Another land slip

[locoholic]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

I'm not so sure that even 30 yrears ago there would've been suitable resources for diversions onto a non electric route.

 

Maybe there should be a fleet of Black 5s and Mk1 stock on stand by?😄

All that's needed are trains that have compatible couplings - something else that today's rail network can't deliver.

[melmerby]

6 minutes ago, locoholic said:

All that's needed are trains that have compatible couplings - something else that today's rail network can't deliver.

Because the requirements of different stock varies over time as more/different features are added.

The UK isn't alone on this.

 

When we changed from steam to diesel/electric, the different locos/MUs had different coupling requirements.

Yes you could use the good ol' hook & chain but what about other requirements, such as electrical supply & brakes?

 

 

 

[stewartingram]

18 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

Presumably it doesn't cost too much to maintain the road/motorway network ??!? ☹️

Do they maintain it then?

[locoholic]

12 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Because the requirements of different stock varies over time as more/different features are added.

The UK isn't alone on this.

 

When we changed from steam to diesel/electric, the different locos/MUs had different coupling requirements.

Yes you could use the good ol' hook & chain but what about other requirements, such as electrical supply & brakes?

 

 

 

Requirements of different stock? What about the requirements of the rail network, and the passengers? Seems that the tail is well and truly wagging the dog these days!

[phil-b259]

4 hours ago, locoholic said:

Your comment merely highlights the fact that the fragmented structure of the rail industry has resulted in a complete lack of resilience. Alternative arrangements are rarely made, even when there are planned engineering works. As I said earlier, rail is now regarded as expensive and unreliable - the transport choice of last resort.

As ever it depends where you are going….

 

There is no way on earth I will drive within Grater London for example and more locally to home I wouldn’t drive into the centre of Brighton however expensive the trains get - its simply a far too stressful experience.

 

The same would be true with respect to visiting the centres of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds…

[Wheatley]

1 hour ago, locoholic said:

Requirements of different stock? What about the requirements of the rail network, and the passengers? Seems that the tail is well and truly wagging the dog these days!

Westinghouse  v vacuum, 21" vacuum v 25" vacuum, vacuum v air, single pipe air v 2 pipe air, screw couplings v buckeye, screw v tightlock, tightlock v BSI. Don't imagine incompatibility is a symptom of the modern railway. 

[90136]

21 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

If you thought it was bad back then - let me tell you its many many times worse now.

 

But as the bean counters in Whitehall keep telling us the railway costs the taxpayers too much so cuts, cuts and more cuts to staff are essential to deliver tax cuts.... ahem, I mean 'value for the taxpayer'....

I have to agree.
PPF and Modernising Maintenance are the politically correct terms they would have us believe. 
You only have to look at Western Route recently and the report off the back of a certain Junction on the ECML. 

The industry is heading down a path it really shouldn’t and as much as I hope and pray I am wrong, it’s not going to be long before something catastrophic happens. Luck only last so long. 
 

[john new]

Just read elsewhere that the Shipley - Ilkley line is also shut for about a month with bustitution due to cracks in a cutting side near Baildon.

 

Edited February 14 by john new
Added the link

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, 90136 said:

 

The industry is heading down a path it really shouldn’t and as much as I hope and pray I am wrong, it’s not going to be long before something catastrophic happens. Luck only last so long.

The Railtrack lesson forgotten?

[uax6]

1 minute ago, Reorte said:

The Railtrack lesson forgotten?

 

It would seem so. I do wonder if the 'slimming' down of the workforce that actually keeps the railway safe is the precursor to hiving off the engineering function to private contractors ('We've found that we need more men to do the repair work, but we haven't got the staff, so we've moved over to using contractors for it all'). I seem to recall that this worked well last time didn't it?

 

Andy G

[Wheatley]

2 hours ago, john new said:

Just read elsewhere that the Shipley - Ilkley line is also shut for about a month with bustitution due to cracks in a cutting side near Baildon.

 

Just south of  two very shallow short tunnels on a route with other very shallow short tunnels nearby, in an area made up of geological porridge (the Guiseley Gap) so presumably known to be  prone to landslip when it was built.

 

I don't imagine the water helped though. Nor I expect did the 1970s bungalows built on the top of the cutting that's now slipping. 

 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/RGcP3qnwrsGkdbR29

Edited February 14 by Wheatley

[melmerby]

5 hours ago, locoholic said:

Seems that the tail is well and truly wagging the dog these days!

Wake up.

It's nothing new. You seem to have a very narrow view of Now = Bad, Then = Good. It never was.

[Reorte]

8 hours ago, melmerby said:

Wake up.

It's nothing new. You seem to have a very narrow view of Now = Bad, Then = Good. It never was.

If it's nothing new then it's worse, since there's the added factor of failing to have learned.

[Mike 84C]

The lack of preventative maintainance is everywhere, I live in rural Lincolnshire , our village never used to flood, done it twice this winter. The drainage boards and the EVA only fire fight cleaning dykes when the water has overtopped. Most organizations that deal with these sort of problems are not fit for purpose. And I do understand about cutting budgets. 

  There is no joined up thinking and only political short termism.  An instance, there is a proposal for North Lincs to have a depositry for nuclear waste , who in their right mind would build such a thing on land which is only 30/40 ft and probably less, above sea level. Fill of materiel with a radioactive life of thousands of years.  I 'm sure I read that if global warming melts the polar ice caps sea levels will rise about 40ft so what happens to all the monitoring of the radioactive stuff?

  Glad its not my problem but why should our grandchildren have to deal with this stuff when with planning and forethought the outcomes could be much better and I could go on about solar farms, digesters, energy crops and the third world roads we drive on around here.

  Rant over!

