Mierystock Tunnel
The Explore
Mireystock is a lovely little tunnel and is one of my favourites as it has a very high eliptical shape throughout. It has some interesting calcite deposits in a couple of places and has a nice bend in it about halfway along. A great way to spend a chilled afternoon with camera and friends.
Photo's taken over a few different visits but the majority are from Jan of this year.
History
June 1872 witnessed Cardiff contractor J E Billups cut the first sod of a new railway connecting Gloucestershire’s Severn & Wye line with the Great Western’s network at Lydbrook. Along this artery, the Forest of Dean’s mineral wealth would flow to markets beyond.The Explore
Mireystock is a lovely little tunnel and is one of my favourites as it has a very high eliptical shape throughout. It has some interesting calcite deposits in a couple of places and has a nice bend in it about halfway along. A great way to spend a chilled afternoon with camera and friends.
Photo's taken over a few different visits but the majority are from Jan of this year.
History
It was an unremarkable route, save for Lydbrook’s stone and wrought iron viaduct which dominated its valley until the wrecking ball of progress ripped through it in 1965. Further up the 1 in 50 gradient, the line vanished into a tight, steep-sided cutting where the 242-yard Mierystock Tunnel lurked. Therein struck tragedy during 1893 when a ganger surrendered his life to a locomotive. Five years on, fallen rock caused a derailment in the northern portal’s shadow. Runaway trucks added more colour to the picture.
Logic dictates that a railway’s prosperity closely follows that of the industry it is built to serve. So when mining in the forest began its decline in the late 1920s, local branch lines suffered an unsurprising fate. The descent to Lydbrook Junction had its death sentence passed in 1956.
On 11th July 1960, a final train braved Mierystock’s darkness, propelling a brake van. Frank’s mate Keith Allford was aboard, surveying the scene ahead of him with camera in hand. To the rear, demolition contractors busied themselves tearing the track up.
When the health and safety brigade came to power in the Seventies, its attention soon turned to the abandoned tunnel and cutting. The former had a breezeblock wall erected just inside its entrance whilst the latter was obliterated by 30,000 tonnes of colliery waste.
On 1st Feb 2005 the buried portal was uncovered again thanks to some local lads and a £50,000 grant to turn the tunnel into a cycle track. Unfortunately their great work ended shortly after they uncovered the tunnel and nothing has been done in the intervening years; the tunnel is still blocked at one end and theres no sign of any work being done in the near future.
There is a more comprehensive account of how they uncovered it again here:-
http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/tunnels/mierystock.html
The Pics
Thanks for looking
Thanks for looking
Last edited:
