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The Great Central Railway main line from London Marylebone to Sheffield via Leicester and Nottingham was the last trunk route to be completed (1899) and the first to close (1967). North of Nottingham and in the city much of its route has disappeared - embankments flattened, cuttings filled, viaducts demolished - and it is hard to follow. After passing through a deep cutting in the sandstone south of New Basford station, southbound trains entered the 665-yard Sherwood Rise Tunnel, the top of whose north portal is shown here. The cutting has been filled in and the tunnel mouth sealed: the railway track was getting on for twenty feet below the current ground level. The sheer side of the cutting through the soft Lenton sandstone is clearly shown on the left of the picture.

After leaving Sherwood Rise Tunnel, steam-engine crews had only a 100-yard respite at Carrington before the line entered the sulphurous 1,189-yard Mansfield Road Tunnel, which took trains to Nottingham Victoria station.

See SK5642 : The approach to Sherwood Rise Tunnel and SK5642 : Former railway cutting north of Sherwood Rise Tunnel.