Highlandman Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 "Trees and plants can cover up signals, fall on to the tracks or overhead power lines and stop workers from getting to safety when trains are passing. Autumn leaves on the tracks are hazardous for trains and can cause damage as well as delays." Above is a quote from Network Rails own website, http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/1034.aspx After every storm we have in this country the news is full of reports about delays to trains, blocked lines due to fallen trees, leaves on the line. The after effects of each storm can linger for a long time with the inevitable fines imposed on Network Rail. Should the railway network go back to the days of steam and keep all embankments and cuttings clear of large trees and undergrowth, especially anything growing over the line? I am sure the short term cost of this mass clearance would be very expensive but it must surely be outweighed by the long term savings in delays and fines. I am aware that Network Rail are an environmentally friendly company and have a duty to care for wildlife on its land. This could still be catered for with smaller bushes and properly sited nesting boxes. It looks like the embankments and cuttings along HS1 are deliberately kept clear of overgrowth simply because of the catastrophe it would cause if a tree or part of one fell on to the line. So why should the WCML or ECML or any other route be different. Am I in a minority thinking this or is this something that Network Rail should seriously consider? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Jonboy Posted January 18, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 18, 2014 This is an area of discussion that appears regularly on several train related forums. The consensus boils down to the "railway" would love to clear it all through, but local residents constantly object due to the noise/visual screening these trees allegedly provide from their houses. This pressure from local communities means the railway must compromise to try and meet the needs of all the different stakeholders (and no one tends to end up 100% satisfied with any compromise situation...) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scouser Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 I can't help thinking that if you don't like railways surely the answer is don't live by one. Clear them all and admit we all need transport systems that work. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
'CHARD Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 I'm pretty sure that apart from trying to be a decent neighbour, NR's first and primary obligation is to the safe operation of the railway, and not to residents. Certainly NR doesn't have to consult residents if operators decide to double the service frequency over a particular line. Equally, I'm confident that it has the right to do whatever it needs or chooses to within its own boundary to ensure its primary obligations are met. From a personal perspective I think the modern railway looks scruffy and unkempt, from the boundary to the cess in many cases, and this encourages inappropriate behaviours from those who have no business being in there, dumping rubbish and worse. I'm all for a damn good pruning! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gruffalo Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 This is an area of discussion that appears regularly on several train related forums. The consensus boils down to the "railway" would love to clear it all through, but local residents constantly object due to the noise/visual screening these trees allegedly provide from their houses. This pressure from local communities means the railway must compromise to try and meet the needs of all the different stakeholders (and no one tends to end up 100% satisfied with any compromise situation...) Almost every piece of railway line has been in existence since before the present residents of nearby houses moved there so let's stop all this PC driven compromise which lets everyone down. As Scouser says, don't buy a house near a railway if you are concerned about noise! As for Network Rail keeping the embankments clear, there should be some sort of "quid-pro-quo" arrangement to incentivise them to do so by relaxing the penalties the regulator imposes in the light of NR's work towards embankment clearing. I accept the route of HS2 may be a different case altogether but will there be any nearby vegetation that could ever jeopardise such a high-speed line? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted January 18, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 18, 2014 I absolutely hate the green tunnel which so much of our railway network now has, it is - to echo 'Chard - scruffy and unkempt apart from spoiling the view. More seriously, from a nature friendly viewpoint, it has destroyed thousands of acres of meadowland and the habitat it provided for various flora and fauna. Basically it boils down to money saving although that has had the nasty sting in its tail of costing far more when trees fall, when their leaves fall, and when lines are closed and equipment damaged. Back in the mid 1980s I carried out an analysis on the Wr of time lost due to leaf fall and the extent to which the problem had developed in a fairly short period - basically emerging as trees reached maturity and began to spread their branches because comparison with older statistics showed the time cost had grown as the trees had grown. Asked b y my then boss to suggest a solution to the problem (and help him earn some brownie points) my reply was simple - cut down the trees. He thought that I was joking so came up instead with all sorts of fancy ideas, but in fact the real answer was and still is that simple - cut down the trees and kill the stumps. And a good place to start would be on those lines where the lineside shrubbery seems sometimes nowadays to do as much damage t vehicle paintwork as those occasional 'tight shunts' of years gone. And to be honest my biggest fear is that one day there is going to be a serious incident which will be wholly down to this lineside menace in one way or another but most likely a signal partially obscured or misread and a loss of adhesion adding to the impact of the resultant SPAD. And the cost? Well done imaginatively it can also produce revenue, round here a pick-up load of firewood logs costs c.£90 and although it would cost much more than that to deal with teh trees on our branch I reckon it could manage at least £9,000 in log sales for its 5 miles - and probably a lot more. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
