1 Rail Engineer • February 2016 Healing Wounds Could campaigners bring rebirth to two South Wales valleys by BRIDGES & TUNNELS BRIDGES reopening the disused railway tunnel that connects them? PHOTOS: BEN SALTER/DAVID VOUSDEN BEN SALTER/DAVID PHOTOS: Rail Engineer • February 2016 2 efore the advent of Xboxes and all-singing smartphones, kids signed up to a vivid, multi-sensory game accessed (Opposite, main picture) through a portal at the far end of the kitchen, known as ‘outdoors’. In the black and white era - albeit slightly rose- The epitome of bleakness: Btinted - this was unfettered by health and safety, the dress code comprising short trousers, grazed knees, cheeky a Seventies view of the grins and cockeyed fringes. The social backdrop was industrial, as was parenting. Woe-betide any child who got under tunnel’s now-buried east mother’s feet. So, after breakfast, they were swept into the real world to learn about life through the unique experiences portal at Blaencwm. it flung at them. That culture shaped today’s generation of retirees and those, like me, who still remember coalmines. & TUNNELS BRIDGES (Opposite, top) The western Also amongst the latter is Stephen Mackey who grew The decades that followed brought industrial decimation entrance at Blaengwynfi. up at the head of the Rhondda Fawr valley, blessed with to the once-thriving upper Rhondda. Though the physical The only shaft can just be an adventure playground on his doorstep. But there was scars have now healed - revealing a spectacular landscape seen above the portal’s one particular place that drew him back time after time. A - economic deprivation still blights the area. Stephen felt left-hand wing wall. short walk from home was a railway tunnel, two miles in this personally a couple of years ago when he was made length, through which there was no traffic on a Sunday. So redundant. With such events comes the need to refocus, a he’d take a candle, put it in a tin, and venture forth into the process that often benefits from a good walk. And so, on darkness. Near its midpoint, the tunnel abruptly widened a late summer afternoon, he found himself in Llwynpia, a for a few yards, a spot he knew as ‘the church’. Here he couple of miles from home, wondering what to do next. would sit for hours, reflecting on the courage and resolve The answer came to him as he passed some blackberry of those who had pushed this passageway through the hill bushes, his attention being drawn to something in the 80 years earlier. For reasons he never fully understood, he undergrowth. It was a moment of bizarre happenstance. felt at one with them. Pulling back the branches, revealed to him was the cover Confrontation with officialdom was an ever-present stone he had painstakingly repainted 40 years earlier. Life threat, but this diminished in 1968 when passenger traffic since has been unrecognisable. ceased, disenfranchising communities in this remote corner of South Wales. With the help of two mates and Go west a 40-foot rope, Stephen repainted the commemorative Through the 1870s, increasing coal production in the cover stone cemented into the east portal’s headwall, Rhondda severely tested the handling capabilities of its appending his name and the request “please open me”. monopoly carriers, the Taff Vale Railway and Cardiff Docks. Then, in 1980, with locals persistently breaching the Return journeys typically took two days. This background of tunnel’s protective blockwalls, the county council arrived crippling congestion spurred the merchant folk of Swansea to infill the approach cuttings, bulldozers burying their - where new coal shipping facilities had opened - to liability beneath tonnes of earth. Stephen watched on with develop proposals for the Rhondda & Swansea Bay Railway a lump in his throat as part of his childhood vanished. As (R&SBR). Incorporated on 10 August 1882, it established a he headed home, he looked back and shouted: “I’ll open shorter export route via the Afan valley but, to reach it, the you one day” - the sort of thing you do as an impassioned line would first have to overcome a 1,700 feet high natural youth before the burdens of being a grown-up barrier, Mynydd Blaengwyfni. Set that come to bear. task was engineer Sydney William Yockney; his father, Samuel Hansard Yockney, had acted as engineer (Left) Bulldozers bury the and manager for the contractor east portal in 1980. at Box Tunnel, bringing him to the attention of Brunel for whom he (Below) The commemorative went on to fulfil a number of other cover stone with its plea for tunnel projects. the tunnel’s reopening. PHOTOS: STEPHEN MACKEY STEPHEN PHOTOS: GRAEME BICKERDIKE 3 Rail Engineer • February 2016 Duck or grouse From the hydraulically-powered