The Woodhead 'Hell Hole' Tunnels. A brief history

The Smiths cover by Dean 'Sensory Triggered' Other music by Dean

Just a little railway anecdote from me. I'm a designer for a construction company, about 8 years ago we were doing some roof refurbishment at Manchester Central. I was in their archive room looking for drawings from the 1980s roof replacement when it was the Gmex. I had been in there for about an hour going through hanging drawings and not having much luck when I came across some cardboard tubes. I pulled out a rolled up drawing from a tube and rolled out the drawing on a table. When I realised what I was holding, every hair on my body stood on-end. It was a hand-drawn detail drawing about ten feet long drawn on canvas and dated 1860, it was the Trafford Street viaduct drawing, not a copy, the actual thing drawn by hand nearly 160 years ago! There were dozens of them there for all of the local railway infrastructure. These things should be on display in the science museum, not in a dusty back room of an exhibition centre.

Additionally, when you guys were congregating around tunnel 3 gates, the surface below you was divided into six parallel 'tracks'. These are the concrete ducts for the individual high voltage cables; the cables are laid inside & then the ducts filled with sand. Then a concrete cap layer is poured. Six ducts for 3-phase parallel feeders, the same as the pylon lines. Incidentally, all of the rock in that area is largely sedimentary, which is why it appears as thick layers. The further north you go, up into the Lakes area, the layers get thinner, forming slate & shale.

my dad AND my grandad were both train drivers, and i often heard the two of them discussing the difficulties of driving this route. my dad did both steam and diesel. he also taught nee drivers. i was tremendously proud of him.

Nice to see your enthusiasm for the place of my railway birth, so to speak. Heartbreaking to see all the overgrowth that has crept in. I too had a'near miss' with the line, but mine lasted over 4 years.... I had another one of a different kind, November 79; 2 of us had been spare on Saturday morning and it started to snow. And snow some more. So we were detailed to take a class 25 with mini snow ploughs fitted, to 'do a few trips to Hadfield and Glossop to keep things clear for the units'. OK, no problem, be finished before last orders (this was when pubs closed at 3pm until 5pm each day), early finish then a beer. Arriving at Hadfield, told crossover was unusable due to packed snow. Need to go to Woodhead to cross over and return. Got to Woodhead, same thing. 'Go to Dunford' was plan B. Arrange to pick up signalman on way back as he couldn't drive home as it was by then. Arrive at Dunford. Same script. 'Go to Penistone'. And so it went. Woodburn Junction was where the deed was done. Far side of Sheffield. All right, off back we go. All well until Dunford west. The signals were on 'black oil', i.e. no light at all (colour light sigs but the expression was still prevalent). Waited and saw snow pile up to platform level. Repaired to Stanhope Arms for liquid sustenance and whatever solids they had. Followed path to their door and sunk 5 feet into a snow drift. Got out fairly dry. Brush off and into pub. (First encounter with what became Peperami years later, at this time called 'Chewbilee'). And a few bottles of Guinness. Suitably refreshed, went back to loco. Throwing snowballs at the signal and hitting the red aspect, the thing lit up again- the power had coincidentally come back on that instant. So, got the road, driver put me in the chair. 'Give it a run, says he, as I shut off at 60. Go up to 70. 'Give it a bloody run lad!'. Right then. Up to 85 now. Line speed 60. Just over the summit I shut off. And got on the brake, hard. 'Don't forget we're supposed to pick the bobby up at Woodhead!' says I. When the station came in to sight, we were still doing over 45 miles per. No way would we stop. But. The depth of snow was our saviour. The bobby saw what was going to happen, and got into the stone waiting shelter out of the way. We hit the drift with a huge bang, a massive wall of snow going off like a bomb. I thought the windows would come in, or dent the cab front. It was the only thing that stopped us anywhere like where we needed to. We only did the one trip that day.......

As a Guard at Rotherwood, I thought that I had worked the last train out to Godley because of flooding at Howden. We had to be dragged back to Rotherwood by a pair of class 31. However, they did restore the line in my absence and continued to run trains. Such was the feeling for this wonderful and unique railway. The depot at Rotherwood was like one big family. I suspect that I am close to being the last surviving traincrew member. The depot closed on Saturday 18 July 1981 and as a twenty-six year old, I was officially made redundant on my wedding day. The class 76 locomotives were formerly class 26 and number 20 is in York Museum. They did bounce about a bit but they were powerful and could power 1,436 tons of coal up the bank with ease, unlike the diesels that progressed at walking speed up there. The Woodhead tunnel was bone dry and lit throughout, the standard bulbs were at one point replaced with fluorescent strip lights. The scenery is stunning round there. The navies who worked on the original tunnels weren't paid in cash but in tokens to spend in the Tommy Shop, it sold inferior goods and food and this was the origin of the Sheffield saying "Tommy Rot" for anything considered to be rubbish. The prototype loco, of which there was only one, was loaned to Holland because they used the same 1500 volt three wire system. It was the Dutch who named the first 26 class "Tommy " because of their admiration for the British army and the locomotive, which they loved. Later, the six co-cos that were built, were sold to Holland for passenger services. Reddish was the repair depot, mainly the locos were based at Rotherwood and Guido Bridge. Sheffield was the city where the Great Central Railway began, previously it was named The Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. The BBC has a documentary named "Locomotives Must Not Enter The Potato Shed "in its archives and is worth watching. They travel with driver Walt Hibberd over to Manchester.

