Report - Dark Arches, Leeds - Aug 2014

[paulpowers]

I've fancied going for a decent walk through the Dark Arches for a while, the foot traffic was quiet enough that I could walk in without being spotted and conveniently the cctv was blocked by a board on the bridge so over and in I went.

The water is fast flowing and because you can see from one end to the other I had to keep light to a minimum which meant lots of poking around with a tripod to make sure I wasn't about to go arse over tit.

It's impressive inside and should really be up there with the big drains like Prime and Megatron.

Today, the entrance to Leeds’ central railway station is a rather banal building dating from the late 1960s. This replaced another station, dating from 1864 to 1866, which, in turn, was a ‘new’ station superseding a jumble of earlier buildings dating from the 1840s. The enormous scale of the railway station today is best appreciated from below, in its aptly-named ‘Dark Arches’ – a line of immense red-brick groined vaults covering an access tunnel built beneath the station in the mid-1860s and still forming most of its substructure today. When it was built, this subterranean world was one of the largest man-made underground spaces in Britain, created by the engineers T. E Harrison and Robert Hodgson and using over 18 million bricks. The space is dominated by the River Aire – Leeds’ principal waterway – which crosses the west end of the Dark Arches in four immense tunnels spanned by a cast-iron bridge

 

[Will Knot]

Great report there Mr Powers....tidy pics, thanks for sharin'

 

[Bugsuperstar]

Top stuff Paul.

 

[Kaplan]

Yes

 

[Lenston]

Nice that mate, parts of it reminds me of Megatron, quality pics as usual

 

[Nickindroy]

Great stuff Paul.

 

[The Wombat]

Dam fine stuff Paul

 

[Wevsky]

Does look decent paul

 

[Camera Shy]

Nice one pp looks great.

 

[concreteJungle]

Lovely stonework down there and some nice walls and weirs that make it appear more interesting than just parallel tunnels. Good work!

 

[Stopford_lad]

It really is like a mini Megatron
Those arches look ace

 

[Fudge]

Does this actually lead into something under the station or was that all a rumour?

I seem to remember something about a tunnel and police cars and a loudspeaker shouting at people.

 

[Ojay]

Yeah car park mate, the rest is just the river

 

[Bunk3r]

good to see an underground Leeds report that isnt just another Matiscator report (though Im not a Masicator hater like some).

 

[The Franconian]

that are really some good shots