comfort of the twenty- first century, not one of us can realistically imagine what life was like for the workforce. However, a visiting newspaper reporter did his best to paint a picture. “Taking our places on some temporary seats, the horses started at a brisk walk along the tram-line, and soon we were entering the tunnel. Generally the tunnel was narrow and one had to exercise care in passing one’s arms within the strict limits of the little track, or the jagged points which stuck out here and there would give one a sharp and unpleasant reminder, while an occasional cry of “heads” from our guide warned us of the necessity of sometimes disposing this part of the body somewhat suddenly BRIDGES & TUNNELS BRIDGES between our knees. At more than one place however we saw signs of operations already on foot for the purpose of ‘opening out’. We were informed however there is no immediate necessity for this, the great object being to bore the tunnel, and in a very short time a hundred or so gangs of men can quickly enlarge it to the required size for the passage of trains.” “The side and the roof generally presented a most substantial appearance, the roof particularly being for quite half the distance a level mass of rock. As one passed along, a hissing sound indicated the passing of the air which kept the tunnel even three-quarters of a mile in quite nice and cool. At last the waggons came to a sudden stop and a short walk over the boots in mud took us to a solid wall of rock, which effectually blocked our progress. Not so that of the excavators. Against this solid wall were six men hammering with pickaxe and crowbar, as though their lives depended on it, PHOTOS: STEPHEN MACKEY and though their progress will be slow, they will eventually clear a passage through which it is hoped that millions of passengers and countless tons of coal will pass from the Rhondda to the port at the mouth of the Tawe.” Work on the R&SBR was split into three contracts, No.3 being Tick tock awarded to William Jones of Neath. Included within it was Despite the miners’ industry, alarm bells started ringing the construction of Rhondda Tunnel, the second longest in early in 1887 when progress started to slip; according Wales at 3,443 yards, for which the resident engineer was to William Jones, this was the function of a manpower William Sutcliffe Marsh. shortage and the underground springs encountered at the Ground was first broken on 30 May 1885, completion east end of the tunnel. Reluctantly, the company pushed being due within three years. However, delays in securing back the contractual completion date to 31 July 1889. It “Against this land at the eastern end prevented any substantive wasn’t until 16 March that year, with only 20 weeks to go, progress there for another 15 months. Yockney’s reports that the headings finally met, Yockney recording that the solid wall to the company directors were initially positive, with good levels were out by just half-an-inch whilst the line was ground conditions encountered and little water ingress. perfect. In celebration, the contractor entertained a hundred were six men The headings were being driven through sandstone at a navvies to supper, song and recitals at a nearby hotel. rate reaching 240 yards per month, the miners working This constructional high-point acted as a counterbalance hammering from shafts in the approach cuttings at either end and to the lows that inevitably attended. John Harris, 24, killed another just in from the western entrance. by an explosion; William Shod, a haulier, run over by a with pickaxe With ground cover exceeding 900 feet, the conventional wagon and fatally injured; Isaac Watson, 36, succumbed approach to expediting progress in lengthy tunnels to dynamite. And then, on 22 January 1889, news of a and crowbar, - the sinking of intermediate shafts - was deemed huge rock fall spread across the district; seven deaths impractical. However, the miners did benefit from rock were reported. Although an exaggeration, the reality - as though their drilling machines, operated by compressed air which was two victims - proved no consolation to the families of generated by a pair of horizontal engines and stored in George Lever, a 28-year-old miner, and labourer George lives depended an iron tank before being passed into the tunnel. The Smitherham, known to everyone as “Soldier”. Gangs of machines’ exhaust acted as effective ventilation at the men laboured for many hours to extricate their bodies on it...” working face. from the debris. Rail Engineer • February 2016 4 When Colonel Rich fulfilled his inspection duties for the (Opposite, top) In April Board of Trade on 2 May 1890, Yockney was confident of 2015, engineers entered a tick in the box.