it runs from Wapping to Rotherhithe, between the stations of that name on the East London Line of LUL. It has no connection with the Greenwich foot tunnel.
it was a spectacular commercial failure, taking many years to construct and being abandoned at one stage due to an inundation of the workings.
it never fulfilled its original purpose of providing a route into London for produce from Kent, in large part because the access ramps were never completed. This meant that access on the Rotherhithe side was by a spiral iron staircase down the brick shaft, which horses and carts tend not to be very good at traversing.
it lingered on for a number of years, providing a foot access across the river and being notorious as the haunt of prostitutes and what were then called 'footpads' and would now be called muggers; its multiple dark corners, arches and cross-passages making it impossible to police, a lesson which would be re-learnt in the 1960s and 1970s.
It was eventually taken over by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway as a railway tunnel, and subsequently became part of LUL's network.
it had a pronounced 'sump' shape and made great quantities of water. For this reason it was provided with a huge pumping sump and pump range, drained by one of the first major electric pump ranges in the world.
by the early 1980s it was in advanced disrepair, the years of accumulated corrosion from loco soot and polluted water resulting in tiles dropping from the inner lining onto the tracks on occasions ( these were things like flagstones, not the ones you put in your bathroom ). The pumps were long since worn out, and it had been discovered that the changing profile of the River Thames had resulted in the outer masonry becoming exposed in the river bed in one place.
So, a programme of repair works were instituted. Rock was dumped from barges over the exposed section to protect it. The tunnel was closed and a 'substitute bus service' begun đŸ˜® :surrender: :lol:
the tracks and ballast were lifted ( a truly foul job! ) and the pump ranged renewed, along with a new concrete invert. This was followed by a travelling stage which passed through the tunnel, from which the inner tile-and-brick shell was dressed back and a new inner skin of in-situ concrete placed. No attempt was made to seal the water penetrating the outer, masonry shell in huge quantities over the whole length; the shell included a layer of brick channels rather like those Roman underfloor heating systems, to channel it to the sumps.
However a membrane was fitted to keep the Thames water off the new concrete and provide what amounted to 'tanking' for the inner structure.
the new inner structure was modified in profile to provide clearance for the running gear of its new use, re-instatement of electric commuter trains from the South-East Coast.
at this point a major problem occurred; the structure was cursed with some kind of Listed status, and the yoghurt knitters and Guardian-readers from EH descended in force :guns: ( actually they mostly seemed to be large, strident ladies like the Head of St Trinians as played by Brian Blessed's sister... ). The project was stopped for several months, at huge cost in buses and standing time, while most of the workforce lost a lot of earnings in lay-offs and short-time :curse:
the travelling shutter was modified to more closely resemble the original profile ( as if anyone was ever going in there to look, and there was any value in this once the brickwork had been completely lost or covered ) and the whole project ground back into life...
''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.