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Landslip at Hatfield & Stainforth


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some interesting knock on effects, 158s running up the ECML from Doncaster to Temple Hirst and this morning the sand train from Barnby Dun came into Doncaster with a 66 on the front and 66/67/66 on the back, don't think i've ever seen such a consist before

 

Hull traffic can go via Selby but Scunthorpe is a bit trickier

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all i remember about hatfield from going there with fastline was the colliery area was like a moonscape, very desolate, no trees and very "sinky" when you had to walk to the train on the loading road

 

looking at the NR twitter pic the slip is north of the loading bunker, as other have pointed out in a spoil tipping area, basically beyond the signal gantry roughly where the trees are above the wagon in this picture (of the first fastline coal train from hatfield), there is a public footpath by the landslip which actually seemed to go no where, it went under a bridge parapet and straight into the slagheap, probably at one time it was busy with workers heading to the colliery

 

17052008818.jpg

 

as you can see in this pic there is quite a steep bank down to the track, which as i say was very soft underfoot

 

30032010241.jpg

 

may as well put this up as well, the last fastline train from hatfield, i worked both the first and last train from there!

 

29032010237.jpg

Edited by big jim
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Nice pictures and I was on the 1st one in when Fastline Freight went belly up looking at the pictures it looks like ground that Up Scunthorpe Slow and Fast has risen alog with the loading line near Stainforth East Ground Frame shame its going to be closed for a month nice little jobs them Hatfields

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This is Hatfield, Yorkshire (near Doncaster), not Hatfield (Herts)...

Many thanks for that. It really did take me a long time for the penny to drop. Doh! I was having problems with the concept of trains to Scunthorpe being impacted by line closures in Hertfordshire.

 

It makes much more sense now though no less serious. Still had to look it up on a map.

Edited by Kenton
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Aberfan was a name which sprang to mind, the impact that this had on me as a 10 year old at the time in October 1966 was very profound and although very distant I was aware that over 100 of my age group would not be able to do something that many of us would have been looking forward to that day; to enjoy our half term holiday. A few miniutes earlier, a few hours later and things may well have been different but in both cases the presence of waterlogged colliery waste played the principal part.  I'm not sure about the history of Hatfield Colliery but it has been there ever since I can remember.

Aberfan was a most ghastly event, which I'm sure locals will not forget for a few generations yet. ISTR the Beeb managed to get Cliff Michelmore - hardly a roving reporter by nature - on site, and his report was choked with emotion, summing it up with words like "I hope I never see anything like it again."

 

Hatfield looks serious, a major event, but no-one, at this stage, has lost their life.

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that ariel picture really shows how bad it is, the fact the track has raised and the trees are still standing suggests to me the main slip has happened below the surface as such, pushing the whole bank towards the lines rather than loose spoil rolling down the hill flattening anything in its path (a'la gbrf 66 incident)

 

its just north of the ground frame that takes you out onto the goods (to run round)

Edited by big jim
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here is the location from google maps, the crossing to nowhere i mentioned previously is actually futher south than i remember but it is where the ground frame is located, look how straight the line of trees is on google compared to the twitter pic!

 

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Hatfield+Colliery,+Stainforth,+Doncaster+District,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=53.594122,-1.009111&spn=0.001601,0.005284&sll=51.050975,-4.214429&sspn=0.054279,0.169086&oq=hatfield+c&t=h&hq=Hatfield+Colliery,+Stainforth,+Doncaster+District,+United+Kingdom&z=18

Edited by big jim
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The way the track has lifted suggests a deep seated circular slip plane to me. Starting somewhere up in the spoil heap running down in a curve into the ground then back to the surface in the middle of the four tracks. The weight of the material high in the slag heap has pushed down on the material above the slip plane and the whole mass has rotated, so the descending material in the slag heap side has pushed up the lower material under the railway.

 

The thing is that if you remove the pile of stuff that has risen under the railway, you make that side of the slip lighter. This will unbalance the situation and the slag heap will push up more material until balance is restored.

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The way the track has lifted suggests a deep seated circular slip plane to me. Starting somewhere up in the spoil heap running down in a curve into the ground then back to the surface in the middle of the four tracks. The weight of the material high in the slag heap has pushed down on the material above the slip plane and the whole mass has rotated, so the descending material in the slag heap side has pushed up the lower material under the railway.

 

The thing is that if you remove the pile of stuff that has risen under the railway, you make that side of the slip lighter. This will unbalance the situation and the slag heap will push up more material until balance is restored.

If this is correct, and I don't doubt it is for one minute, then someone, NR or whoever owns Hatfield, have a LOT of stuff to remove.......

 

I think a month starts to look optimistic.

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This is gonna be awfully expensive. I assume NR's customers will be due compensation for loss of service, and NR has to recoup that money where it can. I infer that the recent history of coal mining is not awash with profit, and hope the net result is not simply closure and job losses.

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This is gonna be awfully expensive. I assume NR's customers will be due compensation for loss of service, and NR has to recoup that money where it can. I infer that the recent history of coal mining is not awash with profit, and hope the net result is not simply closure and job losses.

Under the norma; compensation process NR would be liable for any extra costs incurred by train operators but not - if it is still the case - for any impact on revenue (the reason being that is difficult to reliably estimate) although if any stations lose their train service as a consequence there would undoubtedly be some sort of additional negotiated figure.

 

In view of the amount of movement, plus the fact that there is clearly pressure behind it (and I wonder if there are any old watercourses underneath it?) I suspect that a very large amount of material will have to be removed and/or re-graded to produce even a short term solution.  I've only come across the sort of bigger slips which need to be back-filled and they seem to take tremendous amounts of material as what goes in can vanish as quickly as it's tipped.  Here it's that process in reverse with potentially a very large amount of material moving both visibly and beneath the surface.

 

But looking on the longer term bright side there might be a need to remove a lot of the tip and that might mean rail traffic away from the area using the old loading site?

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