Howdy, and a warm but socially distant welcome (elbow bumps all round folks!) to my Photo-Blog-ting, wherein I document journeys with my camera. The stated aim of my Blog is to document the remains of Birmingham’s network of subways, underpasses, bridges and associated concrete spaces built during the mid to late 20th century. However, life is never straight-forward eh? Back in March, whilst planning for the next instalment of my adventures in the Under/Over, life just stopped. The UK was locked down as Covid-19 came to town, spoiling the party and ending far too many lives. Boris Johnson and his Dominic Cronies have many questions to answer, I hope they are eventually brought to book.

To those who have lost loved ones, you have my sincerest, heartfelt sympathies. And if you are NHS staff, a Carer or any sort of emergency keyworker, you have my deepest gratitude. ‘Thank you’ seems incredibly inadequate for all that you have done for the people of this country, but I thank you all.

Months have passed and my Blog felt deeply irrelevant, I thought about it many times, but I just couldn’t bring myself to write, despite the momentous times. Maybe it’s a process thing, I need time to pass before thinking about writing and reflecting, I don’t know, it’s not a question I want to answer right now.

I was laid off in late March, unfortunately my work remains closed for the time being. At home, with just my family for company has been difficult but I am thankful, it is an inordinate blessing that I have people close to me. We’ve all developed daily routines, keeping physically and mentally fit, giving each other space when needed. For me that’s meant a lot of ‘permitted exercise walks’ around my local area. I’ve largely avoided local parks and public spaces, because they’ve been stuffed full of people, preferring instead to stroll the empty streets of south Brum. And yes, they were very very quiet. Often spooky at times. I rather liked it…

I’ve been thinking a lot about a walk I went on last November. There’s something about the journey that we went on that has stayed with me since. The walk itself was perfectly innocent, a brightly wrought day of exploring in good company. Since that day it’s taken on new meaning, like a foreshadowing of events to come – maybe that’s just me, I’m never happier than when I’m looking for doom, conjuring conspiracies from the banal. Lockdown has offered long periods for reflection, often to my detriment, because dark thoughts have won me over in the past. Thankfully I have enduring support from my family so, a balance is how I navigate my sublime and ridiculous thoughts. I guess, in part, that is why I write.

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts you’ll doubtless have developed a sense that I enjoy relics and ruins; that abandoned, derelict aesthetic deeply appeals to me. Clean lines and polished floors are lovely and all that, but gimme peeling paint and rust any day! A series of online conversations with a lovely chap called Christian (aka @concreterhythms – an incredible photographer and derelict aesthete) led us on a journey to Parkhead Viaduct near Dudley on a sparklingly frosty morning.

After parking up, Chris led us out to a leafy path that dipped down into a wide canal basin straddled at its end by a large brick viaduct. The sun had barely risen over the vast arches of the viaduct, the frigid canal wreathed in a deep layer of mist, such a delight to see! We had the place to ourselves, although the icy tendrils of the mist were fast disappearing. We had a brief walk under the viaduct, following the canal through the locks beneath.

Here the mists cascaded through the arches to the canal below. It was lovely to see, I think if the walk had ended there I would have been content to have witnessed just this ephemeral wonder of nature 🙂

The looming viaduct above us was the intended start point for our walk, but being photographers, a glorious morning mist got us all breathless and excited. Wandering down to the next set of locks allowed us to take in the lovely symmetry of its reflections as the sun rose behind us, bathing it in a soft glow. Originally the viaduct was built from wood, in a trestle style traversing the basin over the Parkhead locks. It was constructed to carry the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, its works overseen by the great builder himself, Isembard Kingdom Brunel, and completed in 1850. However, its construction and use was persistently troubled by the groundworks beneath, all was not well with the viaduct. The soft Dudley ground and subsidence from mining beneath was causing the structure to sink!

In 1877 fresh works began on the viaduct. By then it was owned by Great Western Railways who decided, rather than rebuilding the structure, commissioned works instead to encase the viaduct in a new brick structure, made up of eight vast arches spanning over 150 metres. The viaduct reopened in 1880 but its working life was dogged by ground movements beneath, causing the structure to sag and buckle. When passenger services on the South Staffordshire line ended in 1965 retirement from service was nigh for the viaduct. An intermittent freight service to the nearby steel works at Round Oak continued to use the viaduct for the next thirty years until this service closed in the 1993 and the line was quietly forgotten.

Chris led me onto a dirt path through scrub-land banked up against the viaduct. A short climb and we were greeted with the newly risen Sun casting its warmth onto the unguarded railway line. The air smelled delicious as steam billowed from the gleaming steel chimneys of the adjacent bakery. The ground, laden with a hard frost, crackled and crunched underfoot like rice pops.

The old railway here once stretched from Burton-on-Trent and Lichfield in the north, through Walsall, Wednesbury and Dudley to Brierley Hill and Stourbridge. Whilst the line is technically mothballed, some sections have been reclaimed as public footpaths, others like this section through to Wednesbury are being resurrected as a new route for the Midland Metro. Armed with this knowledge I was very keen to see the route, as is, before the redevelopment. Chris has been photographing it for awhile now, aiming to produce a book from his admirable endeavours.

I must admit I was a bit overwhelmed at first, I couldn’t quite get my head around how easy it was to get on the old line. Large mounds of soil had been banked up either side of the viaduct, I believe in an attempt to reduce the weight on the structure – I imagine the condition of the viaduct will be ameliorated when the Metro line is laid. For now it looks like a weird warscape of trenches and hillocks, punctuated by rusted track sections and piles of concrete sleepers rimed with frosted mosses. It’s bleakly attractive, gone wild but the glories of the past are long long gone. Time has not been kind to Parkhead Viaduct, it deserves so much more.

It felt a bit surreal being up there, looking out across the valley. The mists were quickly disappearing but still, the views, well they’re Black Country sublime. Leaning on the parapet I couldn’t help notice how the bulges and cracks radiated down the sides of the viaduct. One can only imagine the immensity of the forces at play here. Despite the ruinous aspect it doesn’t feel unsafe, just forgotten and uncared for. It was love at first sight for me.

Chris was nipping about, lining up and popping pix, loving the sunshine as it lit up the blandscape, his breath steaming out like an old school loco. We grinned at each other and started walking along, traipsing across the littered aggregates that form the base of the railway line. Most of the tracks here have gone, but only recently it seems, probably for illicit scrap whilst many of the concrete sleepers remain.

The landscape surrounding us is industrial units, steel sheds and concrete blockwork, these places seem oddly blind to the old railway running between and throughout. The line quietly snakes north towards central Dudley, mostly obscured and out of sight, behind block walls and embankments. We can hear the hubbub of traffic and works, but it’s all background music. Piles of rubbish are common, the couldn’t care less leavings of a society perpetually moving forward. Appliances, toys, mattresses, households moving on and never looking back, the little crimes against the world. It’s depressing to see.

Anything of value from the railway has been stripped away, spoil heaps and gravel mound up around piles of broken concrete sleepers too numerous to count. Drink and drugs paraphernalia are commonplace littering amongst the stunted shrubby growth. Birches and Alder line the way, these pioneer trees are usually amongst the first to repopulate human wastelands (Edgelands, as Chris calls them, an excellent descriptor). The general air of decrepitude is reflected in the enclosing infrastructure, the fences and walls often broken, offering ways in and views out.

Up ahead a large rectangular concrete bridge looms, embraced by a vast embankment it’s innards coloured by graffiti and damp. Buddleia hang overhead as traffic gushes past as a river of noise. But down on the track-bed it’s us dancing amidst pools of fetid water and worse. Used cafe cups litter the floor thrown over by the mindless many, caught in the eddies below, mixed up with used aerosols and empty needles.

I do enjoy seeing the murals daubed amongst the detritus and babbling tags, we here lingered awhile between the bridges, taking in the sweep of the roundabout’s concrete innards that effortlessly hold up the road. The hustle and bustle of rail transport long forgotten by walls now adorned by different flights of fancy. Countless tags are everywhere, they look a little desperate amongst the finer pieces of art sprayed up with such care and skill. But that is the way, down here.

