Popular tunnelling community ‘Tunnel Tigers’ turns five
30 May 2019International – A Facebook community devoted to sharing stories and photos from its members’ lives in tunnelling is about to turn five. The group, Tunnel Tigers (the lords of fraud) was launched by Mark Bates on 8 June 2014.
Billed as an informative page for old and new tunnellers alike, the group has recently welcomed its 4,000th member, gaining approximately 10% of this membership in the last month.
Speaking to Tunnels and Tunnelling, Bates said that the group began as a platform to bring old friends together to share experiences (and laugh at some of them) from over the years. Bates himself has worked on numerous projects, counting Crossrail and the Channel Tunnel as career highlights. The group was originally intended for British tunnellers, but it has expanded greatly and has a particularly strong membership from Australia, India and Pakistan.
Bates, who manages the group entirely by himself, added, “I love the game [tunnelling] and have been involved since I left school. The name comes from a friend who called us all frauds while we worked on a job in Workington.”
As for the future, Bates hopes for a sponsor to help the process of finding content.
