Washout at Dawlish

[TrevorP1]

Just wondering if it's time to split this topic.

 

My interest and I sure that of many others, is in the civil engineeering aspect and of how some of the most experienced railwaymen in the world are going to get the railway working again. Also sympathy with the plight of those whose lives have been affected. I am much less interested in the discussion about possible alternatives routes.

 

So, one thraed for 'civils' and another for 'alternative routes'?

 

Just a thought. Mods?

 

Trevor.

[melmerby]

I see that the Southern Line into Exeter is now closed for a week due to a landslide. 

 

Is Taunton as far west as you can get a train now?

Not sure you can get much past Bristol with all the landslides, floods and fallen trees around.

 

Keith

[The Stationmaster]

South West Trains have a "bad weather" timetable to ensure resilance of their core services, which means that Waterloo - Weymouth trains terminate at Bournemouth and the Poole semi-fasts are cancelled. Passengers for Poole/Weymouth changing into an hourly shuttle service from Bournemouth.

 

This appears to work well.

 

Presumably IF the SR route was resurrected (though to be honest I can't see it in my lifetime), then an emergency timetable would be in place that would see perhaps passengers for Cornwall changing at Plymouth after just the one reversal at Exeter.

 

But the WR line will always remain the principal route to the west.

The best people I have ever come across for writing contingency plans are SNCF - they have piles of the things, in great detail.  But I have never ever seen one of them actually work!  The key part of contingency planning is to have a knowledge of (or a set of 'rules' written down) around which you will build your initial reaction plan.  The reason for that is very simple - the emergency or whatever it is can arise at any part of the day on any day of the week and your starting point to get out of that has to be working with what you've got wherever it happens to be - if you are to provide the best possible service that is the only way you can do it, and sometimes you have to do it very quickly.

 

I have on occasion been called out at night to replan a pretty large chunk of the Western Region HST worked service for a day starting less than 5-6 hours hence - that is how it happens, and even if you have a 'contingency plan' you'll spend as much time altering it to fit as you take putting together something from scratch.  But you need the knowledge to do it and, dare I say it, the particular sort of approach which let's you play 3-dimensional chess with trains, traincrews, timetable paths, and platform capacity.  That's the initial reaction bit, longer term for an ongoing situation - such as Dawlish now - can be done with a bit more leisure over several days and can be a different sort of planning, provided you know what you are planning for and assuming it is a static situation.

 

The LMR used to have a plan called CP1 which explained in considerable detail what happened and what, precisely, was to be done if the wires were down south of Rugby on both routes or south of Stafford on the Trent Valley.  It was thick document - and every time the wires came d it never worked as planned, for all sorts of reasons ranging from a shortage of diesels to non-availbility of men who knew the road to Paddington.  In the end it was ditched, thus saving hours of work re-writing it for every timetable change, but it was replaced by a far simpler outline base which simply said - X trains per hour to run to Paddington and the rest to termiinate at wherever.

 

Sorry to go on but there is, in my experience, quite a difference between the theory and the reality of short term service replanning in an emergency (and oddly enough SNCB does it in exactly the same way as BR used to).

[Edwin_m]

I did suggest earlier that you might terminate Paddington services at Plymouth (and presumably XC as well) , with passengers for destinations west of Plymouth changing to a Plymouth/Penzance shuttle. This would eliminate one of the reversals and the longer piece of double running: whether cross platform interchange would be possible at Plymouth in such circumstances I don't know?

 

This is on the basis that Plymouth is the main traffic objective west of Exeter anyway. Passengers for Newton Abbot and Paignton might be catered for by a shuttle from Plymouth.

 

What was running on the GW lines might then look very similar to what is being run at present - but with the crucial difference that it would be connecting at Plymouth into an hourly InterCity service to Exeter and Paddington running via Okehampton, and there would be rail access for stock movements in and out and return to maintenance depots (The same obviously would apply during any planned engineering blocades in South Devon)

I'd have thought the extra time spent in transferring the passengers and luggage would be far greater than the time taken just to reverse the train.  And a shuttle from Plymouth to Paignton would have to reverse at Newton Abbot. 

[The Stationmaster]

I see that the Southern Line into Exeter is now closed for a week due to a landslide. 

 

Is Taunton as far west as you can get a train now?

No - basically Castle Cary or Weston-Super-Mare (?Bridgwater?) at the moment as both lines across the Somerset levels are currently closed due to flooding with possibly extended implications on the Bristol - Taunton line due to damage to signalling equipment and the nature of water movement next to the railway so I've heard.

 

In a nutshell the extent and depth of flooding on the Levels really is extremely serious and far, far, worse than the usual seasonal flooding.

