This is my first report, I've been caving and urban exploring for a good while now but never been too much into the photography side of things. However I'm in a new location now and without my old crew I'm limited to safer places. So Warden tunnel has been done to death but treating it as an experiment in low-light photography and writing up reports; dusted off my old GH2 and off I went:
Keen to secure its own route into the capital rather than relying on the London & Birmingham, the Midland Railway surveyed a route from Leicester to Hitchin in 1847. Although authorisation was granted, financial turbulence ensured no work began on it until 1852; the first passenger trains ran on 8th May 1857.
Passenger services had been withdrawn prior to the Beeching cull, the last train heading northwards from Hitchin in the evening of Saturday 30th December 1961. Goods services ended in 1964, with the line officially closing on 28th December. Before the track had been lifted, the tunnel enjoyed a belated moment in the limelight, starring in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. The short scene involved landing a plane on the roof of a train.
Nowadays the Old Warden tunnel lives on as a small nature reserve and frequent of the odd urban explorer and wannabe Banksy.
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