Swan View Tunnel was built on an alignment which replaced the original Eastern Railway passing through Smiths Mill, (now Glen Forrest), and Mundaring.

The project to build the new line, including the Swan View Tunnel, was managed by the Western Australian Government Railways Engineer-in-Chief, C. Y. O'Connor.

The aim was to find a route over the Darling range to replace the one-in-30 ruling grade existing Eastern Railway section in the Helena Valley.

In 1892, O'Connor recommended to the first Minister for Railways in Western Australia, HW Venn, that a Jane Brook option be selected.

The engineer in charge of construction was John Muir who had also surveyed the prospective new route, designed the tunnel, and identified that broken rock spoil from the tunnel could be used to create nearby embankments, a prudent move on Muir's part as the principal means of shifting spoil in the 1890s was by draft horse hauling mould board and plough, followed by tipping from horse drawn carts.

Standard procedure for engine crews was to cover their heads with a water soaked hessian bag and to stay as low as possible on the footplate.

The last act of the driver before the crews fell unconscious from smoke and carbon monoxide poisoning was to set the engines into reverse.

Consequently the train steamed back down the line and crashed at Swan View Station, with the death of driver Tom Beer.

If a wire was broken by falling rock or if a battery or circuit failed, two relays became de-energised, and the signal controlling the line in the cut was placed at danger.

The new Avon Valley deviation route involved little rock work and flat gradients that had been initially favoured by CY O'Connor.

The tunnel and first open cut deviation are constructed in Archaean meta-granite (slightly altered, coarse-grained granite, in places pegmatitic).

This rock mass has been intruded by dolerite dykes which are more deeply weathered than the granites and in places active swelling clay (montmorillonitic) seams have formed.

These are expressed as bands of closely spaced fractures that have allowed water entry, in some places producing clay seams.