ECML Morpeth viaduct parapet collapse.

[Fat Controller]

You might find it hard to credit, but SNCF have installed a 'green wall' outside their national Control office at Gare d'Est. Now, what's the French for Rosebay Wllow-herb?

[Southernman46]

3 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

40 years ago I used to chair the Quarterly Engineering Works Programme meetings for South Eastern Division. I don't ever recall the engineers being in this sort of disarray. The most difficult bit was pathing the precious Paper Trains through possessions. 

That's cos it was BR  and people knew how to run a railway including passing paper trains thro' blocks - can you imagine that happening today 🤣

[Southernman46]

17 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I think the vegetation issue got swept up  - or not - in the CWR programme. Local P Way gangs were dab hands at keeping saplings and the like under control, in the course of their daily patrols etc.  Once CWR obviated the need for knocking-in keys, and patrolmen became history, so gangs were decimated - as part of the cost-saving justification for CWR investment. Cue Mother Nature doing her thing uninhibited. 

True - advances in technology have caused a natural reduction in the number of people required to look after the railway especially with the wide scale adoption of fast-clip on the SR 👍 - I was reducing the periodicity of patrolling long lengths of CWR between Woking & Basingstoke to fortnightly (properly risk-assessed) even back in 2011 - but the WORST thing they ever did was get rid of length gangs - it needs people who know their sections intimately - can observe change immediately & can do the small easy to do stuff that achieves "AIM-WIDE" 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Southernman46

[Stoke West]

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

This was Worcester's entry for the 'Viaducts in Bloom' competition last year : - 

 

9/7/22

Thats easy to get access , try the Butts branch viaduct thats like the hanging gardens of Babylon

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

This was Worcester's entry for the 'Viaducts in Bloom' competition last year : - 

 

9/7/22

I thought the 'Best Kept Garden' competition died out long ago!

[eastglosmog]

On 21/10/2023 at 15:01, locoholic said:

Predictable that yet again Network Rail are blaming climate change for an infrastructure failure. This time, I assume they conclude that the higher concentration of CO2 in the air is enabling the buddleia to grow faster and do more damage. We can therefore look forward to a major programme of vegetation clearance from structures to prevent further such incidents...

Make more sense to blame it on the clean air act reducing the SO2 and pollutants in the atmosphere,  thus allowing these plants to grow!

[31A]

Apparently normal working resumed at Plessey today with up and down lines back in use.

[adb968008]

On 04/11/2023 at 20:30, 31A said:

Apparently normal working resumed at Plessey today with up and down lines back in use.

Less than a month, good going.

[Enterprisingwestern]

On 04/11/2023 at 21:30, 31A said:

Apparently normal working resumed at Plessey today with up and down lines back in use.

 

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Less than a month, good going.

 

Anyone running a book on when the other parapet follows it?

 

Mike.

[Southernman46]

If the vegetation is the same then sometime in the next 12 months especially if they decide to increase the rear loading with 2 x CWR's as on the failed side.