[ZiderHead]

Concerning reinstatement of the Tavistock line as a diversionary route this document mentions a 2009 Commons enquiry which estimated the cost at £100m, as well as outlining some of the issues. Given typical budget drift for large projects like this £200m doesn't seem unreasonable. 

 

Say you want the project lifespan to be 30yrs (ie. when it will become redundant as the inland 500mph nuclear powered maglev line is up and running!), the annual cost is about £12m at 5% borrowing.

 

This £12m a year will be offset to some degree by picking up lost revenue from closures on the coastal route, additional revenue from new local services, savings in road spending due to those local services and all the less quantifiable stuff which comes from improved infrastructure.

 

Viewed this way that £200m starts to look more like an investment than an unpalatable one-off cost.

[MarkC]

A nice little media snippet further along the coast at Plymouth... According to Radio Plymouth 106.7, the owner of the Wet Wok Chinese Restaurant will be offering a 20% discount to anyone who doesn't take the mickey out of the name when the restaurant reopens after repairs...

 

wetwok.jpg

 

Ah so, welly very good

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

In the short term, might it actually be fairly easy to rebuild the seawall at Dawlish, than dealing with possible longer term changes in river courses across the Somerset Levels?

Edited February 8, 2014 by Western Sunset

[wombatofludham]

Network Rail have announced a study investigating the future resilience of Welsh coastal routes will be undertaken over the next few months.  I expect Network Rail will do something similar for the West of England route (or combine the two studies possibly...) after the immediate crisis has been fixed.  No doubt at that point the pros and cons of diversionary routes, deviations and everything else will be addressed.  In the meantime, I can't help thinking speculation is useless.  We know from our privileged access to onsite insider knowledge a lot of serious work is being undertaken to restore the existing route, which I for one find very interesting and informative, and to be honest I agree with the earlier suggestion that the reports of onsite activity and the frankly rabid frothing about restoring/deviating diversionary routes ought to be separated.

[Pete 75C]

I'm not sure there should be any thread separation... talk of diversionary routes is at least still relevant to the thread title. Loosely, maybe, but it is still relevant. Most threads seem to veer all over the road like a teenager in a Renault Clio, and this one is no different. Just try and skim past any posts that don't interest you. Just my humble opinion.

[The Stationmaster]

Concerning reinstatement of the Tavistock line as a diversionary route this document mentions a 2009 Commons enquiry which estimated the cost at £100m, as well as outlining some of the issues. Given typical budget drift for large projects like this £200m doesn't seem unreasonable. 

 

Say you want the project lifespan to be 30yrs (ie. when it will become redundant as the inland 500mph nuclear powered maglev line is up and running!), the annual cost is about £12m at 5% borrowing.

 

This £12m a year will be offset to some degree by picking up lost revenue from closures on the coastal route, additional revenue from new local services, savings in road spending due to those local services and all the less quantifiable stuff which comes from improved infrastructure.

 

Viewed this way that £200m starts to look more like an investment than an unpalatable one-off cost.

The £100million strikes me as an underestimate but it is worth pointing out that costs have risen substantially in the 21st century - a project in Wales estimated at £5 million in late 2004 had risen to £7million by January 2012 without any change of scope.  Similarly, noting the point you have made, costs of the reinstatement of the Waverley Route have also increased substantially over a short period and are currently expected to come in with an outturn cost  of £10million per mile.

 

The simple fact - already noted in this thread - is while we can look for the most current examples of cost per mile and extrapolate we are still falling far short on items which can seriously impact on costs.  The only way an accurate figure can be arrived at for the LSW route, or any other way round the Dawlish coastline, is to spend a good few tens of thousands on an initial 'heads of cost' assessment and then see if it is worth going forward from that to spend hundreds of thousands on a detailed study and finally spend more on detailed design.

[Captain Kernow]

The current situation is that you can get as far as Bridgwater (from Bristol direction) by train. The line to Castle Cary is still open from Westbury, as is the line down via Yeovil Pen Mill to Weymouth. The Southern main line is blocked at Crewkerne, so (assumption here - it's not on my 'patch') trains will terminate at Yeovil Jct.

 

Newton Abbot to Penzance is open, and hopefully we'll get trains back to Teignmouth soon.

 

From Monday, the railway between Taunton and Exeter should return to operational status. We're running a route-proving light loco tomorrow from Taunton to Exeter and back, hopefully a couple of times.

 

As Mr Stationmaster said, the flooding on the Somerset Levels is very, very bad, worse than usual by a considerable margin. I've never known the line between Cogload and Bridgwater to flood like that, ever.

[Captain Kernow]

I'd have thought the extra time spent in transferring the passengers and luggage would be far greater than the time taken just to reverse the train.  And a shuttle from Plymouth to Paignton would have to reverse at Newton Abbot. 