I walked through the tunnel after the line was closed in 1981, if I remember correctly there were still a few lights in the tunnel, but I don't recall any signal being lit. It was some time later another friend told me the 1500DC over head power was kept live to prevent the theft of the copper. On a map the tunnel looks straight, but it isn't so very quickly it got very dark. Being a modern tunnel it was dry. So glad I did the walk before National Grid took it over.

Glad you just missed me falling off my bike 😅 haha. It was lovely to meet you all on the trail. Georgina xx

I worked with a driver at Buxton that used to be a fireman at Gorton shed, and he told me of an incident that he had in that No1 tunnel. He was a young fireman on a freight train bound for Sheffield from the Manchester area, and they were having more than great difficulty working hard through the tunnel, eventually almost suffocating and lying on the cab floor to try and get the 'freshest' air with wet rags on their faces. The loco was slipping like hell, but they managed to struggle through to the Penistone end. They found out that the guard at the rear of the train had had his handbrake hard on, not familiar with the uphill gradient in the tunnel. He got a right good ticking off! Apparently, back in the late 1800s there was a signal box inside No.1 tunnel, but conditions were so bad, that it got abandoned after ten years of use. Great video Martin, anyhow. The three of you, Martin, James and Roy, the (definitive) Zero crew! Many thanks.

Fascinating. A few decades ago there was some controversy about exhuming the bodies of dead navvies in a churchyard in Tintwistle, the locals were concerned about dormant disease such as cholera spreading. The lives of those navvies were extremely tough, they really were unsung heroes, you're narrative did them proud.

My late father a BR signalman on the SR told me as a kiddy about the signalbox halfway up the original tunnels nicknamed "Hell's Box" because of the heat and rubbish that collected and the seas of huge rats that fed off the passing trains droppings like grain trains not locked up tightly would bring in veritable waves of the damned things. Also maintaining the various signal oil lights was a positive nightmare where signalman as part of their duty would start off from the box heading up, coming back down at the top end on the other bore then down to the bottom and back up to the box hence why even at night this box was never single manned as half a signalman's shift would be taken in by doing the signal lamps. I think the lamps became electric at some point but them pesky rats just loved the wiring insulators for building nests so flagging and lamp duty was a common duty requirement to keep the 24 hour running line operational.

July 1981 I was 14 years old, and us kids spent so much time hanging around the local railyards and track lines. Change was overtaking that era, wasn't it ? My cousin had a welding job in the local yard and I thought I'd end up there working with him, but the yard closed in '85 and that was the end of that. Thanks for another fun adventure Martin, James and Roy.

My father was the signalman at/near Woodhead back in the 1960s, quite a while before I was born. He's been dead for quite a number of years now, but I from what I remember he used to enjoy the work, except during the depths of the winter. Interesting to see the area - thank's for the video!

Well said 👏. You are not being rude or disrespectful showing other people's pictures. Its actual a compliment. It helped put a view of times gone by. Allowing many to see it, rather than how things are nowadays. Keep up the good work 👏 🙌 👍

One of the benefits of the 1500 Volt DC electrification was that locomotives could use regenerative braking, putting energy back into the overhead line when braking. This mean that trains travelling downhill, and slowing, could put energy into the contact wire to assist pulling trains up the hill. This also decreased wear on the brake pads/discs/shoes. I can't be sure but I think timetables were organised to take maximum benefit of this.

It's so easy to forget the underlaying hardships when we see these tunnels and buildings today. Thank you Martin for the historical photos and perspectives you add to give context for a period many will never understand nor could have lived in with their "give me, selfish, ungrateful, it's all about me" modern attitudes.

It's insane that the cycle route wasn't somehow integrated into one of the tunnels. Would be fantastic.

Myself and a bunch of friends walked through the "new" tunnel just after the line closed in the early 80s when all the track and infrastructre was still in place. The new tunnel was on a slight curve and rose slightly towards the Dunford bridge end. At the centre of the the tunnlel there was a large "control room" its purpose unknown, this was on the right side looking towards Dunford bridge.. At the Dunford bridge end the types of locos and consits of the last few trains and the crews was chalked on the tunnel walls. We had a couuple of pints in the pub next door to the tunnel then walked back through. I only wish i had taken my camera to record it all. The victorian bores at that time took high voltage power lines under the moores and there was a 2 foot gauge narrow gauge railway used to maintain and service the power lines etc....

Many thanks again Martin, James and Roy for another bit of our regional history. I just wanted to mention a little bit of Woodhead history that I have come across. Randall Kay Williams (1846 - 1898) aka the King of Showmen was travelling by road from Manchester to Sheffield in December 1876 with his convoy of (horse drawn) show equipment. At Woodhead he was held up in the snow for 6 days, nearly running out of hay for the horses. Whilst stranded there he noticed the trains travelling freely through the tunnels and decided that from hence forth he would travel by railway all over England. He had to negotiate a reasonable fair with the railway company who wanted to charge him 9 pence per mile and he argued for 6 pence per mile. It took him 20 years to achieve 6 pence per mile for travelling showmen. He died in 1898 and is buried at Weaste Cemetery, Salford.

Seven of these locomotives were purchased by the NS (dutch railways) after the line closed. There was a shortage here, and the NS uses a 1500V system. They are known here as the series 1500. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Class_1500 i even recall one or 2 being restored back into British Rail colors and returned to the UK a few years ago. There is also still one or two in NS livery left in the railway museum in Utrecht in The Netherlands.