I mostly used my wide angle lens down there, trying to capture the sheer size of the spaces whilst grabbing detail and leading the eye. It’s hard not to ponder what was, the busyness of industry as trains thundered through. Sadly there’s so little left of any railway infrastructure, just the odd piles of concrete sleepers. I have a good imagination though, I think about the smells and sounds, oily coals, clattering trucks and screeching rails. It’s a good diversion from the current nostril posies of urine and rot. Aside from the ivy trembling against the wall there’s little in the way of reclaimed nature down here, this place is too corrupted, poisoned by our plastic excesses.

The track-bed here begins to incline up towards Dudley town centre. Despite the arid nature of the surroundings I’m enjoying the walk, Chris and I swapping anecdotes about how we approach our photography in such a place. It’s difficult to be intuitive in such an empty place, the architecture is brutally spartan, and there’s only so much graff you can snap before it becomes laborious. I’m looking constantly for details but there’s so little left. I spy the line of sleepers going up hill, running parallel to Duncan Edwards Way. Inexplicably it makes me happy, there’s still a railway here.

As we walk uphill it feels oddly surreal, we’re almost at ground level, suddenly visible to passersby on the road, a thin weedy wire fence separates us from the adjacent industries. The sun is glorious, limning the trees and rooftops with golden light. Chris says it’s not far to the tunnel now. We’re both excited to see The Tunnel. The Dudley Tunnel. If it’s open, that is…..

The line dips again below all acknowledgement, as the roads and walls of industry enclose us once more. The tracks lead our eyes and feet as the hills of Dudley rise up around us. Here it really feels like we’re on the railway as another utilitarian bridge looms above us. Just beyond and to the right is a singular sealed building balancing atop the embankment. This is Blowers Green Station house, bathed in the morning sunshine. It’s forlornly lovely, despite its blanked windows and tumbledown walls. A Union Jack suitcase sits on the track-bed beneath, lost or found, as if in homage to this dead place. Louis Vuitton never travelled on the South Staffs railway.

We barely linger here because, anticipation, excitement, slight terrors too, because the tunnel. The Tunnel! We can see it. Grins all round. Are those gates OPEN? Looking back I regret not pausing for longer here, to take in the remains of the station, but I can see why we didn’t tarry long, the tunnel called to us like a siren. The railway cutting here is straight and deep, taking the route the simplest way, beneath the Dudley Hills. The cutting is steep sided, vegetation covering all, even the old platforms. I thought briefly about climbing up to the station house for a look-see, but Chris cautioned against, vagrants are common here, even living on the hillside, so we left them alone, no need for a confrontation or intruding on their private diversions.

We walk quickly, excited. The gates look like they’re ajar….. I’m aware that my right foot was becoming very sore, but it’s a simple footnote to the moment, the Adrenalin was pumping because the gates, they’re ajar! The track-bed feels like it’s dipping again, toward the gaping black maw beyond the gates. Indeed it is, subtly tracking downwards again, but that’s just details because those fucking gates are open, unlocked, unguarded, and by golly we’re going in. The cutting walls, clothed in straggling brambles and dead-stalks of Bracken and Rosebay, had risen steeply around us. Skeletal trees dance around the hill-brow, a last fanfare bidding us farewell on our Stygian quest, it really felt like we’re going down into the underworld. A random traffic cone sits hilarious just outside, mocking the deathly lack of traffic.

Months later it still feels weird looking back on the Tunnel. Not that anything untoward happened, we entered the tunnel. We walked through the tunnel. We exited the tunnel at the other end (with some issues…). The tunnel was the big draw of this journey, I’d seen photos by my peers, I really wanted to see it in the flesh, before any redevelopment takes it away from us commoners. Which is the thing, it’s no longer accessible, locked up tight awaiting new developments.

So, looking back, to be, inside, walking the actual Dudley Tunnel, suddenly there, confronted by its absoluteness, was quite humbling. And I felt fearful, suddenly aware of my inadequate skills. Chris is a nimble chap, he’s got skills and boy can he climb! Me, I’m an unfit fifty-ting with a dodgy back and weak knees. The tunnel goes deep under Dudley, it’s almost a kilometre long and once you’re in, there’s absolutely no light. Once you’re in, urine. I suddenly needed to pee.

