Harecastle Railway Tunnel - Staffordshire

After Gronk was in the area checking out some other trespass related business he decided to wander down and have a look at the former Harecastle tunnel. We both had a look at the Northern portal a while back and found it securely sealed with two sets of fences, one being more sturdy than the latter and stretching from base to roof.

He was pleasantly shocked on his arrival this time to find the Southern portal unlocked and open. He quickly scurried back to his car to grab his camera bag and returned for an impromptu solo wander. After notifying me about this we both then returned a couple days later to find it in the same state, it was a Sunday morning now so we presumed workers were inside the week prior and forgot to shut the gate on their way home.

As railway tunnels go, it's quite an interesting one with a lot of features. On the right hand side walking North there are two small (now gated) passageways, One of which looks to be part of a former coal drift workings and the other is unknown. Carrying on, the ground turns to a long stretch of sludge. Water ingress and mud make for a bright orange lake for over a hundred yards which luckily sits below wellie depth throughout.

There are then three sets of scaffold structures presumably for maintenance workers to perform integrity inspections of the tunnel. A couple of air shafts are dotted along the route with at least two of them not blocked completely from above.

History

The former Harecastle railway tunnels in Staffordshire are remnants of the original Victorian era North Staffordshire Railway line that once carried trains between Kidsgrove and the Potteries. Three parallel bores were constructed and opened in 1848, forming part of what was then a key route on what became the West Coast Main Line. Two of these, the Middle and the South tunnels, were abandoned in the mid 1960s when the railway was realigned to allow for electrification.Their limited size made them unsuitable for installing overhead wiring, so a new section of line with a new tunnel was built slightly to the west, and the old bores fell out of use around 1965–1966. Since abandonment the redundant tunnels have remained largely unused, with basic maintenance continuing but no regular traffic. The trackbed has become overgrown and sections of the bores are flooded due to poor drainage. In 2013 the UK government indicated its intention to sell the disused tunnels to a public body, with the requirement that appropriate upkeep be maintained. These railway tunnels sit above the historic Harecastle canal tunnels, one of which, the original Brindley bore, was itself closed long ago after subsidence problems.