Dudley Tunnel is a canal tunnel on the Dudley Canal Line No 1, England. At about long, it is now the second longest canal tunnel on the UK canal network today. (Standedge Tunnel is the longest, at , and the Higham and Strood tunnel is now rail only). However, since the Dudley Tunnel is not continuous this status is sometimes questioned: (the main tunnel is , Lord Ward's tunnel is and Castle Mill basin is ). In 1959 the British Transport Commission sought to close the tunnel but this led to an Inland Waterways Association-organised massed protest cruise in 1960. The tunnel was however closed in 1962; and was further threatened with permanent closure by British Railways who wished to replace a railway viaduct at the Tipton portal with an embankment and a culvert. However, this never happened as the railway was closed in 1968 and the disused bridge demolished in the 1990s. The tunnel was reopened in 1973, as a result of restoration, which had been a collaboration between local volunteers (originally the Dudley Canal Tunnel Preservation Society, later the Dudley Canal Trust), and the local authority, Dudley Borough Council. The opening ceremony was advertised as "TRAD 1973 - Tunnel Reopening at Dudley". Construction of the tunnel(s) When a private Act of Parliament to construct a canal near Dudley was obtained in 1776, it did not include Dudley Tunnel. It authorised a route that started in two fields called Great Ox Leasow and Little Ox Leasow, a little to the south of the tunnel site near Peartree Lane in Dudley, and ran southwards to an end-on junction with the Stourbridge Canal, authorised by a separate act on the same day. The principal shareholders included Lord Dudley and Ward and Thomas Talbot Foley. Shareholders had contributed the authorised capital of £7,000 by July 1778, and the canal was completed on 14 June 1779, at a total cost of £9,700. The Stourbridge Canal opened in December. Quite separately, Lord Dudley and Ward was mining limestone in the Castle Mill and Wren's Next area, further to the north. This was brought up to the surface, and transported overland. In 1775, he started building a private canal, which branched from the 473 ft Wolverhampton Level of the Birmingham Canal at Tipton, and reached Tipton Colliery through a tunnel. This was known as Lord Dudley and Ward's branch, and the first phase was completed