Tunnels The Totley Tunnel, opens its mouth in a deep cutting just below the Rise. The bank is very high at the entrance to the underground way, and has yielded so much owing to the rain that men are busy planking it up. On the line there is the shriek of engine, the rattle and jolt of waggons, and the shouts of workers. “Is he going in, sir?” asks one of the officials. “Oh, yes,” replies the engineer, in a brisk encouraging tone; “he’s come many miles to go through the tunnel.” “I’ll get the lamps, then” says the man, and, with a railway lamp in my hand I am speedily slipping, sliding, jumping, stumbling, splashing along the rude road into the darkness. The way is not unlike the main road from the bottom of the shaft to the far workings in a coalpit. Here it is bricked; there it is propped with great timbers. Now we are in the deepest gloom; then, through a thick, almost choking vapour that makes your lamplight feeble, we can just discern the shadowy forms of men who look like gigantic phantoms fighting as they strike, not at each other, but at the rock. The last flicker of daylight from the fourth shaft, on the fringe of the moorland, has been passed, and we are in the depths of the tunnel. The shafts are all within three-quarters of a mile of the Totley end; and though air is continuously pumped into the subterranean road, the atmosphere as we get further away from the last shaft becomes dense and oppressive. The brick-lined arched part of the tunnel is now behind us. There the way is 27ft wide and 22ft 6in in height. Here it is at present narrow, rough-hewn and low-roofed. The road, only just wide enough to enable the waggons to come down, is being dug and cut through the coal measures. The black shale is easy to deal with; but the intersecting rock requires more patient working. Watching the drillers and strikers at their toil, one is inclined to think that to delve 3½ miles of track beneath the moorland from Totley Rise to the Derwent Valley is almost a hopeless task. Yet considerable progress has been made with the work. There is still a mile of heading to pierce; but men are driving from both ends of the tunnel, and are looking forward with pleasure to shaking hands with each other in the underground junction. A useful friend in tunnel-making is found in gelignite, an explosive, which blasts away the most obstinate bulk of rock with scant ceremony; but the men have an annoying enemy in water. In the earlier lengths of the tunnel they were much embarrassed by it. Water dripped from the roof and flowed from the rock and sprang from the tunnel floor. The flow became so constant that the men had to work in mackintosh suits, and looked like divers wading through deep pools and torrents. At the faults particularly the inrush of water was considerable – at one time not less than 1,200 gallons per minute. The men were never in danger; but the flow was too great for their liking, and for the reasonable progress of the undertaking. A head wall of bricks and cement, 4ft 6in in thickness, was at last run up not far from the fourth shaft to keep the water back. Behind this wall the water rose and dashed ominously; but the gangs in the meantime made a drain in the tunnel bed, and ultimately through this drain and along the culvert by the railway side the flood-water was carried into the river Sheaf. The water in the Totley length has been successfully coped with by the diversion of the underground stream that now flows beneath the line; but the irruption in the Padley heading was recently gauged at 5,000 gallons per minute. The flow was so great that the men had to go to work on a raft. I learn all this piecemeal and haphazard as I stumble along in the uncertain lamplight at the heels of my friend. Now we pause to watch the men – by the light of candles stuck in their caps or in the interstices of the rock – toiling and drilling, or penetrating by means of ladders into the breakups; then we climb over waggons that obstruct our progress. By-and-by we reach the heading, the most distant point excavated from the Totley end. The rock and shale is as dry as tinder. There is not a drop of water here. The air is hot and heavy. Perspiration bursts from every pore and trickles in fantastic courses down your face. The men, great muscular fellows, perspire too; but they pick and dig on. The shale is steadily shovelled down to the waggons. At the face a sturdy tunnel-hewer inserts his pick in a crevice and brings down a great mass of rock that threatens to crush him as it gives way and thuds on the floor; but he leaps aside, reels, and comes on his back on the shale heap, causing some diversion. From the soles of his boots, your eyes, with scarcely perceptible effort, have roamed to the tunnel roof. It is altogether a surprising roof – a huge flat, smooth-faced slab of shale, many yards in length, that completely covers in the tunnel-way; a vast natural roof that may not be a curiosity in geology, but is certainly rare enough in tunnel-making. Since I emerged from the tunnel by the deep shaft, bathed in perspiration and splashed with mire, the measurement of the natural roof has been taken. It stretches 121 yards along its first length, then after a break continues for another 10 yards, and beyond a further break it has been worked for an additional 45 yards, without its edge being reached. The men working the Totley Tunnel met on October 19th, 1892, and, breaking through the heading with strong blows and loud shouts, shook hands. Five days afterwards the first gang, headed by the engineer, went through; and the tunnel, which took more than four years to delve, and which has been hewn with dogged perseverance and skill through difficult strata will be ready for passenger traffic in the coming spring.” Taken from Our Railways by John Pendleton. Cassell 1894 Want to know more? See Steam in the Peak magazine no. 58 Winter 1990-91 for a fascinating letter about graves linked with Derbyshire railway tunnels. Click here to search the books database