Woodhead Tunnel
The Woodhead Tunnels are three parallel trans-Pennine 3-mile long railway tunnels on the Woodhead Line, a former major rail link from Manchester to Sheffield in Northern England. The western portals of the tunnels are at Woodhead in Derbyshire and the eastern portals are at Dunford Bridge, near Penistone, South Yorkshire.
Woodhead 1 was one of the world's longest railway tunnels when it opened in 1845. Woodhead 2 was completed in 1853 and Woodhead 3 opened almost exactly 100 years later in 1953. Passenger services ended in 1970 and the last train passed through in 1981.
The tunnels are currently owned by National Grid plc who initially used Woodhead 1 and 2 to carry power cables and in 2008 started to install new cables in Woodhead 3. The use of Woodhead 3 for power cables was controversial as it would make it very much more difficult to restart rail services on the line, and it was resisted by a sizeable campaign.
Read more about Woodhead Tunnel: Location of Portals, Proposals To Re-open The Tunnel For Rail Traffic, Current Situation
Famous quotes containing the word tunnel:
“The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to let them speak for themselves.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)