Nottingham's Lost & Forgotten Railway Tunnel

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone welcome to a brand new video and i'm back in nottingham actually i say that i live in nottingham so i never left in the first place um we've come to see a long abandoned railway tunnel which was formerly part of the great central railway and it is just up from the old mansfield road tunnel and victoria railway station it is sherwood rise so no you're back in nottingham as well hello i am yeah i love it he he really doesn't live in nottingham all the way from sunny hull hull this is andrew alw exploration hello it's got a channel have a look i'll put the text down below and in the description so we're going to find this tunnel we're going to attempt to get inside i've never been in it before you've never been in it before no no uh many of us have i've seen photos you know numerous other images i think it's time to go and do this tunnel properly let's do it shield rise tunnel is situated on the former great central railways main line just north of nottingham and you can see in this map at the bottom the former site of nottingham victoria station just above that we've got the holy grail of mansfield road tunnel unlikely we're ever going to get inside that one but we'll never give up hope on that if we zoom right in you can see where the tunnel location is more precisely you've got the former carrington railway station that's shot in the 1920s just between both tunnels of mansfield road tunnel and al sherwood rise tunnel that we're going in today so let's get ourselves down there get ourselves inside sherwood rise tunnel come on [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so in the nottingham thought the roof is very very white and wet it's got these concrete breeze blocks on top of traditional breeze blocks look and there's a hole so this isn't the actual end of the soil there's another 20 odd feet so if we climb through here well i'm not going to climb through i'm going to show you we'll go through and that that is the end of our shield rise tunnel or in that case it's the beginning because we're going to walk them away and we're going to film it for you and up there that's the access in and out for maintenance purposes so behind that wall you'd be heading off through carrington station carrington station used to be on the other side of that wall before the line plummeted into mansfield road tunnel which is longer than this one before then appearing at nottingham victoria station so taking a step back look there's some nice graffiti we've got the one here from 1994 i was still at school then um i started a couple of years left at school and you can see the hole for the other access right slap bag in the middle some really really tiny steps and there's the roof looking rather slimy indeed so let's get ourselves further up this tunnel see what we find and get to the other portal [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] immediately look there's a pile of rubble this would have come from the other side of the tunnel portal i imagine because it looks like it's just been scooped in and left here because there's nothing there's nothing vacant from where it potentially fell from and the first reset on the right is looking in really good condition look at this root coin all the way down there you can pick oh there you go that's so so long a little bit of furniture here someone must have dumped in here long before the tunnel was abandoned i can't really make out what that says on there there's the old cable hangers look at this site it's being carved out just here in that soot there's a little noticeable bit of sandstone coming through there where that's broken away and would have come down and crumbled amongst all this rubble there's another one in cable carriers here though this route here has come all the way from there all the way from down there or up there it's actually embedded itself into the ground it's just got this huge look it runs and runs and runs decades of growth that's unbelievable all the way that's how long that is [Music] [Music] [Music] so what i really like is the cable carriers when you get to the recesses look they go up there's your recess over and back down again so rather than being the traditional you know you usually see them like four foot five foot high don't you they go over the recesses but these stay close to the ground and go up and over you can make out the little gaps of bricks you can see the um you know the cement holes the bricks together now that is just showing you where the soot isn't the rest of it is thick with salt and it's covering up the entire ceiling and they're just little bits that have broken away and look how clean they are because they would have been protected by the salt for many many years and eventually just little pockets of this sort has fallen down and quite a lot of sandstone is evident now look as we go further down you notice also the recesses are not numbered so it's not been surveyed or measured for a very very long time at least there's no you still get the highways agency or whoever come in even today in most tunnels even the abandoned ones and they come down and survey them and put a fresh bit of spray paint on given the distance and usually the um recessed number as well don't they yeah you're the number one distance to it it's absolutely clogged up flagged up galore on both sides you also notice the ledge there so the sandstone has been carved out all the way through this tunnel and it's it's it's like a cut and cover tunnel but it's not a cotton cover and they've built the brick arch on top of the sandstone walls and it is a similar design and build construction to the nearby mansfield road tunnel which is just around about a quarter of a mile behind us now we believe this was some sort of signaling signal in post brackets cut the old wrought iron brackets there look on both sides now i believe this line opened in 1899 so you've got to think these are well over 100 years old a little bit more down here look at the size of them bolts they're ginormous and there's a wooden little section actually into the sandstone here which would suggest that probably this was mounted somehow just beside this recess just here and again there's the cable carriers look going up and over and down the other side so there's an old little look at this that's been there look literally moved it look that's never moved since whenever it dropped there you can still see the shards of iron no idea what it is i'm just going to see if we can yeah look there's a salt coming off there i'm gonna put that back exactly where i found it there we go look never moved [Music] [Music] look at this for a blast from the past this is i'm not going to look at the um date on it because i don't really want to move it because it probably hasn't moved for a long time but cherry coat that's at 1980's brandon look because you can see it's got the original ring pull on top that's remarkable because i think