Harecastle-Tunnel

The Harecastle Tunnel is a canal tunnel of the Trent and Mersey Canal. It consists of two parallel tunnels, which are referred to by their designers as Brindley and Telford tunnel. Both tunnels are each allowed only one-way traffic with narrowboats. Today is only the Telford tunnel passable.

The Brindley tunnel

The Brindley tunnel has a length of 2633 meters ( 2880 yards) and was in his time the longest road tunnel in the world. He is the older of the two tunnels and was designed by James Brindley and built in 1770-1777. Brindley himself did not live to the opening, he died during construction.

For the construction of the route of the canal over the hill was measured time. In this disease a total of 15 vertical wells have been drilled, of which from then each in both directions of the tunnel was drilled. To transport the constantly seeps into the pits of water, which caused more than once for flooding, steam-powered pumps were installed.

In the tunnel, there was no towpath. Therefore, the boatmen had their boats by carrying through the tunnel that they backwards lay down on the boat roof and pushed off with his feet from the tunnel walls. This technique is referred to in English as leggings. Meanwhile, the draft animals were performed over a specified Boathorse Road way over the hill.

The tunnel had a clear height of 3.66 m and a maximum width of 2.74 m. In the early 20th century, the tunnel ceiling began partially lower due to mining subsidence. After a partial collapse of the Brindley tunnel was finally closed in 1914.

The Telford tunnel

The Telford tunnel is 2676 meters ( 2926 yards) long. Its construction was necessary, as developed in the Harecastle tunnel in the late 18th and early 19th century due to the ever increasing boat traffic and extremely time-consuming Legging increasingly becoming a bottleneck. The engineer Thomas Telford was therefore commissioned to build a second parallel tunnel. Thanks to advances in construction technology took the construction of the second tunnel just three years, and he was able to be opened in 1827. The new Telford tunnel also had a towpath, so that the boats could be towed by draft horses through the tunnel and the elaborate and dangerous Legging was no longer necessary. After completion of the tunnel, both tunnel Telford were used at a time for opposite directions of travel.

From the 20th century motorized boats came increasingly used, which required no more draft animals. However, since running the engines would have meant choking hazard for the boatmen in poorly ventilated tunnels, in 1914 an electric tug was put into service, the pulled boats through the tunnel. This was until 1954 operated from then caused a big fan at the south portal for sufficient ventilation of the tunnel, so that boats could pass him under engine power. A Narrowboat today takes about 30-40 minutes to drive through the tunnel.

In the late 20th century there was also in the Telford tunnel to mining damage, which is why he had to be closed for several years. During the renovation work of the towpath for a long time no longer in use was reduced, so that boats could use the remaining headroom in the middle of the tunnel.

Inside the Telford tunnel open several smaller Channel Tunnel. They were linking him with the coal mine at Golden Hill and allowed both the dewatering of the mine as well as the direct transportation of coal over the channel. For this purpose, small boats are used together with a capacity of ten tons.