John Forrest National Park
Granite railway tunnel on a heritage trail, with a dark history of chronic ventilation danger.
Location
About this audio guide
John Forrest National Park outside Perth holds the Swan View Tunnel, a granite railway passage cut through the Darling Scarp in the eighteen nineties under engineer Charles Yelverton O'Connor. This guide follows the tunnel's chronic ventilation troubles through decades of steam and wartime locomotives, the crews who worked it, and the unions and Royal Commission that eventually got involved. It is a story about a shortcut that came at a real cost. Stand at the tunnel mouth on the Heritage Trail and feel the cool granite air the trains once struggled through.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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