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Landslip at Hatfield & Stainforth


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Looks like one hell of a mess to tidy up. But how long will it take before the immortal phrase is echoed from the powers that be.... "lessons will be learnt from this"  Never have and never will, like always.

 

Mike

Edited by mike61680
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Actually Powerfuel (the company set up by Richard Budge to re-open this mine) went into receivership in 2011, the pit is owned by a Dutch company, Entero BV. see http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/business/400-jobs-saved-as-dutch-company-buys-hatfield-colliery-1-3354421.

Richard

 

Thanks for updating me, sorry everyone but my information was out of date.

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The whole area is run down, uncared for and suffering from vandalism. There seem to be "travellers" caravans and tethered horses and ponies all over the place.

 

We moved to Hatfield in 1977.  Sadly, that description could have applied then.

 

 

Adrian

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Slightly related, in that it's a precedent for TPE running a long way round to avoid a problem - the Hope Valley's closed for engineering today, so TPE are running Doncaster-Meadhowhall-Sheffield-Huddersfield, presumably for connections over the Pennines.

Via Moorthorpe/Kirkgate/Healey Mills! Timetabled at 51 mins Sheff-Hudds, compared to 1h13-odd for the Penistone stoppers

 

The TPE website describes it: "Following customer feedback and to reduce the use of replacement bus services, train services from Scunthorpe to Manchester Airport will be diverted after Sheffield to terminate at Huddersfield"

 

Also Hull Trains today are going Hull-Goole-Snaith-Ponte Carlo-Calder Bridge Jn* (rev)-Adwick-Doncaster-KX because Selby is blocked for engineering and Hatfield is well, blocked.

*near Wakefield Kirkgate

Edited by eastwestdivide
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Also Hull Trains today are going Hull-Goole-Snaith-Ponte Carlo-Calder Bridge Jn* (rev)-Adwick-Doncaster-KX because Selby is blocked for engineering and Hatfield is well, blocked.

*near Wakefield Kirkgate

I was quite surprised by this - especially considering how things will be during our blockade in summer.

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There'll possibly (probably) be a secondary slip as the back wall of this slip (see any of the aerial pix) has now become destabilised.

 

Seems that the tip has been built up in just three/four years? There's a reference on Big Jim's link to the area in 2009 where there isn't a tip - wonder if they carried out any drainage works first? As they went bust we'll never know.

Edited by Coombe Barton
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Sorry for the previous slightly less than serious post!

 

One of the news reports referred to the slip being from the waste from the most recent workings, adding that the tips from older workings, which were the ones nearest the houses, were quite stable and safe.

 

What it didn't say was what "recent" means in this context.

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Sorry for the previous slightly less than serious post!

 

One of the news reports referred to the slip being from the waste from the most recent workings, adding that the tips from older workings, which were the ones nearest the houses, were quite stable and safe.

 

What it didn't say was what "recent" means in this context.

 

Wonder too what is meant by the word "quite" in "quite stable"

 

Water in unprecedented quantities can undo a lot of stability that was previously thought OK.

 

Were the 'recent' tips put against the 'old' ones?

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Your roving reporter visited the site today, 18/2/13, at about 0915. Lighting conditions murky and grey, pretty much matching the scenery. I went to the bridleway bridge at the Thorne end (east), about a 20 minute brisk walk from the end of Hatfield village. There is a shorter route to there from the road to the N side of the line, but for one thing, an earlier photo caption described it as "knee-deep in sticky mud", and for another, it leads directly past the suspect spoil heap.

So call me a coward, I took the long route, puddly wet, but not that muddy. The fields were pretty waterlogged, but the drainage ditches were mostly in good nick that side. Didn't go to the station, as I had a pressing appointment (well, meeting Mallard60022 near Gainsborough to watch some of the diverted traffic, but that's another story). In any case, the station is a bit further from the slip, and in the murk, the pics wouldn't have been very good.