'CHARD Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 My thoughts precisely, Mike. My mental process started at the savings associated with not replacing the cinders-effect of the steam railway. As the accountants rub their hands with glee, all those consequential costs start to muster: railhead conditions and their aftermath, Japanese knotweed and its elimination, protracted suspension of services through wilful acts of vandalism, destruction of drainage runs by root invasion - all of these taken on the chin, with a shrug that says the emerging-cost railway will be able to pass them all on somehow. And in no case is the declared solution ever simple because all third parties (not employed by the core railway) have a vested interest in keeping it complex: environment engineers, behavioural psychologists, metallurgists, every 6ugger gets their n-hundred pounds per day to announce "what we could do differently next time," instead of getting to the central cause. Which is that the husbandry skills, for want of a better phrase, long derided by the 'business-led' railway, should never have been dispensed with in the first place. Like clearing ditches alongside the road network. Without getting political, couldn't convicts who wanted to give something back, do some of these jobs as a useful community payback scheme? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pH Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 And the cost? Well done imaginatively it can also produce revenue, round here a pick-up load of firewood logs costs c.£90 and although it would cost much more than that to deal with teh trees on our branch I reckon it could manage at least £9,000 in log sales for its 5 miles - and probably a lot more Earlier this year, I travelled from Gatwick to St. Pancras, and was struck by the number of felled trees lying by the sides of the line in south London. Most of them had been bucked, apparently in preparation for being moved, but many of the piles were overgrown and looked as if they had been there for several years. I thought at the time that they could be a source of revenue, and wondered if they ever were sold off. From your post, apparently they aren't - why wouldn't they be? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted January 18, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 18, 2014 Earlier this year, I travelled from Gatwick to St. Pancras, and was struck by the number of felled trees lying by the sides of the line in south London. Most of them had been bucked, apparently in preparation for being moved, but many of the piles were overgrown and looked as if they had been there for several years. I thought at the time that they could be a source of revenue, and wondered if they ever were sold off. From your post, apparently they aren't - why wouldn't they be? Answering your final question the guy who does a spot of tree surgery for me in the back garden every now and then also does contract work for Network Rail and for NR contractors and all of them tie him right down on his charges. So that means he has to do the job at what amounts to 'a very keen cost margin' (i.e as cheaply as possible) but he starts with high overheads because not all his work is local (= travelling or accommodation bills) plus he has to pay for staff safety training and Lookoutman qualification for some of his blokes. So it's done the cheapest way and that means getting a chipper in as close as possible and chipping as much as possible of what they fell and, usually, cutting up anything larger although I'm not sure if they remove the larger stuff from site or leave it to rot. Knowing what size stuff they chip I know full well that much of the stuff I'm burning at this very minute in the wood burning stove in the living room would usually be chipped because I've stopped them chipping it when they've worked for me and it has gone into my log pile. Their charge to me works out at around £100 for coppicing or felling a medium size (40ft) tree - I don't know what they get from NR - and the stuff I'm burning currently was felled in 2011/12 and I reckon it will save me around £200 in bought in logs which is about 20% of my bill from them that season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southernman46 Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 YES ! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 Gets my vote and while we are at it clear all the trees, shrubs and other obstructions from the roadside, so when you drive up to a junction or approach a roundabout you can clearly see the way rather than having to creep out into oncoming traffic. However, I fear we are too late and very wishful as the population of the Greater Spotty Environmentalist must be protected. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pointstaken Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 Gets my vote and while we are at it clear all the trees, shrubs and other obstructions from the roadside, so when you drive up to a junction or approach a roundabout you can clearly see the way rather than having to creep out into oncoming traffic. However, I fear we are too late and very wishful as the population of the Greater Spotty Environmentalist must be protected. NR's attitude should be "we own the land and we'll do what we like with the trees on it. So if you don't like it, then shove off and do something on your own land. " It should be an offence to restrict visibility on a road or railway because of overgrown vegetation. Dennis Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium phil-b259 Posted January 18, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 18, 2014 NR's attitude should be "we own the land and we'll do what we like with the trees on it. So if you don't like it, then shove off and do something on your own land. " It should be an offence to restrict visibility on a road or railway because