It’s easy to pee when faced with a monster, fortunately nothing dribbled down, my old jeans stayed nice and dry despite the cold sense of fear. I don’t think the old beast minded me watering the lichen though. It gave me time to actually look around and take in the tunnel’s immensity. I felt very small and aware of the impenetrable gloom just metres away. I’m not claustrophobic, but in places like this I can appreciate how it makes people feel, the sense of depth, the oppressive weight of the hill above, the scuttling doom of Moria. Speak friend and enter….

My photo makes the tunnel look very bright, but really it’s not. I put my camera on a mini-tripod, aimed it high and took some long exposure shots. I’ve post processed them to bring out all the colour and details, I was surprised by the blues and oranges that my camera picked up. I guess that’s a hundred and seventy years worth of minerals washed down through the hillside and accentuated by the lime mortar. Whilst the shots were taking I ran my hands across the stubbily floor, cinders, aggregates, coals, splinters and fragments, plus the alien looking silvers left by teens getting high. I pressed my fingers to the bricks marvelling at their uniformity, caressed nascent stalactites dangling from the mortar. I was falling in love with a tunnel.

Construction work on the tunnel began in early 1847, with a timetable to completion of approximately 18 months, which is severe even by today’s exacting standards! Progress was anticipated at a rate of 100 yards per month, but a series of catastrophes and violent strikes slowed construction down. Understandable really, tunnel building was and remains a dangerous business.

The tunnel was built outward from a series of five deep shafts driven into the hilltop. These were removed after completion as the land about there was developed for industry and housing. The tunnel is constructed entirely in blue bricks, although in patches there’s evidence of repairs and patching up, corrugated sheeting and lighter coloured brickwork attached to stem the constant flow of water. These access shafts claimed several lives; a navvy was partially decapitated after falling from a skip as he descended; another fell and broke his neck at the bottom of the shaft; whilst falling timbers claimed the life of a navvy working at the bottom of one of these shafts. What a gruesome sight that must have been. Just beyond the northern entrance to the tunnel is the wide arch of the new road-bridge, this partially collapsed during its construction, as the hillside beneath slipped away. One can only imagine the horrors of such a scene, and how the history of this place has slipped out of mind.

Today the earthly reality is that it’s dark, it smells and it’s not particularly safe underfoot down there. It’s also deathly quiet. You realise very quickly that, if you were to have a nasty fall you’re in trouble down here. Chris has walked here before, assures me it is safe as long as we walk ON the sleepers. There are numerous catchpits and drains throughout the tunnel, refuges for tunnel workers and long lost shafts. All are likely to cause certain doom. A flicker of uncertainty flashes through me, is this a good idea? I could fall, because I do. I am the person who puts his feet in all the wrong places, I was born with a foot in my mouth. It’s just who I am, not that clever, not that savvy, and suddenly rather nervous. I am very conscious of the pulse in my neck, my breathing, I focus on my breathing. Calm down, it’s just an old tunnel.

We flicked our phone torches on and walked inwards a little ways. I put my camera away because, yeah, my balance in the dark is questionable in the dark and all that. Flash photography here would just blind us, stumbling about and busting a foo-foo valve in complete darkness would be bad, but losing my camera too, that would be catastrophic! Entering this Stygian realm the light dropped significantly as the outside world fell away. It’s odd but I found that those sudden fears just fell away as quickly as they’d risen. In the absolute quiet I was absolutely pumped, alert and keyed to every sound around me, my torch could barely pick out any details more than a metre ahead, such was the sheer density of the dark we were entering. Sounds were so sharp, footsteps like crashing waves, water droplets falling like echo blasts as we picked our steps carefully, human breaths somehow comforting.

About thirty metres inside the tunnel starts to dip and banks to the left, any ambient light left to us disappearing behind. I stopped and grabbed my phone out. It has a useful night mode shot on it, that can catch interesting images, if you can hold your hands steady for a few seconds. The above shot is that image, and whilst it lacks real detail it does give you an idea of how utterly black the tunnel was (and goddamned cold, my hands got shaky in the gloom). We turned and faced the strange, and marched down into. Always looking downwards, wary of where we were placing our feet.

