The Winchester

February 2011

Sitting in an almost pitch black tunnel stripped of  rails and sleepers, the only light we can see is from some tunnel lights barely visible through a doorway a hundred or so metres up the line. Any rustling, kicking of ballast or movement is met with a curt and whispered “shutthefuckup!” We couldn’t sit there forever, we certainly couldn’t wait until the end of the tube service.

Within a minute of this photograph being taken, I was alerted by Gary as to the presence of a team of track inspectors bobbing up the tunnel behind. Fortunately we were at a crossover point between the two tunnels, so  promptly moved up the parallel tunnel towards the disused sections.

Twenty minutes previously we’d dropped onto the tracks and gingerly made our way up the mouth of the tunnel. 5 strong, we were perhaps on the heavy side and had to be careful as 5 people don’t move particularly quickly.

A brick arch is walled off and two deep level tube tunnels lead the tracks under a hill in North London. Cut and cover wouldn’t work here, so the techniques deployed in the first deep level tube constructions were used again here, at a greater scale.

Finding ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place, the decision was made to vacate the abandoned tunnels and to depart this section, chancing our arm as to whether we came across workers or not. This was a delicate affair, interrupted by a passing freight train before we could finally depart the railways.

Sometimes when you’re in the underground, you’ve got that urge to get out, the feeling that time is up on that trip. In the pitch black tunnel, I’m sure all 5 of us felt that.