When Steve Mackey was about 13 years old, a couple of his friends dangled him by a rope over the portal of a disused railway tunnel by his ankles, 14m above the track bed. This was not to scare the living daylights out of him but was so he could re-paint the commemorative portal stone. When he did so, he added the words “please open me” and his signature to the side of the stone.
That was in the late 1960s. Fast forward to a country walk in 2014 when in a bizarre twist of fate Mackey stumbled across the portal stone, covered in brambles, lost and all but forgotten. Within a few days he had organised its removal and restoration at a local stonemason and the stone is now on display at nearby Treherbert station.
This sowed the seeds of the Rhondda Tunnel Society (RTS), of which Mackey is chairman, and its campaign to restore and re-open the 3.18km Rhondda Tunnel as a cycle path and walking route.
Campaigners believe that this would create the second longest cycling tunnel in the world, bringing much needed tourism revenue to south Wales.
“The longest cycling tunnel is Snoqualmie in Washington State in the US, which is 3.7km long,” Mackey says. “That is closed for half the year because of the weather so, technically, our tunnel would become the longest for six months of the year. I don’t know how we market that but we’re working on it.”
A precedent exists closer to home in the form of Two Tunnels Greenway, a cycling route in Bath that links to the National Cycle Network. The longer of these two tunnels, Combe Down, features an interactive light and sound installation. The tunnels opened in 2013 and attracted 278,000 visitors in the first year and Mackey would like to see this level of visitor numbers and more exploring the Rhondda Valley.
The Rhondda Valley was the beating heart of the coal mining industry in south Wales.
“There were so many pits in the Rhondda that they were digging the coal out before they could deliver it because they had to take it from the valley down to Cardiff, up to Bridgend and then on to Swansea,” Mackey says.
There was a more direct route to Swansea – through a mountain. Enter one SW Yockney, an engineer and protégé of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who took on the challenge to connect the village of Blaencwm in the Rhondda Valley with the village of Blaengwynfi in the Afan Valley.
Work by the Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway company took place between 1885-1890, with excavations starting from both ends. When the tunnellers met in the middle of the 3.18km tunnel they were less than 7mm out of true.
At its deepest point the tunnel is almost 305m below ground and features a single 18m-deep ventilation shaft around 96m from its western end. The single line tunnel split into a double track on emerging from either portal.
The tunnel was opened in 1890 by the Railway Inspector of the day, a Colonel Rich, and transported coal for the next six decades. In the late 1950s it also opened up to passenger transport although, as Mackey says, this was relatively brief and unsuccessful.
The tunnel wasn’t without its problems during its operational life. Underground springs meant the tunnel was very wet in places and water had to be channelled away via a drainage system. In addition, subsidence caused by the coal mining above and below the tunnel resulted in the movement of the brick and stone lining and resulted in further water ingress – although this is confined to both ends of the tunnel (92m from the Blaencwm portal and 73m from the Blaengwynfi portal).
Attempts were made to stabilise the structure in the late 1930s by installing arched steel ribs around the tunnel lining but some of these were pushed out of shape as ground movement squeezed the sidewalls in and the arch upwards.
The tunnel closed to rail traffic in 1968 and when the Ministry for Transport decided not to repair it, due to the prohibitive costs (and in line with the British Railway chairman Dr Beeching’s swingeing cuts to railway services), the line was permanently closed in 1970. The tunnel then became a playground for the young Mackey, who, in spite of his mother’s concerns for his welfare, would sit at its centre and “marvel” at the Victorian brickwork by candlelight.
His fun was curtailed in 1979 when the local authorities filled in the approach cuttings at either end. A series of concrete pipes were built into the infill material at the Blaencwm portal end so that access was still possible for tunnel inspection purposes.
Following vandalism of the ground level access hatch, this was plugged with concrete, so no further inspections could take place. However, in 2008 the concrete plug was removed by persons unknown and subsequently replaced with a lockable steel hatch by the British Railways Board (BRB).
The BRB was abolished in 2013 and ownership of the tunnel passed to the UK Secretary of State for Transport, who appointed the Historical Railways Estate (formerly known as the Burdensome Estate) to manage it. Historical Railways Estate (HRE) is part of Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency).
“So currently the tunnel is in ‘foreign’ – i.e., English – ownership,” says Mackey. “This precludes the RTS from applying for grants from Welsh funding agencies to pay for a detailed survey. It urgently needs a letter of intent from the Welsh government to say that a Welsh government body will accept ownership of the tunnel it is to re-open. The transfer of ownership would come with a GBP 60,000 [USD 74,000] dowry.”
No detailed surveys have been carried out as yet and up until recently there were no records available of the tunnel’s condition since the 1960s. In 2014, as part of the information gathering exercise behind their Tunnels Strategy, HRE decided to carry out a special examination led by structural engineering company Hammond (ECS).
