Washout at Dawlish

[Ron Ron Ron]

Whatever the discussions on here, one thing that is concrete is that the political profile of the problems facing this route has been raised several steps higher, following these events.

The cynics will say it'll all blow over and fade away once the line has been restored and the weather improves, but the feeling I get from various news programme reports and discussions today, is that it will now be very difficult to brush this one under the carpet.

 

The Transport minister has ordered  a couple of reviews into the issues at hand and both the proposals for alternatives and proposals to protect the existing line.

I have a feeling that West country politicians and business won't allow this one to drop from sight.

 

 

.

[Ron Ron Ron]

I do wonder if some sort of artificial reef offshore (as has been done elsewhere, using redundant ships) might serve to reduce the force of the waves in future? 

 

 

....But what would an extra sea defence further out do the beach and therefore the tourist trade? It is incredible how much a small change, such as extending a pier a few extra metres out to sea, can have on the shoreline. A sandy beach can disappear over a few years, if the measures are not carefully thought out. That wouldn't help the local economy for sure.

 

 

For many years, when reading and hearing about the effects of weather and the sea on this stretch of line, plus the attendant worry about future conditions, I've wondered about the possibility or feasibility of building an artificial reef offshore, designed to break up waves and limit potential shoreline damage.

 

I've no idea if this could be done or would work in such a location and it would undoubtedly cost a vast fortune, but I've recently spent a very leisurely time lying on a tropical beach watching the Ocean waves breaking on a natural reef a few hundred metres offshore.

Even when there was a storm out at sea and the waves became quite large and angry, nothing but mildly choppy water got as far as the beach.

 

Just daydreaming, but I wonder if a two stage approach to improved coastal defences would be a better solution for this particular location. It might help with regard to beach retention and the tourist industry too?

 

 

 

.

[PhilJ W]

Someone will no doubt correct me if I am wrong but I think that very little of the Brunelian or even Victorian embankment/wall still exists, most of it dates no further back than the 1930's or later?

Edit for punctuation.

Edited February 6, 2014 by PhilJ W

[Coombe Barton]

The line along the sea wall through the tunnels was doubled in 1905. Prior to that tunnels were widened. At that time Brunellian masonry would have been completely replaced, IMHO, if it hadn't already suffered in previous winter storms

Edited February 6, 2014 by Coombe Barton

[Kenton]

 

I've wondered about the possibility or feasibility of building an artificial reef offshore, designed to break up waves and limit potential shoreline damage.

Better still do something creative and add to the position that Cornwall has as a destination for surfers. Something like the artificial reef off of Bournemouth beach. At least that would have a return on investment for the Dawlish locals. Edited February 6, 2014 by Kenton

[Rivercider]

I am firmly of the opinion that repairing the coastal route and beefing up protection for it is the first priority.

The line also forms an important part of the coastal and cliff defences for much of the stretch between Starcross and Teignmouth

so even if the railway were not there I imagine significant money would need to be spent on upkeep of some kind of barrier anyway.

   

When staying at Dawlish Warren we use the line regularly travelling on local services to Exeter/Exmouth or Torquay/Paignton.

The trains we use ( varying times from 10.00 until 19.00) are always well used, being formed of 2,3 or 4 cars.

As well as leisure travellers like ourselves there are commuters and shoppers into Exeter/Newton Abbot/Torquay/Paignton,

some of whom are waiting staff and shop workers, hardly high earners. 

And there are also plenty of school children and students using the route during term time.

We like to sit on the seaward side for the view but this is often not possible and quite often we do not even get a seat.

I don't really mind standing as it proves the railway is doing its job.

 

Devon County Council are looking to open additional stations on this route and introduce a half hourly service through the day.

In fact the current timetable starting on 8th December 2013 shows six additional return services between Paignton and Newton Abbot

two of which are extended each way to/from Exeter St Davids. These additional trains are funded by the EU Interreg Citizens Rail Project.  

 

Having said that in an ideal world, with available funds, I would like to see the Southern route reopened as I see it also able to provide

a valuable (if more limited) service, and the ability to divert services during storms or planned engineering work to be a bonus.

