It is obviously important that builders, engineers and suchlike know what is underground. Pipelines, tunnels, mines, railways, rivers, caves, bunkers…

Is there an easy on-line resource to find such information?

I’ve found these:
http://maps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/wiybyController?ep=maptopics&lang=_e

https://naturalresources.wales/our-evidence-and-reports/maps/?lang=en

http://www.environment.scotland.gov.uk/get-interactive/

but I’d really like to see the actual position of the tunnels or whatever, a bit like the way that this map shows the true positions of the London tube network, but with more detail/ layers.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03443/London-Connections_3443046a.jpg

I used to have quite a stack of plans and overlays, but they’re often not easy to get hold of – utility companies and the like like to keep things secret sometimes, and there’s worries about giving out too much about infrastructure for security reasons.

A friend in the local planning department is a useful person to cultivate 😉

Local councils’ GIS systems hold this sort of information (based on my knowledge of one council this is a FACT). Whether they’d want to share with the proles is another matter…

You are Guy Fawkes, and I win five pounds!

MR- a £5:00 postal order is on its way. Everywhere is a bit damp for gunpowder storage at the moment, the Establishment should be safe.

Interestingly, I note that there is currently a low risk of forest fire hereabouts. Really?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/fire-severity-index/#?tab=map&fcTime=1427371200&zoom=5&lon=-4.00&lat=55.74

A lot is held in different ways by many organisations and companies, and they’d rather keep it that way to charge big fees for each piece of work or development. Each time surveys need to be done, fees to get the information. Nice profitable business.

inspired by the news report on cross rail and the ww2 shelter earlier?

I am sure there is a service contractors can access when digging up roads etc to see what lies beneath. Can’t remember who the provider is sorry. Just give your local groundworks company a call and see if they can help. Bound to be a few in Ammanford

And don’t trust the information that utility companies or others hold is correct. Southern Water’s records show a fairly major sewer running under the road next to my property but it is about four meters south under my new extension.

I had logins for Scottish Power and scottish and southerns GIS systems a few years ago. the info regarding cabling was at times ‘historic’ – some records were just scans of old paper records merged together to form a map.

They had to be checked on the ground to find the exact cable runs. recent upgrades to transformers/new developments were rarely shown.

I tried to get a similar login from scottish gas networks and was politely but firmly told not to ask again as it was local authority and emergency services only. they did say that if I provided them with a 6 figure grid reference, they would advise on a job by job basis.

caveat: this was all 5 years ago, things may have changed.

As others have said, various organisations hold records for different things. Is there a particular sub-surface ‘thing’ you want to find out about, or is it just passing interest ? If the latter and depending where you are in the country, you may find visiting the Coal Authority archives in Mansfield interesting.

I like that London Connections map, saw that when it was first released and I keep meaning to get to the London Transport Museum.

What I would really love to see is a 3D model of Tube lines with the actual depth, direction, stations and connections.

Sort of related, there’s this 3D London model at The Building Centre on Store Street (off Tottenham Court Road)

See a 3D map of London at The Building Centre

On a slightly more random, but interesting, level Subterranea Britannica has quite a lot of information about stuff down there…

What I would really love to see is a 3D model of Tube lines with the actual depth, direction, stations and connections.

You’ll not really get that anywhere, however there are redacted version of the stations 3D axonometrics released under a FOI request mid last year here

And don’t trust the information that utility companies or others hold is correct.

Years ago, when I explored the Molendinar burn and others under Glasgow, I exchanged a bunch of emails with the city planning department – they wanted to know exactly where I’d gone and what I’d seen, because they couldn’t go explore themselves for H&S reasons.

Great pics there Ben – not sure you’d get me down there!

I work in construction, specifically pipelines and tunnels and the quick answer is no, there is not one single source.

All the utilities et al have their own records and in a lot of cases haven’t a clue where it actually is apart from in the road/footpath somewhere!

There are a lot of tunnels under every city that date back to the cold war which were constructed as bunkers etc, the location of these will never be disclosed, particularly in London where there still exists emergency escape tunnels. We have hit some of them in the past whilst tunnelling in London and have simply been told to ‘back up’ and re-align. We built a supposedly ‘water’ tunnel under Chelsea Barracks in the 90’s, but it was left at two blind shafts in certain locations 😉

In London we having to go deeper and deeper to get under everything, we are just about to start a new sewer down the centre of the Thames which is going to be up to 100m deep.

LUL are slowly laser surveying all of the currently used underground, so I would say that is the most accurate available wrt where is exactly is in 3D.

Then you’ve also got industrial things like petrochemical pipelines. There’s networks of pipes running out of Fawley, Stanlow, Teesside, Hull, Glasgow etc carrying all sorts of stuff.

Yup, there’s also the MoD’s GPSS network, for distributing fuel to airbases and the like. Though that’s just been sold to a Spanish company.

Cheers folks. If I were to dig a shaft in my garden I would very quickly reach coal. In fact, my neighbour across the road lost her front garden a few years ago when it collapsed into a private mine being dug, unknown to the Coal Board, by a couple of old guys just down the hill 😯

The Coal Authority have their own interactive mapviewer.

It looks like I’m going to fall down one of several holes nearby if I’m not careful.

http://www.linesearchbeforeudig.co.uk may be useful.

Most utility companies (gas, water, BT etc) will have a department that should be able to provide plans, try googling for plant protection or similar?

I work for a Gas Network and we provide maps showing mains and some larger pipes, but even we sometimes have to have a guess at where it should be…..sometimes we can’t find them, or find a pipe that shouldn’t be there.

Be careful before you let the JCB loose on your lawn 😉

These guys are well established report and data providers but it’s not aimed at the home enthusiast and isn’t cheap http://www.envirocheck.co.uk/report/utilities-report .

It can be very hard to get hold of detailed spatial data even when you are working on an infrastructure development. So much infrastructure exists from before accurate mapping via GPS and GIS, and it’s expensive to digitise. Unless there is a good reason to it is unlikely to exist digitally in a publically available form and very unlikely to be as-laid accuracy.

A lot of the old stuff is almost forgotten too, on a survey for an offshore wind farm we found old unmapped cables that were probably old wartime telecoms cables to Europe

A lot of the old stuff is almost forgotten too, on a survey for an offshore wind farm we found old unmapped cables that were probably old wartime telecoms cables to Europe

Reminds me of the time a boss of mine offshore was telling me about the time him & his mates were laying a fibre optic cable inshore to Iceland, they dragged a grapel across a supposedly clear bit of seabed (according to the charts anyway) and came up with a hydrophone.. Not long after a US navy chopper was buzzing them & calling over the vhf telling them not to say anything..

Yeah there must be some interesting military stuff down there, but beyond the known practice areas, historical minefields, wrecks etc I’ve certainly never mapped any of it. I don’t know if there is a ‘secret level’ when seabed infrastructure is being planned where it goes past the military.

100mphplus – Morgan Sindall?

An Icelandic friend was involved with a telecoms cable that he was told in no uncertain terms ‘was not there’ and ‘did not exist’. At all. Ever.
He figured it was probably military.

aP – Member
On a slightly more random, but interesting, level Subterranea Britannica has quite a lot of information about stuff down there…

I’ve spent ages over the years getting distracted looking at that site 😀