The survey took place over three days in April 2015 and was not for the faint-hearted or claustrophobic. Engineers accessed the tunnel by being lowered around 10.5m down the inspection shaft near the Blaencwm portal and then crawling through a pipe approximately 0.6m in diameter and 5m long.
HRE engineer Lee Holland, who joined the survey, noted that this eastern end of the tunnel was wet underfoot, with running water entering through the arch and sidewalls at various locations. There was no ponding, however, and water was flowing away via the original track drainage towards the infilled cutting.
The survey also showed that the steel ribs around the arch were in poor condition but didn’t appear to be unsafe. The same could not be said for the timber lagging between the ribs and the stonework of the tunnel arch, which were rotting and, in some cases, had fallen away. Small sections of stonework had also fallen from the tunnel crown, although this is thought to have happened as a result of the movement recorded in the 1950s/60s, and may have stabilised.
Moving in the direction of the Blaengwynfi portal, the tunnel was relatively dry. Engineers noted mass concrete in the tunnels, which they presumed had been fixed in front of the original masonry. About half way through the tunnel they saw large recesses built into the sidewalls with the arches here correspondingly wider.
Further in they encountered a timber “cwg” at the point where the tunnel arch was at its most distorted. This structure was made up of two separate lengths of railway sleepers built up into the shape of the tunnel arch with a central opening big enough for people to walk through. They concluded that this cwg had been constructed to resist any further movement of the tunnel lining and keep the tunnel relatively clear in the event of a collapse. Some of the timber in the cwg had rotted away but the overall structure seemed stable.
The final 100m at the Blaengwynfi end is blocked by a concrete wall and close to this is the aforementioned single ventilation shaft. This is brick-lined and circular and was estimated to be 11m high above the crown of the tunnel arch.
The top of this airshaft had been sealed and large volumes of brick rubble – probably from the demolition of a chimney above ground – had been pushed down into the tunnel.
The surveyors concluded that the condition of the tunnel hadn’t deteriorated since it was closed to rail traffic in 1968. Coal mining had caused ground movement and since this had stopped, the ground appeared to have settled.
They also reported that the tunnel conditions didn’t preclude further similar examinations taking place but that, given the hazards and relative inaccessibility, remote inspections would be preferable.
Mackey’s opinion is more enthusiastic.
“I have been in the tunnel four times in the last year and the condition is quite remarkable,” he says. “There are places that need attention but with the technology available today it would be no problem whatsoever.”
The RTS has recently formed a technical sub-committee consisting of retired civil and mining engineers. They are examining what surveys are needed for these historic tunnels to re-open and ensuring that they are safe for public use. They are also researching the activities of the Canals and River Trust and Sustrans (a charity promoting travel by foot, bike or public transport), both of which have re-opened and managed long historic tunnels for leisure use.
The technical sub-committee is also working up designs for the re-opened portals with their approaching cycle paths to calculate the volume of material to be removed and to create designs ready for consultation with the local communities and planning authorities.
“Armed with information about other historic tunnels the RTS aims to get an agreement with the Heritage Lottery Fund, HRE and the Welsh government about the type of survey that is appropriate,” says Mackey. “Indications are that a detailed visual inspection in conjunction with a tap survey is the usual practice and is in line with the accepted regime of Network Rail. Such a survey would avoid the substantial cost of having to excavate and re-fill any portal.”
Once a detailed survey is completed the scope of works will become clear but these will include constructing a road surface, lighting (including emergency lighting) and CCTV. It is assumed at the moment that the existing ventilation shaft can be repaired and pressed into service again – perhaps with the addition of fans.
On the question of the tunnel lining, apart from the necessary remedial work, Mackey would like to see it kept in its original state, complete with “the soot of the trains on the ceilings and walls.”
The tunnel is virtually straight and has only a gentle incline in the first two-thirds from the Blaencwm end.
When it was open, on a good day you could stand at one end and see a faint pinprick of light at the other. Its length, however (it would take around 20 minutes to cycle through it), means that restorers have to be mindful of personal security and emergency access. Current thinking is for a golf-style buggy to be deployed to pick up any casualties.
Rough estimates put the cost of reopening the Rhondda Tunnel and transforming it into a cycling and walking route at between GBP 7.5-9M (USD 9.2-11M).
The RTS’s activities raise enough cash to keep its campaign going but are not intended to fund the building work. This money will have to come from the public purse and organisations such as the Heritage Lottery Fund.
“In the great scheme of things it’s not a lot of money and we may even be able to apply for EU funding before we leave,” says the ever-optimistic Mackey, adding that he would like to see the tunnel open by 2020.
He’s also hoping that financial help will be forthcoming from the neighbours. Vattenfall is building a 92-turbine wind farm on the land above the tunnel and a cheap supply of electricity would be very welcome.
In any funding application it will be vital to show how running and maintenance costs will be met in the future and a recent survey conducted by RTS at the Two Tunnels Greenway project in Bath revealed that tunnel users would be willing to pay a nominal toll.
Local residents would be expected to have free access