 

cheers

Edited February 6, 2014 by Rivercider

[petethemole]

The 'future of Dawlish as a beach resort' isn't looking too rosy anyway, the beach appears to have gone (a local resident on a live news broadcast yesterday suggested about 10-12 ft depth had gone).

 

Pete

[Godders]

What you and others singularly fail to grasp is that,despite the fact that this is a prime holiday destination,it is also an economically depressed one.....so,enough of the Marie Antoinette...'Let them drive a Rolls....'.For that,I suggest we substitute 'Let them find a job'.

Many youngsters migrate in order to do just that....because there are no prospects for them there. Although it may be incomprehensible to you and others,there is,in fact,life outside the overweight Southeast.....and it needs its main line as a lifeline and,hopefully, for future regeneration.If their fares are cheaper than yours,then all well and good....you should be grateful that you are able to subsidise those a good deal worse off than you are....through no fault of their own.

Hi Ian,

Can you tell me what percentage of holiday makers come to your holiday destinations by train. I would wager it's not a lot.

 

As for being economically depressed, so is most of the rest of the country/world.What gives you the sole rights on poverty.

 

I can't afford to travel by train in my area because the fares are so high. My son commutes from here (Three Bridges) to London which costs him over £4000 annually (more than £5000 before tax) consequently he can't afford to buy a house. I didn't know that the TOCs were allowed to subsidise fares based on locally perceived incomes.

 

As for youngsters migrating, tell me about it I was born in Yorkshire 70 years ago and have had to migrate and travel all over the world to make a living.

 

I was basing my observations purely on the viability of maintaining a route through Dawlish. It doesn't make any sense economically to keep rebuilding and maintaining this section of track. The reference to the limosines was purely saying that it may well be cheaper to find an alternative way of transport. Everybody thinks their position should be supported but sometimes it isn't practicable.

 

The population of Cornwall is 536,000, the number of journeys annually from Penzance is 579,000. This gives just over 1 trip per person per annum. Hardly a heavily used section of railway.

 

Devon is little better with a population of 1,135,700, the number of journeys from Plymouth is 2,597,000 or just over 2 trips per person. I know these are not particularly accurate figures but I think they suggest that the railway is hardly overutilized.

 

I notice no one replied to my solution of paying for the rebuilding out of 4% of suggested annual losses. Perhaps because you want the repairs if someone else pays for them but you don't need them if you have to foot the bill.

 

Cheers Godders

[Peter Kazmierczak]

What's the photographer/writer Colin J Marsden going to do with no trains going through Dawlish for a while?

[Peter Kazmierczak]

 Better still do something creative and add to the position that Cornwall has as a destination for surfers. Something like the artificial reef off of Bournemouth beach. At least that would have a return on investment for the Dawlish locals.

Don't go down the artifical surf reef track; at least not the way Bournemouth tried to do it.

[The Stationmaster]

 

 

The very valid points made earlier by Stationmaster regarding the time-consuming reversals at Exeter and Plymouth (the Plymouth end taking longer in particular, because Cornish passengers would have to travel the St Budeaux - Plymouth North Road section twice) is very important. Not just from the point of view of 'business journey time-cost', but also train diagrams, crew diagrams etc. You can't simply/glibly say - 'well, we'll have another driver and guard standing by at Point X to take over' - that's another cost in terms of running that service.

The traincrew factor is indeed an important one (thanks for reminding me ).  When HSTs were introduced to the West of England route there was a major change in the way trains were crewed because of the improved journey times and basically it meant that only two Drivers were needed on London - Penzance (or Plymouth) trains with all changes taking place at Exeter.  This meant Penzance men working through to Exeter and vice versa but I reckon if they had to go round the top side of Dartmoor - even with linespeeds as high as the curvature allows it would break most of the crew diagrams which would inevitably mean a second change at Plymouth and injecting a third crew in addition to the existing two.

 

So ok - that would only be for diversions but having had more than a little experience of it over the years including scouring bars and in one case having to knock on the front door of a Driver's 'close lady friend' in order to get him out of her bed I can assure everyone that magicking crew, especially Drivers, out of the woodwork at short notice and then finding some who actually know the road and the traction is not an easy process.  And it becomes an even harder process when you need 50% more than you started with and of course they all need to learn and then retain the diversionary Road Knowledge and that costs money too.

