No sooner is the 50th anniversary of the Institute behind us than I find myself celebrating another two. The first is the realisation that, as of the 1st August, I will have been with my current employer for twenty years. Two decades of rust and degradation, or at least trying to prevent it. The second, less personal and more impressive, is the 75th anniversary of the Queensway Tunnel in Liverpool which was celebrated on the 19th July. Fifteen thousand people braved the weather and Keith Chegwin to join in the celebrations and walk through the two-plus miles of temporarily closed tunnel from Liverpool to Birkenhead, then literally ferried back across the Mersey. Anyone caught singing a la Jerry Marsden was severely punished. The modest £5 charge all went to Claire House, a local children’s hospice.

The dear old Queensway Tunnel was designed by one, Sir Basil Mott. 55 years later he was posthumously partnered with the equally deceased Sir Murdoch MacDonald, precisely the time I joined the newly formed Mott MacDonald. Some of my earliest dry sprayed concrete repairs were carried out in Queensway, quite appropriate given much of the lining was, and still is, protected with an inch of Whitley Moran’s original gunite. Inevitably, I risked irritating my otherwise understanding wife and confusing the other walkers by incessantly pointing at various parts of the tunnel and expounding personally fascinating facts about its maintenance. Do feel free to remind me of this the next time you hear me questioning the sanity of train spotters or chuckling at the apparent pointlessness of people who collect bus registration numbers. I fully acknowledge I appeared just as potty to those who quite reasonably see tunnels as a convenient route from A to B. Anyone out there who is seriously into tunnels (I’ve got it down to one a week now) it is possible to arrange a visit to the invert and various other interesting places courtesy of Merseytravel, details available via their website.

I was going to include a photo of myself on the Queensway Tunnel walk but decided instead to use one of me with some rust in Cyprus (I’m the one on the left). I know how much you all like some rusty metalwork to admire. I was out there talking to their bridge people about the inspection and maintenance of the local bridge stock. Nice place, lovely people and great rust courtesy of a hot, salty maritime environment – you can’t beat it. So I’m thinking of starting a specialist tour company, something along the lines of Tunnels and Rust, with tunnel walks in the summer and rust safaris around the Med in the winter. Anyone interested in investing their pension pot in this venture should leave a note behind the third wash basin along in the continental style unisex washroom at Manchester Victoria Station, together with a four figure non-returnable good-will deposit. This time next year we’ll be millionaires.

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