Summit Tunnel
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The Summit tunnel in England is one of the oldest railway tunnels in the world: it was built between 1838 and 1841 beneath the Yorkshire Pennines.
It runs north-south between Todmorden and Littleborough. The tunnel is just over 1.6 miles (2.6 km) long and carries two standard-gauge tracks in a single tube, which is shaped like a horseshoe approximately 7.2 m wide and 6.6 m high.
The tunnel was mined by hand through shale, coal and sandstone, then lined with six courses of bricks to form the horseshoe shape. It was aligned by drilling fourteen vertical shafts to provide survey points on the hillside above: after the tunnel was completed two shafts were closed and the remaining twelve were used as blast relief shafts to vent steam from the locomotives that passed through.
Despite its age, the tunnel has been continuously used for passenger and freight since it opened, with one exception: it closed for the first eight months of 1985 following a serious fire. The Summit tunnel fire was probably the biggest underground fire in transportation history.
Source
- Duncan, S. D. and Wilson, W., Summit tunnel—post fire remedial works, 5th international symposium (Tunnelling '88), Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, 18–21 April 1988; ISBN 1870706013