I think the whole point about reversals is that this is not a desirable state of affairs for a regular, WTT service, when the railway is in a 'steady state'. That argument, therefore, assumes that the Okehampton route would be the main route from Exeter to Plymouth (and Cornwall).

 

If, however, the Okehampton line was reopened mainly as a local route only, but acting as a diversionary route when Dawlish is blocked, then I don't think anyone would disagree that reversals would be an accepted fact of life 'for the duration'.

 

But, I just can't see Government (national or local) putting the money into the Okehampton route, unless the Okehampton route became the 'main line' - and this would imply that all options at Dawlish were considered non-viable.

[Rivercider]

The £100million strikes me as an underestimate but it is worth pointing out that costs have risen substantially in the 21st century - a project in Wales estimated at £5 million in late 2004 had risen to £7million by January 2012 without any change of scope.  Similarly, noting the point you have made, costs of the reinstatement of the Waverley Route have also increased substantially over a short period and are currently expected to come in with an outturn cost  of £10million per mile.

 

The simple fact - already noted in this thread - is while we can look for the most current examples of cost per mile and extrapolate we are still falling far short on items which can seriously impact on costs.  The only way an accurate figure can be arrived at for the LSW route, or any other way round the Dawlish coastline, is to spend a good few tens of thousands on an initial 'heads of cost' assessment and then see if it is worth going forward from that to spend hundreds of thousands on a detailed study and finally spend more on detailed design.

I know that road and rail construction involve different costs, but the Kingskerswell Bypass currently under construction

just to the west of Newton Abbot is costing £110m for 5.5 km of dual cariageway......

 

cheers 

[Fat Controller]

Network Rail have announced a study investigating the future resilience of Welsh coastal routes will be undertaken over the next few months.  I expect Network Rail will do something similar for the West of England route (or combine the two studies possibly...) after the immediate crisis has been fixed.  No doubt at that point the pros and cons of diversionary routes, deviations and everything else will be addressed.  In the meantime, I can't help thinking speculation is useless.  We know from our privileged access to onsite insider knowledge a lot of serious work is being undertaken to restore the existing route, which I for one find very interesting and informative, and to be honest I agree with the earlier suggestion that the reports of onsite activity and the frankly rabid frothing about restoring/deviating diversionary routes ought to be separated.

Revive the BP&GVR route from Burry Port to Sandy Junction...

[SwissRailPassion]

Road costs are immense but few in the public have any conception of them. A short section of Glasgow motorway came in over 500 million. One roundabout on the A64 came in at 10 million. 150 million will get you quite a few miles of new conventional railway but not a large amount of new road.

 

The forecast for next week is not good, more storms (forecast on 06Z GFS) on the way to make the repair work more difficult. It's a real engineering challenge and NR are rising to it. Excellent updates on the NR website btw.

 

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/improvements/dawlish/

Edited February 8, 2014 by SwissRailPassion

[Guest Belgian]

I know that road and rail construction involve different costs, but the Kingskerswell Bypass currently under construction

just to the west of Newton Abbot is costing £110m for 5.5 km of dual cariageway......

 

cheers 

. . . and it just shows what good value-for-money building or reinstating a railway is!

 

JE

[Captain Kernow]

Excellent updates on the NR website btw.

 

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/improvements/dawlish/

Yes, I think I recognise one or two of those photos...

[Captain Kernow]

A couple of photos circulating of Dawlish earlier today...

 

First two containers in position:

 

Initial shotcreting:

 

[yorkie_pudd]

cheers CK for the update pics

 

but I cant help thinking that last pic could be a test track for future Cornish pendolino services 

 

 

 

<<<  needs more coffee - has left the building >>

[BlackRat]

One good thing is that at least you're not getting -12C temps and Snow and Ice Storms with it............

 

Look on the bright side.

 

Good vibes again to the Cap'n!

 

Best, Pete.

Bring it on.....just shelled out for a skiing holiday!

 

Things actually not to bad at mo, not as bad as predicted so fingers crossed...............

Edited February 8, 2014 by BlackRat

[TheQ]

I. See the old idea of using bits of track to reinforce things is still the best solution!!!

The Q

[Pete 75C]

I. See the old idea of using bits of track to reinforce things is still the best solution!!!

The Q

 

You'd never get away with that on a model, would you...?

[Gary H]

What a great idea of using shipping containers filled with aggregate / concrete as a barrier!

[great central]

I may have missed something here but there seems to be a resistance to reversals on services? 

Our Liverpool-Norwich service reverses twice in each journey at Sheffield and Ely.

It always seems to work well enough, it causes more problems when the reversal is cancelled for some reason, usually missing out Sheffield due to late running.

Apologies if I've misunderstood.