Woodhead Tunnel: The Yorkshire railway tunnel regarded as 'one of the greatest specimens of engineering skill'

Attention was turned to a railway linking Manchester and Sheffield in 1836 and the first meeting of prospective investors was held in Sheffield on January of that year.

The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne & Manchester Railway was formed subsequently with capital of £1 million and promoted by Lord Wharncliffe and over fifty others.

The bill for the project was passed in May 1837 and the first sod cut on October 1, of the following year by Lord Wharncliffe from Wortley Hall as reported: ‘Taking the spade, his lordship, in a workmanlike style, cut and threw out a sod, and declared the road duly broken for the Sheffield and Manchester Railway’.

Ladies who could not descend down to form a group round his lordship witnessed the ceremony from a neighbouring knoll.

It was also mentioned that in attendance was a body of about a hundred labourers in the employ of the contractors, and they ‘were regaled with bread and ale on the green sward by the roadside.’

The consultant engineer for the line was Sheffield-born Joseph Locke, having replaced Charles Vignoles.

Locke had worked on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, Grand Junction Railway and the Lancaster & Carlisle Railway.

Monday December 22, 1845 was a great day for the then towns of Sheffield and Manchester, the railway between the two points being opened throughout.

The Woodhead tunnel, which pierced the great chain of hills between Lancashire and Yorkshire, cost £200,000 (about £25,000,000 today) and had taken nearly six years in execution.

The tunnel was regarded as one of the greatest specimens of engineering skill and had a length of 5,300 yards, or three miles and twenty yards, being exactly midway between the termini of the line.

It was adapted only for a single line of rails, and was worked by an engine which was entirely confined to taking trains through each way, so that no collision could take place.

In addition to the security, there was an electric telegraph which conveyed signals through the tunnel.

Prior to opening, the tunnel had been inspected by General Charles William Pasley, the Board of Trade Inspector of Railways.

He was accompanied by a wagon full of men all bearing torches so the tunnel could be satisfactorily inspected.

A train of about 20 carriages left the Sheffield station at 10 on that Monday morning, drawn by two new engines, accompanied by the Company chairman, J. Parker, MP for Sheffield, the other Directors and their friends.

The train reached Dunford Bridge in three quarters of an hour, where it remained 20 minutes for water.

It took 10¼ minutes in passing through the tunnel and on emerging, the passengers gave three hearty cheers.

Arrival in Manchester was at quarter past twelve, a band playing ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’.

The party was met here by the Manchester shareholders, who travelled back to Sheffield.

During the day, it was reported the bells rang merrily, and at four in the afternoon, upwards of 200 gentlemen met the Directors at the Sheffield Cutlers Hall, ‘to partake of an elegant cold collation…’

The line was opened to the public on the next day.

One Sheffield newspaper commented: ‘It is impossible to over-estimate the vast importance to Sheffield of the opening of the Sheffield and Manchester Railway…

‘No long period can now elapse before we shall be free to exchange the produce of our workshops for the corn of the great Mississippi valley, and the facility for an indefinite extension of our trade which that will afford will be greatly increased by this railway.’

One set of tunnel tracks was soon found to be disadvantageous, leading to the authorisation of a second tunnel, which opened on February 2, 1852 after costing almost £150,000 to complete, some £50,000 less than the first.

In June 1849, whilst work on the second tunnel was in progress, there was an article headed ‘Fatal Attack of the Cholera Among Railway Labourers.’

It was claimed that many of the men had been indulging in ‘heavy drinking and dissipation’ for several days’.

On their return to work, allegedly from want of proper nourishment, and from drinking the water, that flowed through the soil and rock, they were seized with dysentery.

This soon ‘assumed the severe form of cholera’, and before medical assistance could be called, deaths occurred.

Coal trains travelling westwards through the tunnels from Yorkshire and back again were at one time a regular daily feature.

But by the 1930s, the two tunnels were showing their age and becoming uneconomical to maintain.

Their inheritors, the London & North Eastern Railway, decided that the best way forward was to construct a new tunnel capable of accommodating two lines, which were also to be electrified using an overhead 1,500 V DC system.

Work on the scheme had just begun when the Second World War commenced, halting progress.

At the end of June 1949, it was announced that preliminary work had started on the new double-line railway tunnel over three miles long, through the Pennine Range from Woodhead to Dunford Bridge on the Sheffield and Manchester Main line.

It was added that the route was one of the chief arteries of communication between the North-West, the East Coast and the Midlands.

It carried a heavy flow of mineral traffic from the South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalfield areas.

This was in addition to passenger services connecting Manchester, Sheffield, the Midlands and the South and the East Coast ports and holiday resorts.

The total cost of the scheme was estimated to be in the region of £2,800,000.

A new camp for the contractors’ forces was built on the hillside at Dunford Bridge, to house a self-contained community of about 700 workmen.

The new tunnel was to be straight except for a 600ft length of 40 chain curve, at the west end.

Other works in connection with the project comprised the reconstruction of Woodhead and Dunford Bridge stations situated at the Manchester and Sheffield ends of the tunnel respectively, including the building of new road and rail bridges.

Sir Brian Robertson, chairman of the British Transport Commission, blew the whistle on Sheffield Victoria station on Tuesday September 14, 1954 to set in motion the first electric passenger service with Manchester’s London Road station.

The ceremony marked the completion of the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath scheme which had eventually cost £11m.

Special locomotives known as Bo-Bos and Co-Cos had been built to operate on the new track.

Aboard the first train, besides Sir Brian, were the mayors and council chairmen of areas through which the service passed.

The trip was completed in a record time of 53½ minutes – 10 minutes ahead of steam train schedule.

Sir Brian shook hands with the driver, Frank Laming, of Sheffield and said: ‘Well done. Very good run.’ But not only VIPs were aboard. The men who made the railway had not been forgotten.

There were 30 of them – linesmen, bricklayers, gangers, drivers and guards. Among them was William Simpson who became driver in 1924 on steam locos, and for 18 months had been switching to the new electric locomotives.

He said: ‘We ought to have introduced these services 20 years ago’.

The new service – through the new Woodhead tunnel – would speed the coal trains which made up much of the traffic over the Pennines by between 20 minutes and half an hour. Steam locomotives were to be completely replaced by Monday September 20, 1954.

Further reading: David Joy Piercing the Pennines (2021)