Dudley Railway Tunnel

The northern portal in 2011
Overview
Line	Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton
Location	Dudley, West Midlands, England
Coordinates	52°30′30″N 2°04′43″W / 52.508392°N 2.078701°W / 52.508392; -2.078701
OS grid reference	SO 94755 90058
Status	Disused
Start	Dudley railway station
End	Blowers Green railway station
No. of stations	2
Operation
Opened	1850 (1850)
Closed	19 March 1993 (1993-03-19)
Technical
No. of tracks	2

Dudley Railway Tunnel is a railway tunnel located near to the former Dudley railway station in Dudley, West Midlands, England. It was opened in 1850 to allow the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line between Stourbridge and Wolverhampton to pass for several hundred yards beneath a hilly area of Dudley which would have been difficult if not impossible to have constructed a railway through. At Dudley the OWWR and South Staffordshire Line to Walsall met.

The tunnel was regularly used by passenger trains until 1964, when the town's station closed along with the remaining passenger stations on the line,^[1] although goods trains were still allowed to use the line. It finally closed to all trains on 19 March 1993, when the section of railway between Walsall and Brierley Hill was closed after some 150 years in use. A cable laying train passed through the tunnel on 1 July 1993 - nearly four months after the line was officially closed.

The railway line through Dudley is scheduled to reopen in 2023 as part of an extension to the West Midlands Metro,^[2] although the Metro route would not include the railway tunnel, it will be used for test purposes by the Very Light Rail National Innovation Centre.^[3] The reutilised line will also be designed to carry freight trains.

Coordinates

References