Blea Moor Tunnel

The northern entrance to the tunnel

Sign at tunnel entrance

The isolated Blea Moor signal box, near the tunnel entrance

Blea Moor Tunnel is a 2,629 yard railway tunnel through which the Settle–Carlisle railway line enters Dentdale, before Dent railway station. It is bored through the moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire, between the Ribblehead Viaduct to the south and Dent to the north.

Beam Moor Tunnel is by far the longest tunnel on the Settle–Carlisle Line: it is almost twice as long as the second-longest tunnel, Rise Hill Tunnel. Built by the Midland Railway, it took more than four years to complete, 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: [1]).

At one point of the track's history, steam locomotives were tested for their worthiness by driving them through this tunnel.

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 stream 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 2015.

Location

• Southern portal: 54°13’55"N, 2°22’2"W
• Northern portal: 54°14’59"N, 2°20’47"W

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Blea Moor Tunnel)