Blea Moor Tunnel is a 2,629 yd (2,404 m) railway tunnel located between

Ribblehead Viaduct The Ribblehead Viaduct or Batty Moss Viaduct carries the Settle–Carlisle railway across Batty Moss in the Ribble Valley at Ribblehead, in North Yorkshire, England. The viaduct, built by the Midland Railway, is north-west of Skipton and ...

and Dent railway station in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is the longest tunnel on the Settle-Carlisle Line, being almost twice as long as the second longest tunnel, Rise Hill Tunnel.

History

Built by the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It ama ...

, it took more than four years to complete. Construction started in 1872, with dynamite transported from Carlisle and Newcastle in carts to the construction site. The wages on offer to the miners who dug the tunnel were 5s () to 5s 6d () per day. It was completed in 1875 at a cost of £109,000 (). It passes some 500 feet below the moor after which it was named, and was built with the aid of seven separate construction shafts sunk from the moor above. This permitted sixteen separate gangs of workers to be used during construction (one from each open end and two from the foot of each of the shafts). Four of these were subsequently filled in but three were retained for ventilation purposes and are still used as such today (with occasional ice accumulation problems). At one point of the track's history, steam locomotives were tested for their worthiness by driving them through this tunnel. The line from the south enters the tunnel on a rising 1% (1 in 100) gradient (the "Long Drag" beginning back at ), but an initial summit is reached at the 1100 ft contour just under half a mile from the southern portal. From there, the rest of the tunnel is on a shallow descending gradient of 1 in 440 towards Dent Head.

Traffic

Any train that goes the full length of the Settle & Carlisle line goes through the Blea Moor Tunnel. This includes passenger trains, all run by Northern (seven each way per day in the 2016-17 timetable), various special excursions (some hauled by steam locomotives) and the many goods trains.

Train simulators

You can go through the Blea Moor Tunnel either with Microsoft Train Simulator, Trainz Classics 3 or Train Simulator Classic.

Location

*Southern portal: *Northern portal:

References

{{Tunnels in Yorkshire Railway tunnels in England Midland Railway Rail transport in Cumbria Rail transport in North Yorkshire Tunnels in Cumbria Tunnels in North Yorkshire