(Photos 1-5 © The New Mendoza, photo 6 © Richard Croft)

British Rail opened a four-mile single-track branch to the new Bevercotes Colliery in 1961, linking it to the network at Boughton Junction. It was closed temporarily between January 1962 and August 1965, and saw its last train on 18th June 1993.

The line featured a 350-yard bore known locally as Mummies Tunnel, but correctly titled Boughton Brake. The portals are brick-built whilst the interior features near-vertical brick side walls incorporating regular refuges and a segmental arch concrete roof.

Just over two miles of the Bevercotes branch, including the tunnel, were brought back into use as part of a Network Rail test track during the summer of 2012. The tunnel will be used as a training environment for on-track machines. But it is understood that reballasting needs to take place before the line is ready to take trains again.

(Richard Croft’s photo is used under this Creative Commons licence.)

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