Bolsover Tunnel

Bolsover Tunnel is a disused and infilled twin-track railway tunnel between Carr Vale and Scarcliffe in Derbyshire, England.

At 2,624-yards (2,399-metres) it was once the 18th longest railway tunnel in Britain.

The tunnel was opened by the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (later part of the Great Central Railway and subsequently the LNER) in March 1897. As originally planned, this was a highly ambitious scheme, as its name suggests, but only the central section between Chesterfield Market Place and Lincoln, together with a branch from Langwith Junction to the outskirts of Sheffield, were ever built.

The tunnel hit problems during construction which were never satisfactorily resolved throughout its life. Chief among these was heavy water ingress. This was tapped to supply the nearby town of Bolsover and at 200,000 gallons per day was sufficient to supply its needs. The water problem was exacerbated by mining subsidence. Traffic, notably coal, east of Langwith Junction was heavy, but little materialised on the Chesterfield to Langwith section. These three factors, plus an estimated cost of £1 Million (in 1951) and uncosted concerns over the nearby Doe Lea Viaduct made the decision to close the tunnel easy. In its later years so much propping was needed and so much distortion of parts of the walls occurred that the line was singled from Scarcliffe to Bolsover South.

The section between Chesterfield and Langwith Junction (by then renamed Shirebrook North), was closed to passenger traffic by British Railways in December 1951. Bolsover South and Scarcliffe stations were closed completely. The section from Chesterfield Market Place through Arkwright Town and onto the GC main line remained open to goods traffic until March 1957.

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