Occasionally deeper glooms would appear, shaped shadows off to the side of us, arched cavities, service tunnels, pits of doom, who could tell in the darkness? We walked a ways, picking our steps carefully along the sleepers, pausing occasionally to take in the view, shining our torches aloft to illuminate an endless whorl of bricks punctuated by skeletal stalactites of ochre and calcite, oddly alien flashes of colour in this realm. Around halfway, in pretty much complete darkness, we sensed rather than saw that the rails were intact here, I tripped up on one as I avoided a sudden hole in the track-bed beneath me, causing me to gasp in horror. The tunnel was very wet here, the air deathly still like a sepulchre. I could see little beyond the gaze of my torch, but it was enough, our little bubbles of light sustaining our life in the dense dark that encased those moments. My mouth was full of leaden ash and rail sparks, decades of braking wheels screeching on the steels beneath have charged the vapours of this space, veils of napatha lingering in the closet. I thought we might see or hear rats or bats, but there was absolutely nothing, just the sound of our footsteps, echoes of dripping water and the weight of the earth.

Ahead we could see an oval halo of light, the tracks gradually converging into view around us towards the still distant exit. It would be false to say we had seen some amazing things down there, the reality was that there was very little to actually see, the darkness so absolute and even with the best of torches it is what it is, an old tunnel made from bricks. Despite this ‘lack’ of tangible sights, as we approached the northern exit of the tunnel I was filled with a deep sense of reverence for the builders of this industrial wonder. Lives had been lost building this great forgotten structure that has survived wars, abandonment and thwarted constant erosion. It has withstood them all, and stands as testament to those hardy Victorian souls who carved it out of the hillside with the most rudimentary tools and the dangers of explosives. I adored every second, despite the dangers and my inner qualms, I wouldn’t change a second of my experience down there.

Perhaps that’s why this journey, particularly the tunnel, has been so high in my mind. The experience of Lockdown and the way all our lives have been completely changed, all that resonates with the echoes of that blind journey underground. Those discomforting feelings of danger and mistrust, the lack of knowledge, feeling unsafe in your own skin, isolation from the normalcy of life, claustrophobic surroundings, the reliance on those closest to me, the awareness that I didn’t know what was coming next, the sense that I couldn’t see or understand the full story of where I was. Or mayhap I’m just looking to rationalise all that we’ve been through via the prism of analogous storytelling. I won’t lie, it’s a conceit….

The Dudley Tunnel is a forgotten wonder, it is commonplace, bricks and mortar like skyscrapers and suspension bridges. Just one of many constructs that have fallen from favour and slipped out of time and mind, because of other human constructs like economics and convenience. Travelling through them, inured to their reality, wrapped within trains or cars that insulate us from the reality of these places. How often are we able to truly experience these vast human constructs? I was able to walk where few others have been able too, despite its ominous depths I felt (and still feel) incredibly lucky, even privileged, to have experienced the space, the tunnel, the place. I don’t know how else to describe it. I felt sad that we’d reached the end even though there was so little to see.

It was so much more than I had expected, a visceral experience rather than a visual one. I couldn’t capture those memories on my camera sensor and reproduce them as an image. My memories of the tunnel are mainly through my other senses, akin perhaps to how cave-walkers feel about the dark wonders beneath the earth. We’re so reliant on our sight, I know I am, I am the quintessential seeing and doing person, I’m a photographer after all. My ability to reason those dark spaces was restricted, so my memories of this place fill me with feelings rather than visions. The weird noises, touching the walls, the decaying smells and that freakish taste in my mouth have become paramount, abiding on my tongue. Tunnel licking jokes aside, the taste of the place is my keystone memory. Metallic, coppery, dead electric, like pressing a nine volt battery on your tongue, yeah, you must have done that, right? That’s what I remember of the place. The taste of the tunnel.

Not that I was really thinking about any of that right at that moment. Because, at the northern exit those big, pointy steel gates lashed the view entirely. Oh boy. They were shut tight, a big feck-off-your-names-not-down-you’re-not-coming-in Abus padlock hanging handsome and new from the latch. The surrounding floor was saturated, floods of puddles bubbling with the run off from the hillside above. Chris hopped off to the side, three lithe steps up as he made short work of the leap over. Envious of his urbex-pertise, I stood there resolutely middle aged and stuck on the wrong side.

