The record
The Mersey Tunnels Police is one of Britain's oddities: a constabulary whose whole jurisdiction is two road tunnels. It dates from the opening of the Queensway tunnel in 1934, which at first was policed alternately by Liverpool City Police and Birkenhead Borough Police, and it answers not to the Home Office but to the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive. Its authority covers the tunnels themselves, the marshalling areas, the entrance and exit roads and all Mersey Tunnels premises. As of 2010 it numbered just over fifty officers across all ranks.
Land Rovers were used extensively by the force, and — in a pattern familiar to anyone who has run a small fleet on a small budget — they stayed on well beyond normal retirement dates. This vehicle closed that chapter: the last Land Rover the force operated was a red-striped 90 from 1990. After it, the Discovery became and remains the preferred choice whenever four-wheel drive is wanted, alongside a general fleet of Ford Transits, Mondeos, Galaxies and S-MAXs, with a windowed Ford van historically used to escort abnormal loads.
The livery is the force's own: white with a red stripe edged in blue along the body, TUNNEL POLICE on the doors and a blue lightbar on the roof. A hard top rather than a station wagon — the work is incident response in a confined, well-lit tunnel, not carrying people across country.
No registration number for the vehicle is given in the source consulted, and no engine specification; a 1990 Defender 90 would be a 2.5-litre car of the pre-300Tdi generation, but the sources do not state which engine this one carried.
