the whole night we're sleeping in there here we are
about two years ago i watched a video on some guy who's a random guy that slept in kettleness
tunnel for a night so he slept in an abandoned tunnel and ever since then i've wanted to stay
in an abandoned tunnel but i love me home comforts my wife i'm a big mattress you know yep so about
six months ago i've booked us in to sleep in a disused tunnel but what with all the amenities
so you find us on the Meltham branch line tada heading towards the accommodation that we're going
to stay in tonight and we thought we'd bring you some of the disused stations from the line as we
get to the abandoned tunnel we're staying in it's a tunnel video and an every disused station video
because there are three tunnels along this three and a half mile branch line built by the lance and
yorkshire rail in 1869 so let's bring the viewers some high quality youtube entertainment as always
we rebecca
abutments above all right well well we've just been the um bridge that
was over the top of the railway the buttons are still there but the bridges live longer
i think I've got some shots of that so that was Meltham station uh built 1869 and yeah that was
the first stop of the day as we head west along this rather undulating landscape which tells us
it's probably gonna be some lovely embankments some culverts and more importantly some tunnels
hang on we haven't mentioned this david brown tractors limited used this as a test insight
for their tractors and they obviously towed him around in a circle and
run the tractors over it so obviously test the suspension and stuff like that that's so cool
mountain mills hulk then we're going to build a line i think from the terminus mountain down
into the valley to serve some of the mills down there but instead of that they ran out of money
and they said well we'll just build a short um a little hole here we think it's here somewhere the
trouble with hulks is always really difficult to um not a lot left no never really is it's
just like they had a little bit a few planks of wood out and like a wooden structure so
we think it's here because the gps says it's probably here and there's this lovely little
pathway which goes down towards the middle so we're going to take this off of our little list
in 1895 a group of councillors in Meltham wanted to get to huddersfield to have a meeting right and
so they were waiting for the train early evening on the station yep like you did for train and
after like half an hour i didn't turn up nothing just quiet nothing at all they walked along the
track all of them got along and they walked along the track bed now that sounds quite silly but it
worked they got all the way to here which is healy house and the station master was asleep on the
station apparently unaware that the train hadn't come in and it turned out they carried on walking
and they carried walking all the way along the lines only three and a half mile so so yeah that
kind of adds up right randomly yeah but they they found the train halfway down an embankment because
the embankment further on had slipped and we'll come to that spot a little bit later in the video
so this is the site of netherton station and behind it had netherton tunnel
so it's now a building site so you can't really see anything so the tunnel itself went
into the the um kind of rock face there now it had quite a story to it in that
when they were building it it collapsed three or four times yep um because i hit a layer of
shale and it collapsed and it killed like three or four people i think at the time
thereafter they changed the shape of this side of the tunnel they made this side almost not
round but overhand yeah completely oval yeah and that supported the weight much better
but i think the other end the other end of the tunnel is still straight sides and a round top
so we're just looking for the western portal of netherton tunnel and just to give you an idea of
the landscape around here look that way and why at the time of building this was the most expensive
railway to be built in the country per mile three and a half miles three or four free tunnels
and probably more embankments than you've seen on any railway in that short span and yeah look
right ahead of us wow beautiful bridge that's just amazing isn't it so it got more gorgeous because
this time of year it's not even just thrown in if you know i mean it's probably solidly built
so that's the western portal netherton tunnel and it's fully bricked up big old steel door
and more importantly there's a huge sign just up in the trees to the right left even no gain
at all as such so now i'll never get our way back out of here back down past that bridge we came
under a second ago down into the valley because there's an amazing culvert which will probably be
a lot better looking than that tunnel so i'll join you there
oh yes rebecca that let's taste oh wow just a little one you know just thrown in
people obsessed with the tunnels which is great i understand that yeah
but then you come down to the bottom of the hill 100 yards from the tunnel the netherton
western portal and you've got this gem in front of us but this is the tunnel
shall i pass you over thanks there you go
i don't know how you can but what's freaking me out quite a lot
is the amount of spiders on the roof like hundreds of spiders underneath
um i'll keep that a little bit further i guess about halfway i think um there's a gate and
i think i saw somebody pass the other side i'm not gonna go too far but this is this is a tree
wow that's just an unexpected treat you know tunnels along here very difficult to get inside
these days they're bricked up anywhere these days are difficult to get inside but then all of
a sudden this is what's worth looking for if you see a big embankment like this it's always worth
having to sneak down because rarely are these closed up on account that they're for the water so
long as you think it's safe long as it's um you're not massively trespassing which we're not here i
would advocate having a look at one of these at the very least taking a couple of pictures
come to the last bit of the branch line we've skipped butternab tunnel because butternut
tunnel the 256 yard tunnel is where we're staying tonight so we've just come to check
off the last station on this line now that station was only open for up to a few years
maybe even a year i think i read because it was a two steeper gradient
so likely the border trade closed i think it was 1 in 30 and they deemed it unsafe
well the only other thing to point out as well i don't know if we'll get a view so
across that way there is an amazingly beautiful viaduct on the current main line
that heads south out of huddersfield no idea what
it's called not from around these parts but we'll try and get a shot if we can
so this is us walking up to the eastern portal of butternab tunnel you can legally walk up here and
take some pictures and admire the architecture but please do not attempt to break in under
any circumstances firstly if you want to get inside you need to book the airbnb like we did
at the western end secondly if you did manage to break in you trigger the night vision cc tv
and alarm the owner so suffice to say everything we are about to show you from the western portal
is extremely private so please do not ruin it for others please be respectful there are
limited spaces next year for this airbnb so it's possible if you do search it it won't
be available or online but just keep trying your luck the owners don't want to have the
commitment of running it non-stop but we'll be opening it from time to time so again please do
be respectful this is a private garden private house private residence um so on with the show
so uh here we are very very beautiful
western port of the butternut tunnel which also doubles up as an airbnb which is staying
tonight is so cool i think the owners are going to come out and give us a tour inside the tunnel
right so steve and jude are on their way so they're going to give us a tour inside
the tunnel we'll catch you after that and wrap up
so
oh okay why
right the blue brick was added wasn't it start to reinforce the tunnel yes so
that isn't actually a refuge yeah so that's just the original wall so there's probably
more refugees behind the wall somewhere does that make sense that's why they're so short
yes yeah exactly but you're never gonna see it
so
yes so um butternab tunnel the malfunction three and a half miles long extremely expensive and
we learned today why it's so expensive one of the reasons because of tunnels like this tunnel
that side small town on the other side and the embankments and cuttings the culvert that we went
into yeah that's amazing as well so the airbnb is called the portal and it's here near huddersfield
on the melton branch you can stay in here you can book and i'm not sure how long they're going to
be doing it but they wanted to slow it down a bit yeah they've only been here since December
yeah and it's got very busy they're very booked up so uh i think they want to balance out yeah we've
cooked this couldn't be like six months ago yeah um so it took a long time for us to get in here
anyway here we are we hope you enjoyed every disused station for the Meltham branch line
including the abandoned tunnel that we're going to sleep in tonight and we'll see you next week
you