On Saturday the 15th of September as part of the Heritage Open Days event I took a trip deep below the streets of Leicester into the Robert Stevenson designed Glenfield railway tunnel with Bill Pemberton of the Leicestershire Industrial History Society. We donned our hi-viz jackets and after a safety briefing from our tour guide headed into the brick lined semi-darkness of the tunnel. as our eyes became accustomed to the darkness we where shown ventilation shafts transporting sunlight and air from above into the subterranean space which remained at a constant 10 degrees Celsius throughout. Our guide then pointed out numbers on the wall written by the workers and marking distances from the tunnel mouth, moving further into the tunnel we where shown another ventilation shaft which like many of its duplicates along the tunnel length is situated in a private garden on the surface. As we ventured deeper into the tunnel we passed numerous refuges (small archways in the tunnel wall...
