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Catesby Tunnel to become Aero Research facility

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Furrball

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From the BBC website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...railway-tunnel-to-be-used-to-test-racing-cars

Former Catesby railway tunnel to be used to test racing cars

A disused railway tunnel is to be turned into a test centre for motor vehicles including racing cars.

The tunnel, in Catesby, Northamptonshire, is 1.7 miles (2.7km) long and perfectly straight.

Vehicles will travel through it at up to 100mph to test things like engine performance and aerodynamics.
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https://www.totalsimulation.co.uk/computational-fluid-dynamics/catesby-tunnel/

...Catesby Tunnel is likely to become a worldwide benchmark for aerodynamic testing, capable of providing accurate and affordable full scale aerodynamic performance data. The project is in the planning phase to restore and convert the disused railway tunnel into the test facility. ARP have secured a long term lease for the tunnel and bought the land, including the approach cuttings...
Click to expand...
 
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yorksrob

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When I saw this thread, I thought the tunnel was being converted into a factory for manufacturing chocolate bars :lol:
 
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Sox

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the sniper said:
It's basically based on the same concept as something done by Chip Ganassi Racing in the USA. You can read more details about that here:

http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/nascar/the-secrets-of-laurel-hill/

I first read that article back in 2014. Funnily enough the last paragraph mentions the Catesby project, so it's obviously been a long time coming!
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Ref above article, how would you reconcile these two statements:

Catesby is a colossus, both in terms of length and gauge.
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and..

But a review of the proposal carried out for affected local authorities found that "Catesby Tunnel does not correspond remotely to the loading gauge to which CR aspire."
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eastdyke

eastdyke

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Sox said:
Ref above article, how would you reconcile these two statements:

Catesby is a colossus, both in terms of length and gauge.
And
But a review of the proposal carried out for affected local authorities found that "Catesby Tunnel does not correspond remotely to the loading gauge to which CR aspire"
Click to expand...

Quite easily I think! Catesby is/was a big tunnel for its former use.
But not big enough, apparently, for CR. CR in this case being the Central Railway (CR) freight scheme that postulated a link between Liverpool and Lille via the Great Central's former alignment.

I would hope that the planning authority would be fully sure that the alignment could have no reasonable prospect of any future rail use before granting other permissions.
 
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david_g

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I spotted the work going on in the cutting leading to the south end of the tunnel while cycling over the road bridge at the north end of the site of Charwelton station a few weeks ago and wondered what was going on.

Having picked up on this thread all becomes clear and my hopes for a secret GC reopening which nobody knew about are dashed.

Been over the bridge* again this morning and there are substantial developments going on at the site of Charwelton station too.

*the bridge is closed to road traffic because of weakness, there have been weight restrictions on it for some time so another piece of railway history will be disappearing soon.
 
HSTEd

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That old Central Railway proposal requires 6m of clearance above the railhead, to a width of several metres, on both lines.
I could believe the tunnel is not big enough
 
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