those ring pools we've got today came in in the late 80s and these were the ones that were basically you lifted it or pulled it off and everyone was just chucking them on the floor astounding just shining a torch on the on the ground like the former track bed you see it's ballasted on the right but it's not on the left so there would have been a point where this line went down to single track and it may have only been for a few months to less than a year because wendy was lifting it and the entire line was being closed and taken to pieces it would have lifted one and then used the other track for track lifting trains and maintenance and wagons to take all the waste rails sleepers spoil away and then that too would eventually have been lifted so you can just make out the ballast and maybe even sleeper indentations just there and this side is pretty much smooth compared to this where the ballast remains still got plenty of the cable runners look again nice little recess cable runners going over the top and a pitch black roof and on the other side it's clear of anything really just plain old soap covered sandstone now we're coming up to a really big recess on the left-hand side let me get you there there it is look that is ginormous look at that now you go into tunnels quite often and you see these sections about as wide as this which had just bricked up like a a black surface i'll try and add a picture from previous tunnel i've been into and these black surfaces where for some reason these have been bricked up and i believe well they would have been for maintenance huts the peculiar little hole being dug out there whether it was from when animals have been trapped down here same on the other side i'm sure what those holes were for so yeah maintenance pulse they would have had all sorts of things stored in there for the workers [Music] five o'clock in the morning most the nottingham's above and still snoring [Music] i don't know that song just came into my head because i fancied the sing song and also you got to imagine that right above us nottingham really is fast asleep for the most of it is it anyway yeah these houses this fact is probably just waking up shops they're all above us rows and rows of terraces and people with cars on their drives in the gardens unbeknown this tunnel is below them i can't believe that many people actually know that fact and what is actually right beneath their houses and their streets and their garden sheds roughly halfway we've got a tango can look and it is lemon and lime i can't remember when lemon and lime was produced but again it must have been the mid 80s the mid 1980s i was going to find that out it's got it's got the old ring pull again look different design i'm no can expert but that is definitely pre-1990 i've got to say although it has got a barcode on the side of this one so i wonder if tango was a little late in putting the old ring pulls on i'll find out when this flavor was produced and then it would give us a better idea [Music] all on the right hand side of the tunnel we've got these wooden pieces of uh what look like runners and there's one on there look so that is suggesting that they actually were carried by these cable carriers as opposed to the standard you know you get the metal brackets with the wires going along it with these being wood they've put these wooden light shelves these channels on top of the hangers and then the cables have then been placed inside the wooden carriers all the way for the length of the tunnel so when you get to the recesses which is one coil on the right i imagine they went up either at an angle something there looks um some sort of signaling or there's some sort of bracket stuck in the wall above this reset it's very it's got some wheels in there as well right in the middle so that that's like a pulley system i believe which must have been used for for that over the top and now they've gone to this this uh increased height look so where the others have been going up over and down i've got to a point now look where the cable carriers and runners are actually at a different height so wonder what they even change their mind halfway through the tunnel to change the height of these runners you see here look there's a great big chunk of sandstone missing whether that was done during construction because it is sotted up so it's not fell down in recent years that's been that's that's been absent for a long long time another little bit of old wire on there as well the fact is quite a bit look so we keep going along i'm getting a bit too overly excited about these wooden cable carriers of a doubt a little further down you've got another one of those pulleys look then the cable carriers turn into the more traditional iron or metal and then it blocks the freeze lock so the water's gone and the more conventional metal is now apparent as we come along to this recess which itself is extremely peculiar now i'd say these bricks have been put in in later years or to actually just support these metal cable carriers lot because the recess is extremely high and the brick arch is up there that's about nine foot high but this has been built into the sandstone lot to continue the carrying of the cables and there's another pulley system up there so my guess is there's two different kinds of system of pulleys there and there's a wooden bracket in that recess you can see the traditional height of the recess just there and well lord knows what the hell that is [Music] so [Music] [Music] look how deep this recess is let's get ourselves in here look at this it's a long way in i put the death ray on we can see the floor and see the other side of the tunnel those unbelievably deep it's a long way back isn't it quite cozy in there wouldn't it we've got back to the wooden cable carriers as well as you may have just seen in a previous shot and they're going up and over again so you can see they come from this point come across and now they're back down to the previous level as they were from the portal on the southern side many many more discarded cable carriers on the floor or even bits of old cable running along there all rusted and there's one in situ there look very salty still at this stage you can see a nice bit of sunstone just there it's just poking out it's crystal clear doesn't it [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] so we've been greeted by another huge huge recess look it looks bigger than one i don't think it is i think it's because the sandstone's showing itself off a little bit more than the other one it's a lot more yellow a couple of brackets over the top one there one there which probably helps support the cables however did you also run around inside around there though so yeah it would have been another little a storeroom a workman's hook like a tunnel version of a plate layers what you'd find on the railway on the outside must have been pretty cozy back in the day when they've got their little stove burning bit of a brew [Music] bacon sandwich maybe they