Lost 'white tunnels' that became royal hideaway and crime scene

A PAIR of railway tunnels running underneath a business park have been shut for decades but never entirely erased from memory.

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For years they carried packed carriages full of Butlin’s holidaymakers into the blackness as steam poured from their entrances and children pressed coins on to the tracks.

The whitewashed passages would also serve as a makeshift royal retreat and, for a period, housed the most advanced cannabis cultivation operation ever discovered in north Wales.

The Vaynol Tunnels stand as a magnificent testament to a vanished era.

However, despite remaining closed for more than 50 years, there exists a slim possibility they could welcome trains once more.

They were constructed on the Vaynol Estate - now known as Faenol - for the Bangor and Carnarvon Railway, which commenced operations in July 1852 to carry both slate and passengers. Originally, a single passage was built, with its formal inauguration proving rather unremarkable: a silver trowel ordered for laying the cornerstone went unused as its owner was confined to bed that day.

Four months afterwards, a catastrophe occurred on the nearby line. Evan Jones, from Brynsiencyn, Anglesey, was found "frightfully mangled" yet still breathing, having been struck by the 9.30pm service from Bangor.

It was believed he had been lying with his legs across the railway. He later died at Bangor Infirmary.

Tragedy struck again seven years later further along the route towards Caernarfon. A station master at Griffiths Crossing rushed to assist a woman who had hesitated on the tracks, only to be struck by an approaching train and "killed on the spot" as his wife looked on in horror.

The woman he had attempted to rescue also perished.

The railway was originally conceived merely to link Caernarfon with the main Chester and Holyhead Railway. However, when a connecting section was constructed in Caernarfon through a brief tunnel, it transformed into a through route to Afon Wen on the Llyn Peninsula, plus a branch line serving Llanberis.