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Washout at Dawlish


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I have absolutely no idea what that's about... I think I might stop off there and have a closer look tomorrow...

It is curiously close by the bags of ballast, but in a fenced area. They must already know where the river runs under the station. Seeing as the station car park was made in the 70's when the dual carriage was built I would have thought that they knew what the underlying strata was.

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NR Dawlish web page.....

 

 

Latest news

 

We plan to reopen the Great Western Main Line through Dawlish on Friday 4 April, almost two weeks ahead of our mid-April estimate.

Innovative approaches to sea defence and round-the-clock working by a team of more than 300 engineers have seen major rebuilding work completed along the damaged seafront.

 

Timeline

 

Tuesday 4 March
200m of track is built ready for installing along the main site (between the tunnels) and surveys are taking place to check ground conditions. Around half the new coping stones needed at the station platform are installed.

 

Thursday 27 February
All steels now fixed to the rear wall and concrete pour to the main breach complete.

 

Wednesday 26 February
Track is being built for the area between the station and tunnel, and preparation work starts to install shuttering for the rear wall at the main site and at Dawlish Warren. Concrete pouring to the walkway continues and new coping stones begin to be laid at the station platform.

 

Edited by Ron Ron Ron
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It is curiously close by the bags of ballast, but in a fenced area. They must already know where the river runs under the station. Seeing as the station car park was made in the 70's when the dual carriage was built I would have thought that they knew what the underlying strata was.

 

I'll have a look later to see what they are up to, but in any case if it's engineering or geotechnical info they are after you can't rely entirely on investigations from 40 years ago.

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The client, whoever they are, may not have access to the results of earlier boreholes, which may have been carried out for a different organisation. Reports like that tend to remain the property of the client that commissioned them. Also, improvements in geotechnical equipment and knowledge means that boreholes carried out today are likely to give more accurate results. I've occasionally had access to more than one set of borehole logs for the same site when doing archaeological evaluations and they do differ, not because the holes aren't in the same places, but in presentation and interpretation.  The reason for them may affect the results in terms of how data is recorded and presented; civil engineers and geologists have different needs. 

 

Pete

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The client, whoever they are, may not have access to the results of earlier boreholes, which may have been carried out for a different organisation. Reports like that tend to remain the property of the client that commissioned them.

Particularly true of work carried out in BR days, where the results would have been properly archived - but where said archive didn't necessarily transfer intact via Railtrack to the present owner, NR. Privatisation saw a great deal of written material skipped, just as many of those competent persons who had commissioned it went in other directions, not always by choice.

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The revised and now widely advertised reopening date - somewhat later than first thought due to the additional damage caused by successive storms and somewhat earlier than NR's previous estimate - is to be welcomed.

 

Passengers now have a much greater degree of certainty in order to plan their Easter holiday travels; businesses are able to respond by promoting themselves and planning staffing levels accordingly.  Ongoing works may see some intermittent service disruption but with so much bad weather causing such a multitude of problems - of which Dawlish and the entire sea wall was one of the largest and most visible - that is to be expected.

 

If as some sources are predicting we also now have the "hottest summer ever" ahead of us we can hope that the railway will have received so much in-depth work that it remains robust even if we endure extended hot dry conditions.

 

The Facebook "Orange Army" page is one way to extend thanks to those involved in the sea-wall work.

 

 

Given FGW's chosen style of livery with the dynamic lines formed of place names on their DMU sets would it be too much to think than a future "re-skin" might instead make use of the names of all persons involved?  And of course not forgetting those who have worked to restore the lines elsewhere on the network notably into Penzance and the various sections over the Somerset levels.

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The Facebook "Orange Army" page is one way to extend thanks to those involved in the sea-wall work.

 

Unless youre directly or even indirectly benefitting from the reopening then extending Thanks might be guilding the lily a bit or coming across as slightly sycophantic.   Id give them their due credit for a great job in the timescales and conditions but that is different to thanking them as the work doesnt benefit me personally.  If I lived along the sea wall Id be out there with the mugs of tea though.......

lets not get all Princess Diana about this...........

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lets not get all Princess Diana about this...........

Why not? The railway industry, as represented by both NR and FGW in this case, is showing itself to be hard-working and responsive. Those of us who care about the industry and its public perception have a great deal to celebrate just now.

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Given FGW's chosen style of livery with the dynamic lines formed of place names on their DMU sets would it be too much to think than a future "re-skin" might instead make use of the names of all persons involved?  And of course not forgetting those who have worked to restore the lines elsewhere on the network notably into Penzance and the various sections over the Somerset levels.

 

"West" unit reliveries no longer feature them (since 2010 or so IIRC) - any done now are just painted blue.

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That useless (now part of NBC) "The Weather Channel" told us last Fall that this Winter would be much warmer than usual and dryer in the North East.......

I believe that we have had the coldest winter since the 1870's.

Best, Pete.

Edited by trisonic
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Granny Clampet kept a Beetle in a matchbox. The Beetle position and activity allowed her to foretell the weather, apparently.

She swore by its accuracy.

 

Hundred's of million of $$ & ££ spent on weather research and forecasting, when a tried and tested Hillbilly method costing nothing, works just as well ????