didn't worry about big gases down here and stuff did they back then no definitely not cup of tea and a cigarette i think yeah and that so we're getting towards the end now another cute little recess look it's got a few odds and sods in there bits of wood bits of metal nice bit of sandstone lots of soot still and some nice sandstone evident where the brickwork meets on the ground there look there's some other odds and that's some sort of tubing just there like in a metal box and a piece of metal there i mean there could be all sorts down here bits of car that looks like a bit of a bench or something just there framework from a little stall or something again cable carriers going up and over up and over so we found an old nottingham trent university newsletter for schools in sixth form and it's called classmate and it's even dated july 1997. unfortunately it's gone but it's something i'm just going to suggest it says on top of the world maybe and you know these people on here they're going to be much older than they were they're going to be in the late 40s now you've got to imagine [Music] [Music] so just before we get to the other pool there's this crazy crazy deep hole now at first i thought it was doing a catchment bit but it's not aligned in the center it's sort of skewed to the right slightly as you're looking back towards nottingham it's a bit dug out there's all the uh spoil from inside there so what was the purpose of this because a lot of that sand in there looks quite dry um and even on here it doesn't look like it's been there i mean it probably was done 20 odd years ago when someone was last in here a really really good look monster much packet there where if you save up enough bags you could actually collect enough tokens to earn yourself a furry monster who don't want a fairy monster in their life i'm not saying anything else more than that all right you meant that hulks of prawn flavor corn snack best before 17th of january 1987. and the weight of the bag is 26.5 grams left to see what they weigh now [Music] so we are coming up to the mound so we've got one last recess on the left before we've come to the more northern ended portal and the infill so when we get out and we show you the other side you'll see the track bed level is actually it's as deep as this so the track bed and the cutting has also been filled in to the same height as this we'll have a little run up there and have a look at the top of the tunnel just so you can see what condition it's in and how remarkably dry this tunnel is and great condition it's in so i've now made it to the top of the the mound i can see you know i can see where it's been filled here at the top we're no longer a track bed level on the inside or the outside i'll get the camera and i'll bring you up you can have a look so here's the view from the top you can see how it's all been compacted down and down there look you wouldn't like to fall down there would you all manner of stuff's going to be under here isn't it same on that side looking down it's a little bottle over there i don't know what that is i might have look at that in a minute let's get ourselves to the portal i'm just getting my own back watching you walk up you're filming me yeah of course i am hi viewers this is a bit where we hope he doesn't fall but it'd be funny if he did yeah this is it so i'm actually touching the tunnel roof now uh it kind of goes to show the the amount of backfill we've pushed in just to block the tunnel pot off yeah he's gonna be all manner of stuff under here yeah all matter so the little tub or jar saw was an old quality street tub um hang on i'll try to light that up better turn it over october 1999 as the used by date on that oh there it goes now the points of that now you can pretty much stand up i found an old pepsi can that is dated march 1991 and over there that's an old fire extinguisher isn't it just there down there you can just make out a huge l'oreal tractor tire down there look um it is in the early hours so we're pretty tired aren't we yeah yeah yeah can't get away with a joke can't get away with a joke at this time of day now this is as far as it goes look so we've got this iron or steel grid on top of a bricked up portal and that's about it so i'm gonna make my way back out again and i'll see you on the other side i don't like some sort of mad doctor pulling this face done with this light i assure you i'm not i'm a lovely guy [Music] so we've got ourselves out bit the grubby bit sweaty and it's daytime now it was dark when we went in now i've come around to show you what was just looking at you know the last shot i'll show you on the inside and you've got the metal grate that's there look that's the metal grate was just looking at on the inside there's the copic stones on top look all the way along and the roof of the tunnel and there's a great big rock face up there covered in ivy and trees look at that so i was just saying to you so you can see the track bed is filled in exactly the same on the other side if anything it actually goes much higher if i walk up to here you can see the root of the line as it goes away in that direction and i've actually now above the roof of the tunnel look so outside the infill the cutting has been filled double the amount to what it is inside the tunnel itself right so we're gonna leave it there so we've been through the abyss underneath nottingham one of the lost tunnels of nottingham it's just been you know it's just been buried for absolutely decades since closure it's not one of the easier ones to find or even walk through such as mappily for example and many of the others around the uk so to get in and do it you know it could be a long long time before an opportunity of this you know comes along again and we've got to get really close on this oh it's really cozy isn't it yeah yeah it's cozy um i should have bought me longer stick with me but yeah that's it this is andrew subscribe to his channel it's really really good thank you very much it's even better now i'm on it well yeah that's a joke um no he's got some really good stuff he don't just do the uk goes to germany and stuff as well looks all manner of things military and industrial history yeah so yeah please check it out okay like subscribe comment below from sherwood rise tunnel it's goodbye from him goodbye it's goodbye from me bye [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Trekking Exploration

Views: 36,804

Keywords: Sherwood Rise Tunnel, Mansfield road Tunnel, great central railway, Nottingham, Disused tunnel, Abandoned, railway tunnel, great central railway Nottingham, alw exploration, trekking towpaths, Carrington tunnel, Carrington station, Nottingham tunnel, Nottingham Victoria Station, Nottingham Victoria tunnel, tunnel Explore, Sherwood Tunnel, underground, Great central railway tunnel, abandoned Railway, closed railway, Mapperley Tunnel, thurland Tunnel, nottingham abandoned

Id: 599mUnxU0wM

Length: 33min 55sec (2035 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021