Great Western Railway

High Speed Train coming out of Box Tunnel

Passing through Corsham is the Great Western Railway line built by the famous Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, this is the main line from London to Bristol and South Wales.

On the outskirts of the town is the entrance of the railway tunnel, known as Box Tunnel, was at the time it was built between 1836-41, the longest railway tunnel in Europe at around two miles.

At its peak the building work employed some four thousand men and used about a ton of gunpowder a week. Unfortunately a hundred men died during the five years it took to build. The tunnel was opened without any ceremony on 30th June 1841.

The line is dead straight and descends a 1 in 100 gradient from the east. Apparently, although I have never seen it, the sun shines through the tunnel, as it is rising in the east, on or about April 15th each year.

Partway through the tunnel there is a siding into underground workings which was thought to form part of the Royal Navy Supplies Depot at Copenacre. This, allegedly was/is the site to which the Royal Family would flee from London should there have been the threat of nuclear war.

In January of this year Channel 4 TV revealed the details of the site for the first time.

The site is called "Burlington" and was a miniature replica of Whitehall in London complete with a pub and sections for all the government departments in time of war.

I am indebted to Nat Bocking, an expatriate now living in the States for emailing me with tales of when he was a lad living in Corsham. "Even us kids back then knew the Queens Bunker was around there. We used to walk through the Box tunnel on dares. If a train came through you'd have to hide in one of the cubby holes spaced every twenty yards or so."