near Selly Oak. This was completed by 28 May 1798, and the original canal and tunnel became known as the Dudley Canal Line No 1 or the Dudley No 1 Canal, to distinguish it from the new venture. The Birmingham Canal, known as the Birmingham Canal Navigations since 1794, had suggested amalgamating with the Dudley Canal in 1813, but nothing further took place. A second approach was made in 1845, and in the face of competition from the proposed Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, as well as the plans of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, they agreed to the merger on 8 October. An Act of Parliament was obtained to authorise the amalgamation, and the Dudley Tunnel became part of the Birmingham Canal Navigations system from 27 July 1846. Despite its diminutive size, some 41,000 boats passed through the tunnel in 1853. Birmingham Canal Navigations began looking at ways in which its capacity could be improved, but all of them were rejected. Instead they elected to build a new tunnel, running roughly parallel to the Dudley Tunnel and beginning on the Dudley Canal Line No 2 some to the east. Work began on 31 December 1855, when the first sod was cut, and Netherton Tunnel opened on 20 August 1858. It was wide and above water level, with towpaths on both sides. From the beginning, it was lit by gas lights, later replaced by electric lighting. Subsidence at the southern end got sufficiently bad that the tunnel was closed in 1884, to allow a section to be rebuilt. Around were reconstructed, to dimensions that were considerably larger than the original bore. At the end of the new section, the size of the tunnel suddenly reduces to the original size, and a warning gauge is fitted at the tunnel mouth, to prevent false impressions of the size of boat that can pass through the tunnel. The work was completed in time for it to be reopened on 23 April 1885. Closure By 1959, the tunnel was virtually disused, with no significant traffic having passed through it in the 1950s, and British Waterways announced plans to close it officially. A number of protest groups organised cruises through the tunnel during 1960 in the hope of it being kept open, but British Waterways at the time were intent on closing much of the canal network. A paper called The Future of our Inland Waterways,