PHOTOGRAPHS have emerged showing the extent of controversial works in a tunnel that campaigners want to reopen to form the centrepiece of a cycle path network connecting Halifax to Bradford and Keighley.

Queensbury Tunnel would serve as a strategic link in a proposed greenway.

But National Highways, which manages 3,100 disused railway structures, is seeking planning permission to partly infill the 144-year-old engineering feat.

Enabling works, which started in October 2018, were originally due to cost £550,000.

But following flooding in the 1.4-mile-long tunnel, blamed on a failure to pay pumping station rent, costs mushroomed to almost £7.3 million.

The photographs, taken by explorers, show the tunnel blocked in two places.

In October 2019, National Highways tipped stone down No 2 shaft, close to the tunnel’s southern end.

And around 300 metres further north, grout-filled steel baskets have been assembled to support No 3 shaft. The work took place last summer when floodwater in the tunnel was at its lowest point, but materials still had to be installed by divers. The project is believed to have cost around £2.8m.

Elsewhere, steel mesh panels and sprayed concrete have been used to strengthen sections of the tunnel’s lining and ‘colliery arches’ erected to provide access beneath areas where brickwork collapses have taken place.

Dr Norah McWilliam, leader of the Queensbury Tunnel Society, said: “Sadly, the photographs capture a missed opportunity. Spent appropriately, £7.3 million could have been used to repair much of the tunnel and bring closer its rehabilitation for public benefit. Instead that money has largely been wasted on works that would not have been necessary if National Highways had paid the rent on a pumping station."

Graeme Bickerdike, engineering co-ordinator for the society, said: “This scheme was flawed from the outset and National Highways’ failings have ensured that the taxpayer has received very little value for money.”

Helene Rossiter, for National Highways, said: “We have carried out vital interventions to keep Queensbury Tunnel safe whilst the Department for Transport, local authorities and West Yorkshire Combined Authority consider how they might use it in the future.

“In recent months we’ve worked closely with the Department for Transport and stakeholders from across the heritage sector to identify where structures, including Queensbury Tunnel, could be used as part of active travel plans in the future.

“We’ll continue to support repurposing of the structures we look after wherever there’s an opportunity to do so.”