The Devonshire Tunnel flooding issue is hopefully addressed with a system the installation of which took a good few months. The existing drain, which still copes for much of the time, is now backed up by a chamber beneath the tarmac at the entrance to the tunnel: an increase in levels in the chamber triggers an electric pump in the chamber that sends excess water to a filtration tank at the top of the rise, from where it is taken downhill and off the route and into the street drainage system. We'd expect the pump to be called on only very occasionally.
Meanwhile, further along the route, for the last several months there has been a large puddle across the route where... the tunnel drain there, showing a sense of humour (not) has part-blocked. Not ideal but the puddle can be evaded at one side. This drain has done this before - and there's still a healthy flow into the stream where it emerges so all is not lost.
Something I'm not sure I dreamed and perhaps someone else can remember - visiting the tunnel in the late seventies(?), I found that the cutting there was obstructed some way between its start and the tunnel entrance by a large earth ramp crossing it at an angle, something I thought to be connected with the construction of a pipeline. At the time I thought "That's it as far as the continuity of the route goes, as that looks as if its there for good". At the next visit, it had vanished as if it had never been there. If it did exist it would have been removed again as it blocked access to what was now Wessex Water's tunnel.
Something else: the audiovisual artwork in the tunnel... is not working again, and we have an enquiry in as to when it will be fixed. That aside, the Two Tunnels route's hopefully reliably available for use
Mark
Click on the map to explore geographics
