Catesby Tunnel

After lying abandoned and flooded for over 50 years, proposals were granted in 2017 for the conversion of the wide, straight tunnel into an aerodynamic test facility for road and race cars.

[2] About 2,900,000 cubic yards (2,200,000 m3) of material was dug out to make the tunnel, which is straight throughout due to the Great Central Railway (GCR) being built for speed and on a rising gradient of 1:176 to the south.

[3] However, the occupant of Catesby House, Henry Attenborough, owned much of the land in the parish and insisted that the line pass beneath it in a tunnel to preserve the landscape.

[3] Unlike the tunnel construction of the earlier Victorian era, excavation was able to be accelerated through the use of Ruston steam navvies instead of being entirely dug by hand.

[2] British Railways closed the Great Central Main Line (GCML) through the tunnel on 5 September 1966, and the track was lifted shortly thereafter.

[3] With the withdrawal of a maintenance regime after closure, a blocked drain exacerbated water ingress such that a foot or more of floodwater filled some parts of the tunnel.

[5] The trackbed was also included in failed proposals by Central Railway to build a new intermodal freight line from Liverpool to Europe.