of overgrown vegetation. Dennis And what happens when the local council slaps a tree preservation order on them (thanks to local residents) - it has happened before. There is also the fact that NR is NOT a private company. It is effectively a standalone agency of HM Government (just have a look at who guarantees NRs debts - HM Treasury). As such it is more susceptible to complaining MPs who have in turn been got at by residents - also not forgetting the fact that as NR has no shareholders, it is expected to pay more attention to what the public want. Said MPs and the Treasury also desperately want NR to keep its costs down are and from an accounting point of view it is far cheaper to hire in a few contractors every now and then to remove the minority of vegetation that is causing a hazard*, than pay an army of people to go round clearing vegetation on a regular basis** (Which is not simply a case of regular burn back, that was outlawed decades ago across ALL sectors including farming for environmental reasons). What I would say though is that based on the evidence of the control logs, obscured signals and suchlike are treated seriously with the offending vegetation removed ASAP - though I grant you this may be just removing a few branches rather than getting rid of the problem plant. * A tree causing an identifiable hazard to the safe operation of trains such as being rotten and in danger of falling down , or something obscuring a signal can be removed immediately, even if it has a TPO on it, however the excuse of 'its going to drop leaves on the line' is NOT a valid reason for wholesale clearance - though it can be used as the basis for a little thinning out / cutting back here and there. ** For the sceptics out there - keeping people on to do routine work is something NR / ORR want to get rid of. Thanks to things like remote condition monitoring and new high tech 'scanning' trains routine S&T and p-way inspections are being reduced on the grounds that either the kit or train will send out a 'call tech' alarm when something goes outside of normal operating tolerances. As you can imagine if you don't have to go out doing basic maintenance because the condition monitoring tells you what you need to know - guess what that does to your staff requirements! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium phil-b259 Posted January 18, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 18, 2014 Earlier this year, I travelled from Gatwick to St. Pancras, and was struck by the number of felled trees lying by the sides of the line in south London. Most of them had been bucked, apparently in preparation for being moved, but many of the piles were overgrown and looked as if they had been there for several years. I thought at the time that they could be a source of revenue, and wondered if they ever were sold off. From your post, apparently they aren't - why wouldn't they be? Limited access is the answer *. Its also why we still have long lengths of partially cut up CWR sitting in the 4ft in quite a few places, and there have been quite a few cases where said rail has damaged cables to track circuits TPWS grids, AWS magnets. Then there is the large amount of scrap rail just dumped at various points. If we take your example of timber, to remove it you need a RRV plus trailer, machine operator, a decent length possession, and down here a 3rd rail isolation before it can be shifted. The chances of getting that are pretty much zero - its hard enough just trying to keep on top of things like replacing rail flaws, or fitting new IBJs without worrying about a bit of timber which is going to rot down anyway in time. *You are lucky if you get 3hrs 'working time' at night on the BML midweek - and weekends aren't that much better. Pesky passengers things would be so much easier if they all went to bed at 9pm ;-) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rods_of_Revolution Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 Surely it cannot be long until a driver is killed after hitting a tree? Perhaps then things will change? I also think roadside veg needs to go, it seems every other road death is a "left the road and hit a tree" accident. If there were fewer trees far more people would come to rest, alive, in a field. Not to mention "blind bends" are often only blind because of all the trees and bushes! Regards, Jack Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highlandman Posted January 19, 2014 Author Share Posted January 19, 2014 This is an area of discussion that appears regularly on several train related forums. The consensus boils down to the "railway" would love to clear it all through, but local residents constantly object due to the noise/visual screening these trees allegedly provide from their houses. This pressure from local communities means the railway must compromise to try and meet the needs of all the different stakeholders (and no one tends to end up 100% satisfied with any compromise situation...) I live within 30yds of the LSWR mainline near Berrylands, in fact I could almost spit on it from the front door. Not that I would . Any resident that says trees offer some screening from noise needs to think again especially at this time of year when trees are bare and offer no protection at all. I have lived here for the past 28 years or so and quite frankly have become immune to train noise. We tend to notice it more if they are not running. Again it is only those that have recently moved in that start to complain. I that case why move there in the first place. It's a bit like moving near Heathrow and then complaining about the aircraft noise. Personally I would be quite happy for the bigger trees on the embankment to be cut down. Means I'd get to see more trains in the summer and the front of the house would get a lot more light. I strongly believe that thick undergrowth and low bushes and shrubs would offer the same protection for wild life without the danger of big trees falling onto the line or line-side properties. Maybe this clearance job can be done at the same time as a weekend engineering possession which would allow contractors to safely access the banks, cut trees without endangering a live railway and clear rubbish away to a more manageable site for future removal if it could