I contemplated the sit-rep for a long time, measuring up my chances, casting glances back at the tunnel. Would I have to turn back? But we’d come so far! Climbing over was an immediate none starter, Chris’s route was too dodgy for me, I’d be the one impaling gonads on those steel points, for sure. I know it’s a state of mind thing, if you believe you can do it, you can do it, but I wasn’t in the mood for Vasectomy number 2. I have too much faith in my olympic capacity to fall, so I looked for better options. I couldn’t face the ignominy of turning back, though. But what to do??

Chris grabbed my bag and looked around for solutions in the undergrowth and leavings by the tracks. Solutions were all I could see, water water everywhere, lots of drops to sink. To the left-hand side the gap beneath the gate’s pointed fangs was noticeably larger, deeper, yeah it had definitely been scrapped away at some point by previous inter-loppers. Ah but, the drawback, because there always is one isn’t there? Yeah, all that fecking water, little rivers and fetid oily lake pooling under the gate. Oh yeah, my escape was gonna be a wet one. However, I spied a board, a metre square and much walked upon by the looks, that lay further back squashed up and grimy in the mud. A flicker of hope. Well, more of a shudder.

I pulled it out and wiped my feet all over it, scrapping the mud off with my relatively clean boots. As I did this I could see Chris bouncing up and down on something, he’d evidently had a similar thought and was fashioning me an escape gadget. I looked down at the board and sighed. Oh god, this better work, this is gonna get messy. Good grief Man, stop fecking procrastinating and do it! I slid the board into the muddy puddle under the gates, and pushed it down. Films of filthy water ran riot across the surface eager to greet me.

I scrambled down on to it, an ungainly fat spider in a trenchcoat. I lay down and pushed my feet under and through, scoochy scoochy, bottom wiggling, wobbling in the water, ahhrrghh it was in my hair and hat as I fully touched cloth. All I could see was steel, sky and the curve of the tunnel roof above me as I concentrated on the cold bum shuffles.

The board buckled slightly beneath me as my belly caressed the sharp fingers of the gate. My hat fell off, ah shit come back here I ain’t losing that. I grabbed it, fixed it back and squeezed my arse tight, which pulled my belly under. I wiggled and slid, creepy crawly creepy crawly spider in the bath, you know he’s only there because he wants to have a laugh, scoochy to the left, scoochy to the right and cha cha sliiiiidddde! Chris cried ‘Wahay!’ and I was through, delivered from the tunnel’s depths as a grimy baby, my back and thighs soaking wet but pride intact.

I stood up and grinned grimly at Chris. I think I said ‘thank fuck for that’ several times. My glasses askew on my nose, drops of water swimming around at the base of the lenses. I cleaned them, happily de-focused for a moment in the chilly air. My bum was cold and wet but the warmth of my endeavours filled me up. Cracking out the cameras again we captured some shots of the northern exit of the tunnel and then moved onward. Beyond the road-bridge, looming like a vast brick ship above us, we could see the track-bed curving into a wide flat basin, surrounded by brick walls and the remains of the railway. Why hello Dudley, we’re here, kia ora!

Here, at the former site of Dudley Town station I will pause my story, end this chapter, this is ‘part one’ after all. It ain’t all over though, part two will follow along soon enough, the next ghost service on line one heading up the South Staffs. Wherein I will seek to describe the journey along the next part of this forgotten line, as it threads its way from the remains of Dudley Central through Tipton to the wilds of Wednesbury and the weirdness therein.

Since last November the line has already changed, as construction is beginning to reclaim the route for its next incarnation as an extension for the Midlands Metro. Indeed we saw evidence of this at Dudley, footings for a new Metro Training college were being put down on one side of the old railway basin, beside Dudley Zoo. Life is moving on apace, arris fencing ahoy.

As I said earlier the Dudley Rail tunnel is now sealed to waifs and strays such as myself, which does make me sad. But also, I feel a tremendous sense of privilege, to have experienced the tunnel as it was, before whatever comes next. It’s a Black Country wonder beneath your very feet, one that I am very lucky to have experienced, and one that I am very grateful to Christian for guiding me through. He’s hoping to publish a book of his photos of the South Staffs later this year, I will share details of this on my blog and social media when I get them, I urge you to check it out when it appears. I hope you’ve been able to negotiate my doddering prose and aimless pix from my journey through the waywards, and that you’ll come back for the next chapter in a few weeks time. Till then, be well and stay safe.

Jay