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Catesby Tunnel is a disused tunnel in Northamptonshire on the route of the former Great Central Main Line. Its northern portal is about south of Catesby Viaduct and west of Upper Catesby, with the tunnel ending at Charwelton to the south. In terms of both length and Loading gauge, Catesby Tunnel is unusually large, at wide, high, and long.
The tunnel was completed in 1897, and was closed in 1966 when the line was made redundant by British Rail. After lying abandoned and flooded for over 50 years, proposals were granted in 2017 for the conversion of the wide, straight tunnel into an aerodynamic test facility for road and race cars.
On 4 January 1906 a rail on the Down track broke and derailed an afternoon express from to with about 50 passengers aboard. The train was travelling at about and tore up about of track before it came to a halt. All five coaches were derailed and the last coach fouled the Up track, on which a goods train was due. The crew of the express acted to protect their train: the driver placed a detonator on one rail of the Up track and the guard sounded the train whistle, both of which gave the crew of the approaching Up goods enough warning to stop short of the wreckage.
closed the Great Central Main Line (GCML) through the tunnel on 5 September 1966, and the track was lifted shortly thereafter. With the withdrawal of a maintenance regime after closure, a blocked drain exacerbated water ingress such that a foot or more of floodwater filled some parts of the tunnel.
Proposals emerged in 2014 to convert the tunnel into a vehicle testing facility. The planning approval was granted in February 2017. The facility allows performance, aerodynamics, air cooling and emissions to be analysed in a controlled environment at full scale, the only facility of its type for hire anywhere in the world. With the ends of the tunnel being preserved for roosting , about in the centre is available for testing. Cars will be able to maintain for about 40 seconds before braking. Public access to the tunnel will be offered on Sundays for cycling. Engineering work for conversion to a wind tunnel, including renovation of the drainage, was started in 2020 with a projected cost of £13 million. The facility opened as a test facility in summer 2021, with a remote-control Car turntable at the end.
In 2024 the tunnel was used the location for the YouTube series "Top Gear Tunnel Run".
Redevelopment
Numerous reopening proposals for sections of the GCML have featured Catesby Tunnel. In 2000, Chiltern Railways expressed an interest in reopening the route to passengers as far as Rugby or even Leicester, though this never came forward. The trackbed was also included in failed proposals by Central Railway to build a new intermodal freight line from Liverpool to Europe. It was also part of a possible alignment explored during the planning phase of High Speed 2; the preferred route ended up following a course several miles further west.
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