Template:Featured picture/April 2016
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Garnedd Tunnel is located approximately half a mile east of Tan y Bwlch station. Prior to 1851, the year it was constructed, the line veered round the outside of the bluff through which the tunnel was cut. The tunnel is approximately 180 feet long. The tunnel is lined only for the first 5 yards from the tunnel mouth though maintenance and enlargement have necessitated a few sections where brick has been laid to strengthen it. There is a geographical fault line that runs across the tunnel. The 10 mph speed restriction is to minimise the chance of causing the fault to move. There is a tale, thought to be apocryphal, that the tunnel was lined with iron plates from U-boat U98 which was broken up in Porthmadog on the foreshore by FR Harbour Station road 6 by a scrap dealer after the First World War. Fred Howes summarised the evidence in the Heritage Group Journal No. 133 page 32 and says he is sceptical and has seen no sign for it being true. But he reports that John Dobson recalls walking through the tunnel in 'the early days' and says there were arches at the Porthmadog end with metal plates! Peter Pedr Jarvis in a Facebook post on 3/9/14 says Will Jones told him that the steel arches and plates then holding up the roof in Tunnel Bach were from a U-boat U98. "They rusted away and we had to take them out. Brick now", says Jarvis. Photo credit: User:MarkTemple |