Thurgoland Tunnel is a double bore abandoned railway tunnel between Penistone

Penistone railway station

Penistone railway station is a railway station in Penistone, in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England. Train services are provided by Northern Rail...

 and Wortley

Wortley railway station

Wortley railway station was a railway station on the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway lying between Deepcar and Penistone. It was built to serve the village of Wortley, near Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England...

. Its total length is 924 feet (281.6 m). It was opened in 1845 on the Sheffield, Ashton-Under-Lyne and Manchester Railway

Sheffield, Ashton-Under-Lyne and Manchester Railway

The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway was an early British railway company which opened in stages between 1841 and 1845 between Sheffield and Manchester via Ashton-under-Lyne...

 between Manchester Store Street

Manchester Piccadilly station

Manchester Piccadilly is the principal railway station in Manchester, England. It serves intercity routes to London Euston, Birmingham New Street, South Wales, the south coast of England, Edinburgh and Glasgow Central, and routes throughout northern England...

 and Sheffield

Sheffield Victoria Station

Sheffield Victoria was the main railway station in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England on the Great Central Railway, between Chesterfield and Penistone.-Early history:...

.

It is characterised by a curve of sixty chains radius on a falling gradient of 1 in 131. Because of the difficulties in laying it out, it consists of a series of straight sections in a series of erratic curves varying from 100 to 20 chains. Maximum clearance was only obtained by reducing the normal six-foot spacing between the tracks. Because of the clearance problems this caused for electrification

Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electric railway

The Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electric railway was an early electrification scheme on British railways. The route featured long ascents on both sides of the Pennines with the long Woodhead Tunnel at its central summit close to the Woodhead pass...

, in 1948 a second single-line tunnel was built for the up line and the old tunnel thereafter only housed the down line. As this project was begun in 1947 just before nationalisation, the up tunnel portal hosts dual-dated keystones

Keystone (architecture)

A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone piece at the apex of a masonry vault or arch, which is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch to bear weight. This makes a keystone very important structurally...

, inscribed "LNER

London and North Eastern Railway

The London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...

 1947" and "BR

British Rail

British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...

 1948". Electric working commenced in 1954 and ceased in 1981.

The tunnels ceased to carry trains in 1983 when the local Sheffield–Huddersfield

Huddersfield

Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....

 train service was diverted via Barnsley

Barnsley

Barnsley is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Dearne, north of the city of Sheffield, south of Leeds and west of Doncaster. Barnsley is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, of which Barnsley is the largest and...

.

The up tunnel, being much newer, has been re-utilised for a walking trail, whilst the down bore was backfilled and blocked off.