Thurgoland Tunnel

Thurgoland Tunnel is a double bore abandoned railway tunnel between Penistone and Wortley.

It was opened in 1845 on the Sheffield, Ashton-Under-Lyne and Manchester Railway between Manchester Store Street and Sheffield.

It is characterised by a curve of sixty chains radius on a falling gradient of 1 in 131. Because of the difficulties in laying it out, it consists of a series of straight sections in a series of erratic curves varying from 100 to 20 chains. Maximum clearance was only obtained by reducing the normal six foot spacing between the tracks.

Because of the clearance problems this caused, in 1952 a second single line tunnel was built for the up line and the old tunnel thereafter only housed the down line.

The tunnels ceased to carry trains in 1983 when the local Sheffield-Huddersfield train service was diverted via Barnsley.