not be removed at that time. The other thing I've noticed is the damaged caused to the railway boundary not just by trees falling onto fences, but trees being left so long they grow through the fence or the root system simply knocks the post down. Unfortunately, as some of you have already mentioned, the environmentalist appear to have stronger say in the matter than those who deal with safety on the railway. Please correct me if I am wrong. So far this has been an interesting discussion and I look forward to reading more. All the best Andy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rugd1022 Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Someone high up in NR must be doing something right as in recent months I've noticed a lot of lineside veg has been cut right back on the MML between London and Leicester. Partly no doubt to help with the forthcoming electrifiaction work north of Bedford but it's good to see something happening at long last. There are still far too many 'green tunnels' though, one of the worst areas is just east of Nuneaton on the Leicester line, the Up line signals along that straight section are very hard to see, even at this time of year with fewer / no leaves on the trees.... there have been several occasions when I've had to lean across to the other side of the cab to see them! (And yes, it has been reported ). A by product of the 'green tunnel' effect is where you have foot crossings on certain lines, for instance the Knighton Junction - Coalville branch, at the Leicester end there a few which have a tendency to 'hide' crossing users from a driver's view because of the overhanging trees and bushes - you can't see them until you're practically on top of them. Not nice... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scouser Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Hmm, nothing to do with trains but some genius has suggested today that anybody earning over £80,000 joint income should pay for school places. Why do I mention this? Because it fits in with cutting down trees and hedges to make places safer and more efficient. I would suggest that some of us on here think that this is what we pay taxes for. Shame on us all! Now go to the naughty step and beg forgiveness from "call me Dave" and his mates. They know what is good for us, bless them all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Bigbee Line Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Run a few steam specials with the spark arrestors removed. I remember bank fires were a regular occurrence (at least once a year) when I was a kid (late 50's). When responsible for the Lydd Branch I initiated a program of clearance, mainly as sighting of the numerous crossings was an issue. The only problem was some 'know all' complaining about the trees that he had planted being attacked, unfortunately he had planted them on railway land. Luckily by the time I got to site my staff had efficiently completed the job. Well done. My vote is to clear them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete 75C Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Run a few steam specials with the spark arrestors removed. I remember bank fires were a regular occurrence (at least once a year) when I was a kid (late 50's). When responsible for the Lydd Branch I initiated a program of clearance, mainly as sighting of the numerous crossings was an issue. The only problem was some 'know all' complaining about the trees that he had planted being attacked, unfortunately he had planted them on railway land. Luckily by the time I got to site my staff had efficiently completed the job. Well done. My vote is to clear them. The only problem I can see with removing lineside trees and overgrown vegetation (in urban areas, at least) is that all the washing machines, sofas, mattresses and rusty kids bikes that people have dumped over the fence will then slide down onto the track... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium petethemole Posted January 20, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 20, 2014 I have this vision of a roadrailer white Transit pickup with side boards. Pete Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium petethemole Posted January 20, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 20, 2014 Alternatively, the current van of choice, the Mercedes Sprinter: http://www.zagro.de/index.php?page=zweiwege_sprinter&lang=en Pete Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 As long as NR remember that sometimes the roots of the bushes etc actually work to stabilise the embankments - I think that idea has been forgotten once or twice before What IS needed is corect management of the shrubs / woodland / wildwood the adjoins the railway (and lots of other places) though that seems to be a point of contention between tree-huggers and tree-choppers these days.....Im not sure where sense went to, Its probably out there somewhere or other ! There are locations near me, (Flax Bourton Cutting and Uphill Jn - Bleadon), where extensive work has taken place in the past to remove trees and vegetation and to stabilise the cutting sides, and improve drainage. I can not remember how many years ago that was done but the regrowth is vigorous and widespread, this I attribute to either not killing the roots/stumps, or more likely reseeding from exisiting trees at the top of the cuttings. Looking at old photos there seem to be many less matures trees and shrubs surrounding the railway capable of such reseeding cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highlandman Posted January 20, 2014 Author Share Posted January 20, 2014 Alternatively, the current van of choice, the Mercedes Sprinter: http://www.zagro.de/index.php?page=zweiwege_sprinter&lang=en Pete I love the idea of 'white van man' bidding for a franchise and paths just to pick up all the scrap found after the banks have been cleared. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
'CHARD Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 I love the idea of 'white van man' bidding for a franchise and paths just to pick up all the scrap found after the banks have been cleared. I fancy modelling that, with the mech from a Sentinel inside an Oxford die cast... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.