Redhill Tunnel is a railway tunnel passing under the eastern area of Redhill in

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, Great Britain. It is on the 'Quarry Line' section of the

Brighton Main Line The Brighton Main Line is a railway line in southern England linking London to Brighton. It starts at two termini in the capital, and , and the branches from each meet at , from where the route continues southwards via to the coast. The line ...

and was constructed in 1899. The tunnel is in length but abuts on to a covered way under the Redhill to Tonbridge Line and Redhill sidings, giving a total length of . There is another Redhill Tunnel on the Midland Main Line south of Trent Junction.

History

The tunnel was built by the

London Brighton and South Coast Railway The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR (known also as the Brighton line, the Brighton Railway or the Brighton)) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1922. Its territory formed a rough triangle, with London at ...

as part of their line 'Quarry Line' designed to avoid the rail

bottleneck Bottleneck may refer to: * the narrowed portion (neck) of a bottle Science and technology * Bottleneck (engineering), where the performance of an entire system is limited by a single component * Bottleneck (network), in a communication network * ...

Redhill railway station Redhill railway station serves the town of Redhill, Surrey, Redhill, Surrey, England. The station is a major interchange point on the Brighton Main Line, measured from . It is managed by Southern (train operating company), Southern, and is also ...

. Plans were drawn up by Charles L. Morgan, the Chief Engineer of the company. Authority for the new line was granted by the British Parliament in July 1896, and construction took place during 1898-9. The tunnel was opened on 8 November 1899 (1 April 1900 for passenger traffic). The lines through the tunnel were electrified in 1932 by the Southern Railway. A disaster in the tunnel was narrowly avoided in April 1918, when a munitions train carrying high explosives ran into some derailed wagons inside the tunnel. The entire munitions train was derailed filling a length of the tunnel with explosive debris, but fortunately there was no fire. It took forty hours to clear the line.

References

Sources

* * * {{refend Railway tunnels in England Buildings and structures in Surrey Tunnels completed in 1899 Tunnels in Surrey