with many sections
featuring 10 foot or higher vertical clearances.
There
are dozens of short side passages (not shown on map)
all over the place that lead to dead ends, with the
telephone cables running upward into a hole through
the rock. If a side passage is on a side of the tunnel
that has cables mounted on it, you must go under or
over them to get in. There is lighting installed throughout
this system, but rarely is any of it turned on in the
dead of the night.
At
major junctions, the problem of how to get people past
the cables that need space to curve and go off at a
90 degree angle is solved by short stairwells that go
down under the cables and then come up again on the
other side.
The
Telephone Tunnels run from Shepherd Road at the south
end to beneath Interstate 94 at the north. The further
north you go, the deeper the system runs, to a maximum
depth of over 100 feet below the surface. At the shallower
southern end of the system, tunnels generally run alongside
the other utility tunnels, about 20 feet underground.
Connections to the surface are few and far between,
and often involve a long haul up several ladders.
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