Newsday from New York, New York • 106

Sfrert surface This set on of ventilator has been removed. At right, a blueprint of the Brooklyn Jamaica Railroad tunnel, found in Borough Hall. Far right, a photo by Robert Diamond of the tunnel area he explored. Below, Diamond checks old documents. CO 2 for illegal booze, headquarters for German spies in two world wars, and an underground railway in the civil war.

"The first thing I did was to call the Transit Authority public relations, Diamond Baid recently. 1 got nowhere with them, because they told me that if there really was a tunnel it would be filled up with man-eating rats and Id be killed immediately. Next I went to the New York Public Library, where I got this map, made in 1855. It told me exactly where the tunnel was. Up to that point I couldnt find anyone who could verify that the tunnel was even there.

The map located the tunnel on Atlantic Avenue (then Atlantic Street), but did not indicate any entrances. Diamond went to the Brooklyn College library to read all the kooks he could on the subject of the railroad, and the Long Island Rail Road which succeeded it. "As a final touch, I was determined to get inside the tunnel. But I didnt know how, because everyone I talked to said, 'Well, if there is a tunnel there, itB impossible to get to, its all sealed up. I said to myself that there has to be a way somewhere; nothing is totally sealed up.

But theres no evidence of anything being there. Youd never realize that anything was ever there. Diamond read the 1911 Daily Eagle article, which was written after a reporter had found a blueprint of the tunnel when the basement of Borough Hall was cleaned out. In June Diamond went back to see if he could find the same blueprint. "I figured if they turned up in Borough Hall in 1911, knowing the way the city operates, theyre probably still laying around somewhere.

After much searching, the dusty, yellowing blueprints were found. "And I found a manhole cover that goes right into the tunnel. And thats how I got in. "Im after the old locomotive thats supposed to be in there, Diamond said. "People who Ive talked to, train buffs and railroad historians, claim that there is a locomotive in that tunnel.

When the tunnel was being sealed up they were using the locomotive to carry bricks they were using to seal the end of the tunnel, and it slid down and derailed near Hicks Street. Diamond, who lives with his mother in an apartment on East 7th Street, is an By George DeWan A MAGNIFICENT sealed-off railroad tunnel running for 3,000 feet under the western end of Atlantic Avenue represents an intriguing bit of 19th-Century Brooklyn and Long Island history. To some it is a marvel of subway-type railroad engineering. To others it is the source of a century of sinister but unproven stories about its use as a haven for bootleggers, drug smugglers, gangland warriors, murderqfs, illegal aliens and German and Japanese spies. Almost a century and a half ago, the fledgling Brooklyn Jamaica Railroad carved the tunnel out of a hilly section of the avenue beginning around Boerum Place on the east and ending around Willow Street on the west, at the waterfront.

This allowed some of the first steam engines in America to haul Long Island produce from Jamaica to ferries heading for the New York market. After intense debate, the steam engines were banned in Brooklyn in 1861 and the subway tunnel sealed up. But the stories were just beginning. "Stolen goods found their way there, the prizes of the riverfront, spirited away in the darkness by stealthy rowboats, the Brooklyn Eagle wrote in a full-page, lavishly illustrated story on July 23, 1911. "There is at least one case in Brooklyns criminal annals where a very successful 'blind distillery was operated in its depths, a pipe connecting the operations underground with a barroom in an Atlantic Avenue store It is known that the tunnel has seen gunplay, and that battles have been fought in smugglers lairs.

A 75-man search party organized by the newspaper failed to find a way into the tunnel. "Wherever the entrances are they are kept secret, the paper wrote. "There are men who know the mysteries of the old subway. But no one is willing to lead the way into it. No one, that is, until 21-year-old Robert Diamond came along 69 years later.

An engineering student and railroad buff from the Kensington section of Brooklyn, Diamond heard about the tunnel late last year and decided to find it. After seven months of research, Diamond this summer located a manhole near Court Street that was put in to gain access to a water main. Underneath it is apparently the only entrance to the old tunnel. Due to a CO a UJ 3 a CO 3 Q. New idly Photo by J.

Michael Dombroekl a heavy dirt and stone fill and the presence of carbon monoxide. Diamond only went about 15 feet into the tunnel. Next Tuesday he will meet with members of the Brooklyn Borough Presidents History Advisory Committee of which he is the newest member to begin discussions on how to explore the tunnel further. Donald Simon, chairman of the committee, was asked why the city was bo interested. "One, because its there.

Its the challenge, and the curiosity factor. Two, this is an untouched relic of early 19th- Century massive construction and engineering. electrical engineering student at Polytechnic Insti-Third, all the rumors that went on, from a distillery t'ute of New. York. 1 i V' Jt A JJ fjJ.