 

granny.jpg

 

The Beetle gets a first mention 5 minutes into this episode....

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxKie9PxHTA

Edited by Ron Ron Ron
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Why not? The railway industry, as represented by both NR and FGW in this case, is showing itself to be hard-working and responsive. Those of us who care about the industry and its public perception have a great deal to celebrate just now.

There are ways & means I think.  In my view 'the way' in this particular case would be to throw a great big party for all of those who have had to slog through this problem and its consequences - not just the pourers of concrete (contractors I believe) and menders of walls (again I believe they are contractors) but those who have been making up and will be laying track panels, those who have been carting materials to site, those who have managed maintenance work through great disruption, those who have been making arrangements to shift traction by unconventional means, those who have been writing, timing and diagramming successive and ever changing emergency timetables, those who have borne the brunt of facing the public and so on - the list is endless and it all adds up to 'the railway' and what makes it tick and continues to make it tick when they're up against it.

 

So it would be a very, very big party.  Mind you in a few months time - unless things have changed in very recent years - the passenger ops planning folk from Swindon will be having their traditional 'Christmas party' lunch and no doubt others will be having theirs some 5-6 months later around the more recognised date for celebrating Christmas; one might hope that all such groups and the rest (including those I've forgotten) might be treated to recognise their endeavours.

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Why not? The railway industry, as represented by both NR and FGW in this case, is showing itself to be hard-working and responsive. Those of us who care about the industry and its public perception have a great deal to celebrate just now.

 

I agree. Anyone with a Facebook account can at the very least "Like" the page without adding a comment, and even if you did add a comment, I do not see the harm. Network Rail and railways in general have had far too much bad press over the years and it delights me that in adversity, what's broken can be fixed with a "no fuss, can do" attitude as we've seen at Dawlish and elsewhere.

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Had a wander around the Teignmouth sea wall earlier.  Obviously you can't access the wall itself at the moment but at low tide you can walk up the beach to Sprey Point.  I'm not sure if you can get to the beach from Smuggler's Lane by Parson's tunnel on the other side, but I wasn't going to walk all the way round to find out.  The main wall seems to be in remarkably good nick with a few exceptions, the profile obviously did its job at dissipating the energy with most of the damage from the crashing of waves that went over the top.  The slipway on the south side of Sprey Point had the most damage.  Pictures are pretty self-explanatory.

 

post-6669-0-80619300-1394034402.jpg

 

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Meanwhile back at the station, the drilling rig is nothing to do with railway works, it's South West Water doing a geotech site investigation for an underground water tank at the north east corner of the car park.

 

post-6669-0-52395900-1394034517.jpg

 

On the up platform however there were bits of mobile conveyor, presumably to assist in moving aggregate for wall repair works.

 

post-6669-0-01555900-1394034516.jpg

 

Edited by 10800
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Meanwhile back at the station, the drilling rig is nothing to do with railway works, it's South West Water doing a geotech site investigation for an underground water tank at the north east corner of the car park.

 

You beat me to it, Rod, although I think I asked the nice lady in the hard hat earlier, but I've been out on the Sea Wall all day (at the other end), so I've only just got back to my neglected computer.

 

Yes, all you say is correct. I think she said they are doing up to 3 boreholes, the first is 20 metres down, the other two probably less. She wasn't sure if this was some kind of flood mitigation (ie. accumulate flood waters in the tank), or to do with sewage...

 

Looks like these pre cast wall sections are now going in.

 

http://www.siteeyelive.com/monitor/bbcdawlish/camputerb86.jpg

Yes, I watched the first one being positioned earlier this afternoon. Photos to follow a bit later, after tea! ;)

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OK, here are some photos from my site visit today, which started at Dawlish Warren and progressed along the Sea Wall to Dawlish, and back.

 

R/R activity at Dawlish Warren:

post-57-0-85176300-1394052781.jpg

 

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This mysterious tent structure reeked of fibre glass, and then I realised that this was where the moulds for the concrete parapet walls were being made. The replacement parapets are of reinforced concrete, rather than traditional masonry, and are being attached to the main structure of the wall in a very robust manner. The inner face (next to the railway) will be plain concrete, but on the public walkway side, they have taken moulds from other parts of the wall and are moulding the concrete to match, it is rather good, as we will see later.

post-57-0-37589400-1394052949.jpg

 

Damaged walkway in process of being fixed:

post-57-0-01438000-1394052973.jpg

 

Telephoto views of the main breach site etc.

post-57-0-84649700-1394053002.jpg

 

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Work on-going to extricate the signalling cables from the troughing route that was buried by sand and debris during the storms. The troughing routes are being re-seated, a bit higher up, and many cables are being renewed:

post-57-0-87339100-1394053108.jpg

 

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post-57-0-04326500-1394053394.jpg

 

Now some views showing the on-going repairs to the parapet walls, including the steel reinforcements and some sections of new concrete wall:

post-57-0-02448900-1394053177.jpg

 

post-57-0-99433000-1394053195.jpg

 

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Sheets of fibre glass with moulded masonry effect:

post-57-0-84659400-1394053245.jpg

 

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More S&T repairs:

post-57-0-63833200-1394053517.jpg

 

More photos in next post.

 

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