East Coast Mainline Blockade for Werrington Junction diveunder

[corneliuslundie]

I would have thought that spraying with weedkiller would now be frowned on as harming biodiversity.

Jonathan

[PenrithBeacon]

14 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I would have thought that spraying with weedkiller would now be frowned on as harming biodiversity.

Jonathan

It's probably a broad leafed weedkiller. When it's done its work it will allow grasses to grow.

[great central]

14 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

With the amount of labour they used, a new railway could have been built. However  a dive under in saturated ground, probably not. They would probably have built a flyover and yes that could have been done. The bridge would have needed to be  similar to the one at Little Bytham that carried the M & GN.

 

Jamie

 

I believe there used to be a flyover in the same area to take the M & GN over the ECML although I've only seen scant mention of it and no pictures. A Google search doesn't bring up anything as far as I can tell

[Donington Road]

4 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

I would have thought that spraying with weedkiller would now be frowned on as harming biodiversity.

Jonathan

 

With all the care taken to preserve the original wildlife and new areas created it does seem rather an odd thing to be doing, but then again nobody seemed to care about the amount of cement and ballast dust blowing about.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, great central said:

 

I believe there used to be a flyover in the same area to take the M & GN over the ECML although I've only seen scant mention of it and no pictures. A Google search doesn't bring up anything as far as I can tell

I'll have a look and let you know what I find out.

 

Jamie

[corneliuslundie]

The flyover was further south not far north of the GNR loco shed. The line left the Midland at Wisbech Junction (immediately north of Westwood Junction between the GNR and Midland) and ran parallel to the GNR and Midland past New England Sidings. The other route which crossed the GN main line by a bridge was north of Little Bytham - the Midland line from Saxby which made an end-on junction with the M&GN at Little Bytham Junction not far east of the bridge. (Source the 1915 RCH Junction Diagrams reprint.)

Jonathan

[Richard E]

Here you go ...

 

The line disappearing top right is roughly on the alignment of the current A47 and the wagon works in the V of the lines is roughly where Brotherhood retail park is nowadays.

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by Richard E
factual correction

[melmerby]

if you do the overlay you can see exactly where it fits:

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=52.59720&lon=-0.26357&layers=168&b=1

[Donington Road]

How about a picture.

I have done the notation.

 

 

Taken from the Britain from Above website.  https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en

Good quality aerial photos from around the country.

Well worth signing up for (free) so you can enlarge the thumbnails to full screen and beyond.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Donington Road
edit to photo

[phil-b259]

21 hours ago, manna said:

G'Day Folks

 

A mighty fine job these blokes have done to build a new bit of Railway............... But. It begs the question, could the Victorian builders, if they had come back today, with all there marvels of Technology, 'Shovel, Spade, Pick a Wheelbarrow' have built it quicker, most of the GN section of the ECML, was built in only a few years ????????

 

manna

 

Most definitely yes. However.....

 

• They wouldn't have had to build a diveunder (and install all that elaborate drainage) because nobody gave a crap about visual intrusion (unless you happened to be passing through an estate of the landed gentry)
• They wouldn't have had to consider wildlife or ecology and could destroy animal habitats without anyone caring.
• They would have made the embankments out of loco ash (or other cheap and easy fill) with steep slopes becoming a maintenance lability in future years.
• Some of staff working on the job would no doubt suffered some serious injuries - don't need to worry too much about H&S when death and injury to the 'labouring classes' was accepted as part and parcel of life.

[JeffP]

11 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

I would have thought that spraying with weedkiller would now be frowned on as harming biodiversity.

Jonathan

They may have disturbed some triffid seeds.

 

Seriously, giant hogwort, japanese knotweed, who knows?

[Jaggzuk]

21 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

• They wouldn't have had to build a diveunder (and install all that elaborate drainage) because nobody gave a crap about visual intrusion (unless you happened to be passing through an estate of the landed gentry)

 

And if they had considered the visual aspect, then there would be two huge castellated turrets on both sides of the "tunnel" portal and beautiful brickwork too.

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, Jaggzuk said:

 

And if they had considered the visual aspect, then there would be two huge castellated turrets on both sides of the "tunnel" portal and beautiful brickwork too.

 

You miss the fundamental point that no sane engineer (now or back in Victorian times) would build a dive under in such a low lying bogey area by choice!

 

NR were FORCED to build a dive under by modern planning rules - from a maintenance and construction perspective a flyover would have been infinitely preferable by NR.

[phil-b259]

On 06/11/2021 at 09:14, corneliuslundie said:

I would have thought that spraying with weedkiller would now be frowned on as harming biodiversity.

Jonathan

 

Weedkiller use is generally not an issue these days due to its formulation. Also with a grater understanding of plant genetics its quite possible to formulate weedkillers that will only work on certain plant groups but not others.

 

However to recap, the requirements of pretty much all modern weedkillers (regardless of formulation) is they:-

 

(1) MUST be totally inert if washed into watercourses by rain

(2) MUST be totally inert if it falls on bare ground (and will thus do nothing to prevent the germination of plants from seed)

(2) MUST have no effect on mammals / birds / aquatic life if consumed by them.

