If there's one thing Maine definitely is not lacking, it's places with character and history. One of those places exists in Cumberland, where a house built on top of a rocky hill isn't the story. The story is the old locomotive and rail trail that sits in its backyard. Is it a legitimate rail line? Or is that old-looking, underground tunnel simply an optical illusion?

An old, abandoned narrow gauge railway tunnel underneath a house atop a mountain in Cumberland, Maine. from r/mildlyinteresting

Shared on Reddit by flightylady,  it's difficult to answer that question simply based on this stunning picture alone. On one hand, there's nothing to suggest this is anything but real. The locomotive looks legit as do the tracks it's sitting on. Could there be an old, abandoned train tunnel that passed through a large boulder in Cumberland? Anything is possible.

But one comment inside the Reddit thread opened up a can of forms for many. They suggested that while the locomotive and tracks seemed to be legit, the tunnel itself may simply be for decoration. Pile up some stones in a design and paint the existed rock face black and boom, you've got yourself a train tunnel that isn't a tunnel at all. It's also not impossible to believe that could be the case.

What's complicated the issue of fully declaring this to be a decoration and nothing more is that Cumberland has a history of being home to working mills. Those mills would have likely used trains as a way to haul items one way or the other. Could these tracks be part of a long abandoned route?

Maine is always full of surprises.

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