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Dudley Tunnel is a canal tunnel on the Dudley Canal Line No 1, England. At about long, it is now the second longest canal tunnel on the UK canal network today. (Standedge Tunnel is the longest, at , and the Higham and Strood tunnel is now rail only). However, since the Dudley Tunnel is not continuous this status is sometimes questioned: (the main tunnel is , Lord Ward's tunnel is and Castle Mill basin is ). In 1959 the British Transport Commission sought to close the tunnel but this led to an Inland Waterways Association-organised massed protest cruise in 1960. The tunnel was however closed in 1962; and was further threatened with permanent closure by British Railways who wished to replace a railway viaduct at the Tipton portal with an embankment and a culvert.〔Gittings, Derek A. (1973). "The Restoration". Chapter 3, in: ''TRAD 1973''.〕 However, this never happened as the railway was closed in 1968 and the disused bridge demolished in the 1990s.〔()〕 The tunnel was reopened in 1973, as a result of restoration, which had been a collaboration between local volunteers (originally the Dudley Canal Tunnel Preservation Society, later the Dudley Canal Trust), and the local authority, Dudley Borough Council. The opening ceremony was advertised as ''"TRAD 1973 - Tunnel Reopening at Dudley"''.〔 ==Construction of the tunnel(s)== A private Act of Parliament to construct the tunnel and associated canal, later to be known as the Dudley Canal Line No. 1, was passed in 1776. However Lord Dudley and Ward started building a canal and tunnel, in 1775, to link his Tipton Colliery and his lime works to the Birmingham Canal Navigations, at Tipton, on the 473 ft ''Wolverhampton Level''. The work was completed in 1778 and was known as Lord Ward's canal. He later agreed to sell the canal and tunnel to the Dudley Canal Company. The Dudley Canal Line No. 1 and Dudley Tunnel were reported as finished on 25 June 1791. The earliest part of tunnel system was built to help with the transport of limestone extracted from the mines inside Castle Hill through which the tunnel runs. This was Lord Ward's tunnel, which leads to Castle Mill Basin. From there the main tunnel runs, via the Cathedral Arch, to Parkhead, near Netherton. At Cathedral Arch a branch canal lead into the Little Tess Cavern mine workings. This route is now blocked, but has been by-passed by two new tunnels (see below). The southern end, including the southern portal, of the tunnel had to be rebuilt in 1884 due to subsidence caused by adjacent coal mines. This section of the tunnel was built several feet wider than the original tunnel bore. The southern portal bears a brick ''date stone'' of 1884. Another canal tunnel at Castle Mill Basin, now blocked off by a dam, leads under Wren's Nest to two under ground basins, east basin and west basin, and was used to transport limestone from the underground mine workings. Surface quarries were also opened; they outlasted the underground workings and were last used in the early 1920s. The land above the underground workings, together with the surface quarries, became a National Nature Reserve. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dudley Tunnel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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