 

This rules out many of the substances used until the early 1990s and is also why you need to actually let the weeds grow before spraying as the weedkiller will only do anything if it gets absorbed through the leaf / stem structure (i.e. not through the roots as was traditionally the case).

 

 

 

 

 

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Weedkiller use is generally not an issue these days due to its formulation. Also with a grater understanding of plant genetics its quite possible to formulate weedkillers that will only work on certain plant groups but not others.

However to recap, the requirements of pretty much all modern weedkillers (regardless of formulation) is they:-

 

(1) MUST be totally inert if washed into watercourses by rain

(2) MUST be totally inert if it falls on bare ground (and will thus do nothing to prevent the germination of plants from seed)

(2) MUST have no effect on mammals / birds / aquatic life if consumed by them.

 

This rules out many of the substances used until the early 1990s and is also why you need to actually let the weeds grow before spraying as the weedkiller will only do anything if it gets absorbed through the leaf / stem structure (i.e. not through the roots as was traditionally the case).

 

Japanese Knotweed requires specialist treatment where the herbicide is injected directly into the stems and presumably can be of a different formulation.

[Donington Road]

Just a little bit from today.

 

 

[corneliuslundie]

I hope they are not intending to do that the length of HS2! I really can't understand what was needed. Doesn't the autoballaster put the ballast where it is needed? And what happens next time the tamper comes past?

Jonathan

[Donington Road]

3 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I hope they are not intending to do that the length of HS2! I really can't understand what was needed. Doesn't the autoballaster put the ballast where it is needed? And what happens next time the tamper comes past?

Jonathan

 

The auto ballaster puts the ballast at the end of the sleepers where it creates a higher ridge.   From there to the embankment, which encompasses the drainage covers, it is quite wide.  Most of that has been infilled from open wagons with a rail excavator.  This has been levelled partly with the excavator and finally by hand as videoed today.  The drain sumps are made up of segments, some of these have been removed to lower the top cover and the ballast brought up to level.

Taking away a drain segment.

[Titan]

On 07/11/2021 at 18:34, phil-b259 said:

 

You miss the fundamental point that no sane engineer (now or back in Victorian times) would build a dive under in such a low lying bogey area by choice!

 

NR were FORCED to build a dive under by modern planning rules - from a maintenance and construction perspective a flyover would have been infinitely preferable by NR.

 

A flyover would not have worked, as the gradient would be too steep to get under the A15.  It was looked at how high and long the flyover would need to be if it went over the A15 instead, but as the A15 is already on an embankment that is significantly higher than the ECML it would have put the flyover on an elevation that made it the highest point for miles around, including the top of Peterborough Cathederal, not to mention how much would be required for the embankments/supports, how much longer the site would need to be etc etc

Edited November 9, 2021 by Titan

[Donington Road]

3 minutes ago, Titan said:

 

A flyover would not have worked, as the gradient would be too steep to get under the A15.  It was looked at how high and long the flyover would need to be if it went over the A15 instead, but as the A15 is already on an embankment that is significantly higher than the ECML it would have put the flyover on an elevation that made it the highest point for miles around, including the top of Peterborough Cathederal, not to mention how much would be required for the embankments/supports...

 

It would also have gone much further north, away from the existing Joint Line.  The original proposal for a flyover would have taken it the other side of Barn Farm seen in many of the photos of the Lincoln Road area.  As you say it would have been an unsightly height and that is why it was rejected.  The other issue was, where were Morgan Sindall going to get the soil from to build the embankments.

[woodenhead]

16 minutes ago, Donington Road said:

 

 The other issue was, where were Morgan Sindall going to get the soil from to build the embankments.

if they had waited, HS2 would have done nicely.

[Richard E]

38 minutes ago, Titan said:

 

A flyover would not have worked, as the gradient would be too steep to get under the A15.  It was looked at how high and long the flyover would need to be if it went over the A15 instead, but as the A15 is already on an embankment that is significantly higher than the ECML it would have put the flyover on an elevation that made it the highest point for miles around, including the top of Peterborough Cathederal, not to mention how much would be required for the embankments/supports, how much longer the site would need to be etc etc

 

There is also an issue in that local developments are not supposed to diminish the impact of the cathedral by being significantly higher, something the local planning committee seem to have forgotten ...

[Crun]

Weren't local people also asked to vote for either a flyover or a dive-under? I thought they went for the dive-under on the grounds of not wanting noisy, polluting diesels straining up the slopes of a flyover... I could be wrong.

[Donington Road]

2 minutes ago, Crun said:

Weren't local people also asked to vote for either a flyover or a dive-under? I thought they went for the dive-under on the grounds of not wanting noisy, polluting diesels straining up the slopes of a flyover... I could be wrong.

 

Yes it was put to a vote, but who was going to take any notice of that.

A lot of people rejected the flyover because they believed that diesels going up slopes caused pollution.  What they didn't realise is that diesels coming out of holes in the ground still have to go up slopes to come back to surface level.

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Richard E said:

 

There is also an issue in that local developments are not supposed to diminish the impact of the cathedral by being significantly higher, something the local planning committee seem to have forgotten ...

It's 6.4km (4 miles) as the crow flies from the cathedral spire to the highest point (over the A15) of any possible flyover.

That's hardly next door.