A PIONEERING railway town where the world's first rail passenger journey began has been stripped of some of its heritage.
Network Rail has capped and demolished four brick ventilators running along the Prince of Wales Tunnel, in Shildon, County Durham.
Although believed to have been rebuilt early in the tunnel's life, the shafts were sunk when the tunnel, still used today, was built in the 1840s.
Until last week, the cylindrical brick ventilators, ranging from the size of a shed to a small house, were the only evidence of the tunnel below.
"I just found out in passing that they were going to be demolished and by the time I went to take some pictures, two of them had gone," said Chris Mills, 55, a local historian.
"Things seem to have been done very secretively. Nobody seems to have known what was happening.
"It would have been nice for the many people who have an interest in these things to at least get out and see them before they went."
Rachel Lowe, spokeswoman for Network Rail, said: "The four shafts are in need of remedial work, and as they weren't being used, it makes more sense to remove them rather than repair them, which means we have to do less work on the tunnel itself."
In 1825, the world's first passenger rail journey took place along the Stockton and Darlington Railway between Shildon and Stockton, via Darlington.
The town grew rapidly when the Stockton and Darlington Railway established its workshops there in 1826, and the last wagon works closed in 1984.
George Muirhead, general manager at Locomotion: the National Railway Museum in Shildon, said he knew the work was going to be done.
He said: "It is sad that they have had to come down, but Network Rail has to maintain and manage a modern railway network and sometimes railway heritage has to give way."
Long-term plans to extend the Weardale Railway to Bishop Auckland and run tourist steam trains to Darlington, via Darlington, are unaffected.
Miss Lowe said the ventilation shafts were only required for high volumes of steam train traffic.
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