I was working at Cammel Lairds on Monday 16th Feb, at one of the two main Incomer Substations, Behind the building is what I'm assuming is an old railway route and a tunnel entrance, now heavily overgrown and filled in, The location of the tunnel entrance is opposite the dry dock to the north of the yard, below a priory/old church. Can any of you local experts shed any light on thisApologies for my lack of local knowledge as I only work in the area, but am fascinated by its rich heritage.

I worked at Cammell Lairds in the 7o's. What you may have seen is the rails the outside crane ran along. The old railway line went from Rock Ferry to Woodside

The railway into Lairds came across New Chester Road on a bridge which was demolished in the 70's. This bridge also carried the tracks into Abbey Street carriage sidings . These sidings were above the electric sub-stations & now have industrial units built on them.
The connection from B.R. ran off the bridge down a ramp into the shipyard & the remains of this ramp can still be seen, facing the general stores.
In the days before lorries came into use all materials came by rail & were distributed around the yard by rail. There must still be a couple of miles of track still visible, with much more buried.
In the area in front of those Sub-stations were a group of reception sidings, where the incoming wagons were sorted for distribution around the yard. These sidings ended at the wall under the priory,& some of these were sited where the extended no.5 dock now occupies & also the Ship Managers offices (former North Yard canteen).

Bob.

Does this help? a tunnel from the yard to Monks' Ferry.

love reading sites like this when the tribal elders come online.

More of the area.

50s map, Monks Ferry Tunnel, it's not below the priory/church.

Was there a service tunnel from the church to the old cemetery?

I see from the 50's map, bert, that by then the line had been lifted. On the earlier map, the line led to a turntable. Maybe when the line was lifted, the tunnel was blocked up.

If you stick around, you could become one too.

Excellent info chaps, I think the maps show what I'm asking about, just a quick question the substations sit between the dry dock and the old line, tunnel entrance. I wish I'd have taken some pics, obviously there has been huge changes since the maps. The subs I'm guessing were installed very late fifties as the 33kv transformer has a built date stamp of 1958. If I were to stand with my back to them I would be looking at the dry dock, and a part demolished church higher up to the left, are we in the same place. If so have some of the docks shown on the maps been filled in

Graving docks 1, 2 and 3 have been filled in, Graving Dock 4 is still extant.

Immediately south of Graving Dock 4 is the large Princess Dock which was an extension of a previous graving dock (5?)

Graving dock 4 (now just called The Graving Dock) points straight at St Mary's, Princess Dock runs beside St Mary's

Can you locate the tunnel on this image?

If you want to know what the area once looked like, the website 'Britain from Above' has a number of views of the graving docks - e.g. This One
If you register, you are then allowed to zoom in - a lot of the pictures show some very good detail. Just a thought.

Im onto my PC now so I can put an image of where Im speaking about, from the maps on here, it appears that the graveyard was built over for the dry dock that is there today, is that correct.

Heres a GE image, the red circle is where the tunnel entrance is, the grey obkect the circle cuts through in the lower right hand section is the transformer. and the red line perhaps where the line ran....

Take a look at the Britain from Above site This picture for it's relationship to everything around it.
The tunnel is top left of the photo if it's the one in this zoomed in grab:

That's interesting, it would head under Knox Street and head towards the Monks Ferry Tunnel. This must be the one that was used as a drawing office I think, its somewhere around there.

I think we are looking at two different things here.

There does seem to have been a tunnel under Monks Ferry (even though it shows as Ivy St on Google Earth) to the old Monks Ferry station (which was later used as a coal terminal). The square shape seen in the ariel photo could mean it was made by the cut and cover method. It seems too small to take an engine. It starts at the top end of the buildings running parallel to Church St, on their easterly side.

Also, there seems to have been two entrances from the shipyard going under Abbey St. when looked at from another ariel photograph. Although the path to it curves with the railway lines, I think it's down an embankment from them.

There's no trace of any of these now, but there is plenty of info on this site regarding the making of the dock and the loss of the graveyard etc.

I've attached another ariel photo on which I've marked in orange the line to Monks Ferry terminal and put green dots at either end of the Monks Ferry tunnel. The purple dots mark what look like round tunnel entrances going under Abbey St.

A former Lairds employee once told me that a tunnel was started somwhere in the yard, but it wasn't very long & came to a dead end. It wasn't a railway tunnel, but something to do with drainage or the like.

Bob.

The tunnel in the 1912 OS map (post 4) is clearly a rail tunnel. It joins rail tracks at the yard end and at the other end at Monks' Ferry, terminates in a turntable.

Map images below are before and after Princess Dry Dock,other tunnels on these maps are clearly marked. No tunnel is marked at Abbey Street, so was it a tunnel in the planning that was scrapped?

It must have been a tunnel at some point, they aren't going to dig the cutting and lay the line for nothing, its the only line that goes to the Abbey St wall. And we even have a picture of the tunnel entrance above.

I might be wrong, but looking at the Britain from above pic it looks as though the Tunnel is bricked up and is just buffer stop. Maybe it was intended to be a tunnel, if it was would it have been a link or branch off from monks tunnel (If that was the case then there would be a bricked up area or branch off Monks Tunnel, which there doesn't seem to be). Shame there isn't a recent pic.

Very interesting - I have researched this area quite extensively and only knew of the Monks Ferry tunnel. I think this tunnel was used to move single wagonloads of 'steam coal' into Lairds - for the boilers of ships under construction/test to be steamed on.

I will look at my maps for the area again !

Can add a little to the puzzle - on a 1950 Britain from above image - there is a definite buffer stop.

Also and perhaps crucially the line is not a British Railway run one - as it is separated from them by fencing and also it branches from the Lairds line that runs next to the BR line over the bridge on Chester Street.

So it is a private line within the Lairds site...

Also as hinted at above, it is situated in a cutting - on a downward gradient towards the 'tunnel mouth' - so at least it looks like it was meant to go through there at some point.

If it was pre-steam railway (which it isn't) - there were tunnels at much lower heights - just enough to get a horse and wagon through - known as tramways - it initially looks like that may be the case - but the destination of the line is then the issue !

Now that's a strong possibility. Because of the turntable shown on the 1911 O.S. map it's clear that only one wagon at a time could be transferred from the main line at Monks' Ferry to the line at 90 deg. leading into Laird's.

If the map below is correctly dated, 1850. The rail lines are already in place. The Monks Ferry Tunnel, Chester & Birkenhead railway opened in 1844. Could the tunnel in question(Abbey St) be the one in The Daily News, February 18, 1846. Additional Monks Ferry Tunnel will not be proceeded with.

Amazing.
Thanks Bert for taking the time to look this up for us.
interesting thread enjoyed every post.xx

Excellent work Bert