 

 Replanning the timetable is the easy bit - I used to do that on the back of a fag packet (well several actually if you're rewriting the entire WR HST service for the next morning).

[Guest Belgian]

What's the photographer/writer Colin J Marsden going to do with no trains going through Dawlish for a while?

Panic?

[eastwestdivide]

What strikes me about the 10 pages so far is the similarity of many comments to when the Hatfield landslip first occurred. Without wanting to downplay the impact on those affected, neither of the two events (Dawlish and Hatfield) were catastrophic. Railways get damaged - and then they get repaired, hopefully to a better condition than before. 

Edited February 6, 2014 by eastwestdivide

[Ian Hargrave]

No,I don't live in the West Country,I live in the Midlands.The road network in Devon and Cornwall is ,as anyone will tell you,not of the best.I did not refer to holidaymakers using trains....my comments are based solely on travel for employment and commercial reasons.My statement referring to economic depression,I firmly stand by.For young people,especially in Cornwall,there is no work...ask any local.

When local people maintain they are left out in rail infrastructure development,they have a sound case.Are you suggesting that we revert to the type of rail connection that serves remote areas of Wales and Scotland ?

Force of public opinion simply will not allow anything other than restoration of through rail connections with the rest of the UK.

Really,can the road network cope in the long term ? I thought this was the new age of the train.Simply that communities are less populated than others does not exclude them from the benefits of the rest of society. A functioning rail link means a healthy society..not one that withers on the vine.

[synthnut]

 

I notice no one replied to my solution of paying for the rebuilding out of 4% of suggested annual losses. Perhaps because you want the repairs if someone else pays for them but you don't need them if you have to foot the bill.

 

Cheers Godders

I think you have misconstrued this figure of lost revenue (turnover) for profit! There's a bit of a difference in having 170 million going spare a week and turning over that. I hardly think the south west has that sort of cash jangling in it's pocket...

 

TTFN

Ben

[station cat]

 Better still do something creative and add to the position that Cornwall has as a destination for surfers. Something like the artificial reef off of Bournemouth beach. At least that would have a return on investment for the Dawlish locals.

 

 

Or something that could be used by divers - going back to the blockship idea. Though how feasible it would be I don't know, I can see that one poster has already said it wouldn't work.

 

Any argument about preserving the character of the area might be rather void anyway if a substantially larger sea wall was considered necessary

[Guest Belgian]

 Better still do something creative and add to the position that Cornwall has as a destination for surfers. Something like the artificial reef off of Bournemouth beach. At least that would have a return on investment for the Dawlish locals.

 

But Bournemouth's artificial reef was designed to increase the size of the waves*: i don't think that would be a good idea at Dawlish . . .

 

*although it doesn't seem to work very well!

Edited February 6, 2014 by Belgian

[Not Captain Kernow]

Captain Kernow - I have the solution to fixing the breach...

 

 

[Kenton]

 

To rebut it point by point would completely de-rail this thread, which is about the railway at Dawlish, in Devon.

I was simply going to disagree but that might have been misconstrued as personal.

 

The topic has almost from the start not been about the event at Dawlish or its almost certain return to normality in a number of weeks. Much of it has been about hair-brained alternative route schemes that thankfully have very little hope of being considered or even financed. That discussion has been interesting though and is just as relevant as discussion on road improvement or other disasters.

 

Much of the OT comment has been about bringing some perspective to the debate. In national terms relatively few are affected, though I think we can all see that if you are one of those few it can seem some gargantuan event.

[ZiderHead]

Would reinstating Oakhampton to Bere Alston really be that expensive as a relief route? A quick glance at google maps shows very little built on the old trackbed apart from the council building in Tavistock - just a few barns and less than 10 houses.

 

(Quite why an organisation which is itself responsible for planning, infrastructure and economic development would build their HQ bang on top of a potentially reinstatable route is bewildering to me, although sadly not that surprising …)

 

Is Meldon Viaduct the only major structure which would need replacing on that route? How about the other bridges?

