The Hidden Glasgow Forums

Was fascinated about the possible existence of the GPO tunnel when I read the various posts last week so I decided to try and do a bit of digging into its background.

I came into possession of a number of drawings relating to its design/construction today. Haven't had a chance to properly look through them yet but they include details (route; manhole positions; shaft positions; duct connections; etc) on the Holland Street, Bath Street, Hope Street and Cathedral Street sections. Generally, the tunnel is 2m internal diameter but there are a few short sections of 5m internal diameter.

The drawings were dated between 1970 and 1974 so it would seem the tunnel was built in the early/mid 70s. Taylor Woodrow were (one of) the contractor - they had 4 or 5 site compounds along its length with the largest compound taking up the land that the Buchanan Galleries multi-storey car park is now built upon.

Anyway... didn't have much time but I thought I would tantalise all the tunnel aficionados by uploading the drawing of the most visible part of the tunnel apparatus - the lift shaft building, or machine room as the drawing calls it, at the junction of Cathedral St / North Hanover St. I only had access to an A3 scanner so had to do it piece by piece.

Enjoy...

entrance to Dial House cable chamber

Excellent stuff folks. Any more?

Was going to upload scans of a few more of the drawings over the weekend but couldn't find the time at work today to scan them.

Will definitely get them uploaded over the next few weeks though.

Scans of another of the drawings that came into my possession last week.

GPO cable tunnel from junction of Holland Street/St. Vincent Street to junction of Bath Street/Buchanan Street. Includes leg from Bath Street to Hope Street/Renfrew Lane junction.

Note that the bottom image shows a shaft (presumably with access to the tunnel) in Renfrew Lane - does anyone know if there is a ventilation cabinet there? I don't think anyone has ever mentioned in a post that there is one there.

The red lines and handwritten notes relate to the sewerage system rather than the cable tunnel.

Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/29196299@N07/sets/72157615947521534/ if you want to be able to view these in detail.

I'll try to get the other drawings scanned and uploaded over the next couple of weeks.









Detail in vicinity of Blythswood Street access


Detail in vicinity of Hope Street access

diagram highlighting the Hope Street and Renfrew Lane tunnel shafts at Douglas Exchange

Glesga_Steve wrote:Note that the bottom image shows a shaft (presumably with access to the tunnel) in Renfrew Lane - does anyone know if there is a ventilation cabinet there? I don't think anyone has ever mentioned in a post that there is one there.

Had a walk by at Lunch. No vent cabinet, just the large concrete manhole covers that are present at the other sites.

Bishop Street and south tunnel construction diagram

master diagram





top left





top right





bottom left





bottom right

Cracking diagram Toomse, thats a good find!

Looking on live maps though, the tunnel doesn't run the way i expected it to from the detail drawings, unless i'm reading it wrong, but it runs from dial house out towards the river (Bishop Street, Washington and Argyle street (junction?), then Washington Street.

I though that the tunnel was at the front of the building just from looking at the actual lay of the land around Dial House, once you pas the main doors on Pit Street and and turn right down Bishop Lane you go down quite a steep gradient, I often walk down pass Dial House and round the back to get to the Bannatynes gym (ok, so I say 'often' loosley, probably not as much as I should ) Bishop Street will be at the lowest end in terms of the land height around the building.

The other thing I don't get about the tunnel is how it was actually consturucted, it seems to follow the streets (probably safer so it doesn't interfere with buildings basements and foundations) but was it actually dug as a trench and then covered over, or did they actually dig it all as underground workings just like a mine? Second option seems most likely as digging a trench wouldn't exactly be very secret!


Cheers
Scott

I’ve marked the north, south and Tele house tunnels on this true to scale map around the area of Dial House to give a better idea of the route. I don’t have details of how they were constructed.






here’s the OS map with the plant stripped off

here's a collage of duct diagrams to provide an alternative view

toomse wrote:I’ve marked the north, south and Tele house tunnels on this true to scale map around the area of Dial House to give a better idea of the route. I don’t have details of how they were constructed.

here’s the OS map with the plant stripped off

Bit bored tonight. Here's a Google Earth Overlay of the above image. Useless but passes a couple of minutes.
Click Me

Sorry, messed that first post up.

Great thread - just spent ages reading it all a few days ago - i'd never really thought twice about the vents around the city and that wierd little building! My uncle, a former BT engineer confirmed to me there is a tunnel between Telephone/Dial house and the former GPO building in George Square with an automated narrow guage railway that carried mail etc between buildings. You can draw a straight line between these two points that passes under central station. The mail was possibly fed to each building from the station (where mail trains arrived) to avoid interception in the streets. Remember this is Cold War Britain we're talking about. The other tunnels, are now just used for cables. But he reckons they probably had the same purpose back then. The one thing that I have wondered about isn't mentioned here...

I've always wondered the purpose of a little vent in the sculpture gardens at Strathclyde uni. Could there be a redundant tunnel from Royal Infirmary to the former Rottenrow Maternity hospital? They are close together, and it is common for hospital estates to have tunnels between buildings.

Or possibly a redundant tunnel to the Graham Hills building (NE corner of george st and n.portland st) this was formerly Marland House - yet another Post Office Telecomms building.

These are just theories of mine, but there is definitely a little vent there - check it out and let me know what youse think. Happy hunting!

Is this not simply a vent from the Queen Street low level line, which passes under the Royal College building?