injured working on the tunnel in 1866. The deadliest accident was the explosion in the Central Shaft on October 17, 1867. Workers were digging the tunnel's vertical exhaust shaft when a candle in the hoist building ignited naphtha fumes that had leaked from a "Gasometer" lamp. The ensuing explosion set the hoist on fire, and it collapsed into the shaft. Four men near the top of the shaft escaped, but 13 men working below were trapped by falling naphtha and pieces of iron. The pumps were also destroyed, and the shaft began to fill with water. A worker named Mallory was lowered into the shaft by a rope the next day; he was overcome by fumes and reported no survivors, and no further rescue attempts were made. Several months later, workers reached the shaft's bottom and found that several victims had survived long enough to fashion a raft before suffocating. Operations The Troy and Boston Railroad and its Southern Vermont Railroad and Troy and Greenfield Railroad opened in 1859 from Troy, New York, on the New York Central Railroad and Hudson River Railroad, east to North Adams at the west portal of the tunnel. The 1863 state buyout of the Troy and Greenfield Railroad opened the way for competition through the tunnel. The Boston, Hoosac Tunnel and Western Railway was organized in 1877 to build from near the Massachusetts–Vermont border, where state ownership ended, parallel to the Troy and Boston Railroad to near Johnsonville, New York and then west via Schenectady to Rotterdam Junction on what became the New York, West Shore, and Buffalo Railway in 1883. The line was being planned as a part of the Delaware and Hudson Company's system and as part of the Erie Railroad system via the Delaware and Hudson Company's Albany and Susquehanna Railroad. East of Greenfield, the east end of state ownership, the BHT&W would have built its own line to terminal facilities at Winthrop. The first train passed through the tunnel on February 9, 1875. Regular service via the tunnel between Boston and Troy, New York began the following year. The tunnel and Troy and Greenfield Railroad were bought by the Fitchburg Railroad in 1877, which year is inscribed on the East Portal entrance arch. The Boston and Maine Railroad bought the Fitchburg Railroad in 1900. Competition between the two companies caused various court challenges to be made. In late 1878, the