Dudley Tunnel

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. Under UK law, trespass without force is a civil offence. I never break into a place, I never photograph a place that is currently occupied, as this would be morally wrong and intrusive, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose location.  I leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building and its history.


 In the UK the rail industry was once much more colossal, prior to the mass closure of thousands of stations and lines in the 1960s. The remnants of the era can be found all over the place, including forgotten railway lines, crumbling platforms and my personal favourite, the old railway tunnels. They arent exactly as exciting as places like that eye infirmary from the last blog, but I have a soft spot for them. They're creepy, they look cool, and they're surprisingly common. They're also more fun than staying in and reading the newspaper... but then so is syphilis.

My favourite thing about Dudley railway tunnel is that its security measures are simply blind faith in my obedience.

The tunnel is a pretty impressive feat of engineering, measuring some 865 metres in length, passing under various houses, streets and a roundabout. To the casual observer driving through the area, one would have no idea that this was beneath them. The last tunnel I visited measured only 189 metres in length, so this tunnel in comparison is pretty gigantic.

Its purpose was to facilitate the railway line between Worcester and Wolverhampton, a line whose development sputtered along in the 1840s, meeting all manner of hurdles along the way. By 1849 all of the funds had been spent in spite of the line only being partially completed. This prompted a legal spat between a few railway companies, the ins and outs of which I'm not emtirely sure about. One of the contractors also died, and there was a lengthy legal battle with his family firm over his financial assetts. Once that was out of the way, the line was completed by 1851.

The tunnel similarly progressed slower than intended. Originally work started in 1846 when someone must have said "You know, there's no reason to force the general public to look at Dudley any more than they need to." Nevertheless what was intended to be an eighteen month job was less than 10% complete by 1847, with only 73 metres completed.

The construction of the tunnel wasn't just slow, but it was bloody dangerous too! Five vertical shafts lined it, but while none of these were retained after completion, there were two occasions of workers falling down them and being injured, first in 1846 and then in 1848. Those were the lucky ones! In 1848 a huge chunk of timber fell down one of the shafts and landed on someone, killing them instantly.

In spite of the tunnel gaining a taste for human blood, work went ahead and it opened in 1850.

In 1860 Dudley station opened up nearby, as the railway industry really took off. Initially it was a very busy line, but a slump in sales resulted in the line being used mostly for freight trains as of 1987. Given the industrial nature of the black country, this still meant the line was pretty busy, and it's not to say that passenger trains stopped altogether. In fact this line was actually one of the more successful ones to find its way onto Beechings chopping block.

The Beeching cuts were the dastardly work of Dr Richard Beeching, whose reports on the financial viability of rail transport saw the closure of some 2,363 stations across the UK, along with 8000km of railway line, mostly in rural areas. Today there's still plenty of this still littering the countryside.

Dudley station shut in 1964, and was demolished in 1967 so that they could replace it with a freightliner terminal. That in turn closed in 1989. The line itself closed in 1993 and the tunnel has been sitting here empty ever since.

In 2010 the gates were put up to stop people going in, but as you can see, to call this job half-assed would be generous. In fact the fencing here is more to stop people falling in this nearby puddle than anything else.

Luckily for Dudley tunnel there are plans to reopen the tunnel in 2023, and I'm actually pretty happy about that. It seems a shame for such engineering to go to waste. It will apparently be primarily for goods, although it will serve as a diversion route for passenger trains if the need arises.

My personal use for it was to do an edgy tunnel photoshoot with Tamsin...

Thats all I got. It's just a short blog, but next time I'm blogging about a derelict school that Tamsin and I went to, and then I'm blogging about a mansion that I visited with Casi and Joe. In the meantime, share the blog, follow me on Instagram, like my Facebook and follow my Twitter.

Thanks for reading!