Anyway, on to the pictures, all looking towards Doncaster from the bridleway bridge, located just under 1km W of Thorne Junction and the M18:

There's a plastic blue fence across the line, presumably marking the exclusion zone until the thing stabilises:

post-6971-0-37671800-1361203841.jpg

 

And the rest pretty much speak for themselves. In some, you can just see the station overbridge in the far distance, and I took one showing the tilt on the power lines. On the last shot, you can just see the pit wheels peeping over the top on the right.

post-6971-0-23935400-1361203845.jpg

post-6971-0-23637000-1361203863.jpg

post-6971-0-61957500-1361203867.jpg

post-6971-0-06460900-1361203871.jpg

post-6971-0-10559400-1361203875.jpg

post-6971-0-12211000-1361203879.jpg

Edited by eastwestdivide
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Your roving reporter moved on, to Gainsborough Trent Junctions (walk by the river), and Beckingham, just round the corner from Gainsborough towards Doncaster, meeting up with Mallard60022 (thanks for the location tipoff). Managed to photograph 9 freights in 4 hours, including walking time and half an hour in the pub (soft drinks only!).

Obviously some of these would have gone that way in any case, but the Scunthorpe/Manchester refuse (binliners) were definitely a diversion, and probably those tanks (black VTG - are they from Preston?). I'd got hold of a listing of movements the previous night, but things had evidently changed overnight, as the tank train and the engineering train weren't on the list.

Tricky to get a really good shot down by the Trent, but a few highlights:

post-6971-0-42391500-1361206134.jpg

post-6971-0-89421600-1361206128.jpg

post-6971-0-32063100-1361206125.jpg

 

And at Beckingham (the engineering train had a loco each end, 60 at the front and 66 at the back):

post-6971-0-73798900-1361206114.jpg

post-6971-0-85480600-1361206118.jpg

post-6971-0-30431400-1361206122.jpg

Edited by eastwestdivide
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Modroc is not what it used to be. So unstable under exhibition lighting!

Your roving reporter visited the site today, 18/2/13, at about 0915. Lighting conditions murky and grey, pretty much matching the scenery. I went to the bridleway bridge at the Thorne end (east), about a 20 minute brisk walk from the end of Hatfield village. There is a shorter route to there from the road to the N side of the line, but for one thing, an earlier photo caption described it as "knee-deep in sticky mud", and for another, it leads directly past the suspect spoil heap.

So call me a coward, I took the long route, puddly wet, but not that muddy. The fields were pretty waterlogged, but the drainage ditches were mostly in good nick that side. Didn't go to the station, as I had a pressing appointment (well, meeting Mallard60022 near Gainsborough to watch some of the diverted traffic, but that's another story). In any case, the station is a bit further from the slip, and in the murk, the pics wouldn't have been very good.

Anyway, on to the pictures, all looking towards Doncaster from the bridleway bridge, located just under 1km W of Thorne Junction and the M18:

There's a plastic blue fence across the line, presumably marking the exclusion zone until the thing stabilises:

attachicon.gifIMGP5855.jpg

 

And the rest pretty much speak for themselves. In some, you can just see the station overbridge in the far distance, and I took one showing the tilt on the power lines. On the last shot, you can just see the pit wheels peeping over the top on the right.

attachicon.gifIMGP5857.jpg

attachicon.gifIMGP5859.jpg

attachicon.gifIMGP5860.jpg

attachicon.gifIMGP5862.jpg

attachicon.gifIMGP5863.jpg

attachicon.gifIMGP5864.jpg

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Having looked at this tip I wouldn't want to drive a motor scraper across there in the next five years never mind next week. A small dozer with LGP tracks maybe but I wouldn't want to push a full blade even downhill. It looks more like a slurry lagoon on top  of the tip so a quicksand effect is quite feasible.......

 

Hatfield colliery is under threat of closure or maybe mothballing because of difficult conditions undergrounda massive bill will probaly seal its fate.

 

 

Edit Low Ground Pressure = LGP tracks  sometimes wider plates than normal or long pads that look like split trees.

Edited by skipepsi
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If they are the black ones with the silver banding, then yes that's the Preston bitumen train. 

 

66116 was reported on this today, so reasonably definite confirmation that it's 6E32 Preston-Lindsey OR empty bitumen tanks.

 

Cheers,

Mick

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If they are the black ones with the silver banding, then yes that's the Preston bitumen train. 

 

Whoever thought of that livery? Must have been a "glass half full" type.  You can imagine the meeting...... "If we have to have then black at least we can give them a silver lining".

 

I like it!

 

They get worse...... sorry.

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