[SM42]

On 12/02/2024 at 21:16, nigb55009 said:

This is a growing problem caused by previous administrations. When all the " Leaves on the line" chaos began it seemed the simplest

method was get rid of the root cause, pardon the pun. Trees were removed from embankments, little thought given to where all the

rain water soaked up by the vegetation would go. How many cuttings are being reprofiled, at great expense,  new drainage systems

are built in to these major earthworks to take water away. The use of modern traction, more powerful, faster accelerating than the

previous generation of rolling stock, doesn`t help the stituation, but thats progress. Perhaps if more thought had gone in to the problem

when it first began it wouldn`t be happening quite so often today.

 

 

I often wonder if the tree growth is the bigger problem 

 

The cuttings weren't built with trees on them and regardless of the methods of our victorian forebears in relation to working out, (if indeed they did,) what would be a stable slope,  I don't think they would have accounted for several hundred tons per square foot of timber being added to the slope. 

 

Andy

[john new]

4 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

 

I often wonder if the tree growth is the bigger problem 

 

The cuttings weren't built with trees on them and regardless of the methods of our victorian forebears in relation to working out, (if indeed they did,) what would be a stable slope,  I don't think they would have accounted for several hundred tons per square foot of timber being added to the slope. 

 

Andy

The lineside grass of former times at scythe length would be a binder and hold some water back too. I also think the value of lengthmen on both the railway and in County highway teams has been seriously underestimated. 

[Southernman46]

On 18/02/2024 at 21:11, SM42 said:

 

 

I often wonder if the tree growth is the bigger problem 

 

The cuttings weren't built with trees on them and regardless of the methods of our victorian forebears in relation to working out, (if indeed they did,) what would be a stable slope,  I don't think they would have accounted for several hundred tons per square foot of timber being added to the slope. 

 

Andy

They can actually help - the roots bind very well - the only problem is they have to then be managed properly - it is no use letting them then grow to 60+ft high with all added sub issue of leaves and then being surprised when they topple over or as I have seen recently on NR infrastructure cut all the branches off one side of large trees - THAT is asking for trouble.

I was fortunate in my time at NR in that the off-track vegetation Engineer we were able to have advise us was also a trained Arborologist who was more than capable of shining up a tree on rappelling gear and giving it a professional seeing-to.

What I see going on on the lineside now in Wessex fills me with trepidation - you can't just cut down the the trees or trim them willy-nilly  - the recent land-slip at Woking was entirely due to the complete denuding of a cutting slope..........................

Edited February 20 by Southernman46
bed spolling

[SM42]

11 minutes ago, Southernman46 said:

They can actually help - the roots bind very well - the only problem is they have to then be managed properly - it is no use letting them then grow to 60+ft high with all added sub issue of leaves and then being surprised when the topple over or as I have seen recently on NR infrastructure cut all the branches off one side of large trees - THAT is asking for trouble.

I was fortunate in my time at NR in that the off-track vegetation Engineer we were able to have advise us was also a trained Arborologist who was more than capable of shining up a tree on rappelling gear and giving it a professional seeing-to.

What I see going on on the lineside now in Wessex fills me with trepidation - you can't just cut down the the trees or trim them willy-nilly  - the recent land-slip at Woking was entirely due to the complete denuding of a cutting slope..........................

 

Surely it would have been better not to let them grow in the first place.

 

For once they do they create more problems.

 

Trouble stored up for someone else to deal with long after the perpetrators have retired  or shuffled off the mortal coil. 

 

Andy

[Southernman46]

33 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

Surely it would have been better not to let them grow in the first place.

 

For once they do they create more problems.

 

Trouble stored up for someone else to deal with long after the perpetrators have retired  or shuffled off the mortal coil. 

 

Andy

Yup 

[Hesperus]

Would it make sense to deliberately plant smaller species of tree on cutting slopes?  Send someone knowledgeable along every couple of years to check nothing bigger has joined them and give them a trim.  

 

 

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, Hesperus said:

Would it make sense to deliberately plant smaller species of tree on cutting slopes?  Send someone knowledgeable along every couple of years to check nothing bigger has joined them and give them a trim.  

 

 

And what happens when the DfT come demanding cuts and that ‘someone knowledgeable’ no longer exists in house or NR are no longer able to afford to pay for external help.

 

You forget that the whole reason why tree growth was allowed to happen in the first place was the ability to slash staff numbers once steam had finished rather than any deliberate policy to let them grow!

 

 

 

Edited February 18 by phil-b259

[Michael Hodgson]

On 14/02/2024 at 18:55, phil-b259 said:

As ever it depends where you are going….

 

There is no way on earth I will drive within Grater London for example and more locally to home I wouldn’t drive into the centre of Brighton however expensive the trains get - its simply a far too stressful experience.

 

The same would be true with respect to visiting the centres of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds…

You'd just love Cambridge.

[phil-b259]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

You'd just love Cambridge.

Cambridge does, as far as I know; have a good park and ride service plus a good train service (including a direct service from where I live which negates the need to use the multi lane car park that is the M25).

 

 

Edited February 19 by phil-b259

[Oldddudders]

16 hours ago, SM42 said:

Trouble stored up for someone else to deal with long after the perpetrators have retired  or shuffled off the mortal coil. 

A bit like political decisions, really. 

[Hesperus]

13 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

And what happens when the DfT come demanding cuts and that ‘someone knowledgeable’ no longer exists in house or NR are no longer able to afford to pay for external help.

 

You forget that the whole reason why tree growth was allowed to happen in the first place was the ability to slash staff numbers once steam had finished rather than any deliberate policy to let them grow!

 

 

 

 

Then at least the embankment will mostly be covered by plants that don't grow too tall which will help to stop the taller trees from starting to grow.