31 Years Later

This is one of the ventilation shafts of the Summit Tunnel, where the railway line runs for 1.6 miles underneath the Pennines between Leeds and Manchester.   On December 20th 1984 a huge blaze started  when a freight train carrying 315,000 gallons of petrol derailed in the tunnel between Littleborough and Todmorden.  The blaze lasted for four days and reached almost 2,000C inside the tunnel which did not reopen until August the following year.
Click here to see the Fire Service photographs.