The Toft railway tunnel

CLOSURE OF the railway tunnel at Toft village, three miles south west of Bourne, this summer is likely to herald the end of this relic from the Victorian age of steam. The interior has become unsafe and both entrances sealed off to prevent further public access because of the danger from falling brickwork.

The construction of the tunnel was one of the biggest civil engineering feats for the railway system in the area during the 19th century and formed part of the railway link between the Midlands and East Anglia.

The Bourne and Saxby Railway Act was passed on 24th June 1889 for the construction of a double track between the two locations but the section east of Little Bytham was the most difficult part of the proposed route because the terrain rose in a series of ridges and although they were not particularly steep, they combined to create a climb from 35 feet above sea level at the Bourne end to a high point of 439 feet above sea level between South Witham and Wymondham on the county border with Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.

The escarpment overlooking Bourne presented too sharp an incline to allow engineers lay rails over the top and so it was proposed that a tunnel be driven through it for a distance of 330 yards and wide enough to take two tracks. Survey work started in November 1890 and the actual tunnelling began the following February with an initial workforce of 100 railway navvies soon expanding to around 400.

Clay from a site near to the tunnel provided the raw materials for one million of the 2½ million bricks needed to line the interior walls and these were made by a manufacturing company set up by Henry Kingston of Bourne. The town stands on the very edge of a huge belt of Oxford clay that stretches from Dorset through Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire to the Humber estuary, and in the late 1880s, Kingston had exploited this natural resource and opened a brickworks at the foot of Stamford Hill, a few hundred yards west of the railway station and near a wooden footbridge that was erected later and which eventually became known locally as the Red Steps.

The brickworks were now conveniently situated to the new line and Kingston was given rail access to his premises to supply the bricks needed for the project. The company agreed to build a single transit area known as Kingston's Siding provided that the owner paid for the work himself and so the new facility was duly installed. Spoil removed as the tunnel was cut was transported to Spalding at the rate of four trains with 20 wagons each day, carrying between them 400 cubic yards of earth which was used to form an embankment for a new loop line that was being built at the same time.

In order to facilitate the conveyance of materials such as bricks from Bourne to the workface, a 2½ mile tramway was laid to serve the tunnel and a whole collection of workshops, a sawmill, mortar mill, smithies and carpenter's shops, grew up around the workings. The tunnel shafts were served by two winding engines while the air below ground was kept tolerably fresh by the use of a blower to ventilate the excavations. Water was supplied to the site of operations by a 1¼ mile length of pipe fed by a borehole at Bourne.

In 1891, there was great excitement in the town when reports circulated that coal had been discovered during the excavations but it turned out to be lignite or brown coal and although used as fuel in some parts of Europe there were insufficient quantities to make mining financially viable.

The tunnel took two years to build and by the end of February 1893, the final stage of the project had begun in readiness for the line to open for goods traffic the following June. A freight train from Leicester reached Bourne at 7 a m on Monday 4th June 1893 on its way to the marshalling yards at South Lynn in Norfolk, the first of 30 such trains that day, a precursor of the amount of business that was to be generated in the years to come.

A special excursion train travelled from the Midlands to King's Lynn on 25th June 1893 although passenger traffic did not officially start until Tuesday 1st May the following year when additional facilities had been built to handle them at the Red Hall in Bourne. There was no official opening ceremony although large crowds did turn out to greet the first train.

The tunnel was the only one within the Midland and Great Northern Railway's joint system and the line was used extensively during the summer months to transport passengers from the industrial Midlands to the east coast seaside resorts that were becoming increasingly popular for summer holidays and excursions. The service was particularly in demand on public holidays and by August Bank Holiday of 1936, sixteen extra trains were routed along the line and through the tunnel between 1 a m and midday on Saturday 1st August, most of them heading for Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft but some diverting to Skegness, Mablethorpe and Cromer.

But it was not to last. The popularity of the motor car and competition for haulage from road transport soon sounded its death knell. Both passenger and goods services on the line ended on Saturday 28th February 1959 and work on removing the track between Castle Bytham and Bourne began in the spring of 1962.

The land on both sides of the tunnel was subsequently bought by Bourne Urban District Council and a section on the eastern side used for rubbish dumping and when the authority was superseded by South Kesteven District Council in 1974 it was planned to extend refuse disposal throughout the site but the proposal was shelved. Later, during the Cold War period of 1979-85 when there was a presumed threat of a nuclear attack, Lincolnshire County Council investigated the possibility of using the tunnel as a public shelter equipped with beds, food stores and other survival equipment but it was deemed not to be feasible and the idea was dropped.

Then in 1993, Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust stepped in to preserve the tunnel and surrounding land as a nature reserve consisting of the two deep eastern and western cuttings and now provides a new delight for those who seek out nature that has colonised the abandoned track. Unfortunately, the closure of the tunnel itself, one of the few remaining relics from the heyday of Victorian travel in this area, is regarded by conservationists as the prelude to complete demolition.

NOTE: This article was published by The Local newspaper on Friday 1st December 2006.