Edited February 6, 2014 by ZiderHead

[ess1uk]

Which channel?

we watched the channel 4 news on the internet last night

[Godders]

No,I don't live in the West Country,I live in the Midlands.The road network in Devon and Cornwall is ,as anyone will tell you,not of the best.I did not refer to holidaymakers using trains....my comments are based solely on travel for employment and commercial reasons.My statement referring to economic depression,I firmly stand by.For young people,especially in Cornwall,there is no work...ask any local.

When local people maintain they are left out in rail infrastructure development,they have a sound case.Are you suggesting that we revert to the type of rail connection that serves remote areas of Wales and Scotland ?

Force of public opinion simply will not allow anything other than restoration of through rail connections with the rest of the UK.

Really,can the road network cope in the long term ? I thought this was the new age of the train.Simply that communities are less populated than others does not exclude them from the benefits of the rest of society. A functioning rail link means a healthy society..not one that withers on the vine.

 ..."communities are less populated than others does not exclude them from the benefits of the rest of society"...

 

Unfortunately Ian, you are wrong. People who live in less populated communities do not get the benefits of those who live in larger more densely populated communities. Try looking at Ambulance, Police, hospitals, RAILWAYS, roads, sewers, broadband speeds, restaurants etc. That is why we became a prosperous country in the industrial revolution. We built cities where everything was close together and we didn't have to move bits and pieces vast distances to make finished products. Are you suggesting that someone who lives in a remote village should have all the amenities of a city dweller, because I can tell you now, it's not economically viable. even the town I live in which has a population of 100,000 no longer has a hospital and I have to travel around 30 minutes by car to get there. Have you any evidence to show that the remote areas of Wales and Scotland benefit from being rail connected?

 

Cheers Godders

[jamie92208]

I can't cope with this thread pages are being created faster than I can rad them.

 

Jamie

[Dunsignalling]

 

The population of Cornwall is 536,000, the number of journeys annually from Penzance is 579,000. This gives just over 1 trip per person per annum. Hardly a heavily used section of railway.

 

Devon is little better with a population of 1,135,700, the number of journeys from Plymouth is 2,597,000 or just over 2 trips per person. I know these are not particularly accurate figures but I think they suggest that the railway is hardly overutilized.

 

1. Penzance is the westernmost rail station in Cornwall and the town has a population significantly below 25,000 which makes 579,000 journeys a year an average of nearly 25 per person. Not bad considering they are all going one way.

 

2. If travelling from Penzance to Paddington, you are about a quarter of the way there before you even get out of Cornwall.

 

3. Plymouth is at the westernmost extremity of Devon with a population of just over a quarter of a million - about 100 journeys per year per person.

 

4. Outside the morning and evening peaks, most trains in the London suburban area run 90% empty, how about that for a subsidy; surely they could cancel 3/4 of them.

 

As Mr Churchill said, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics" - but which are the relevant ones?

 

John

Edited February 6, 2014 by Dunsignalling

[The Stationmaster]

It is too early to jump to conclusions, but there are without doubt two aspects to this: what can be done now to get the trains running again, and what needs to be done to ensure they continue to run, even if that might mean serving Dawlish & Teignmouth from the northern side, and abandoning the Warren. But that is for a calm measured debate. As one of the videos here shows NR are already at work on the site. OK, doing a bit of fencing isn't huge, but it is work, and if it can be done today while plans are put in place for the bigger jobs then good for NR. I was certainly heartend to see that already the process of recovery has begun - and of course that's not to say they aren't busy elsewhere, but the camera didnt record it.

 

When the debate on the longer term solution is had I have a feeling that the landward diversion probably has the best chance of happening that it has ever had. Yes, that chance might still be slim, but it would be more benificial to more people than going over the moors, however scenic/nostalgic that might be (and I used to regularly travel on the TransMoor Link bus just to ride upstairs and enjoy the scenery!).

 

 

Whatever the discussions on here, one thing that is concrete is that the political profile of the problems facing this route has been raised several steps higher, following these events.

The cynics will say it'll all blow over and fade away once the line has been restored and the weather improves, but the feeling I get from various news programme reports and discussions today, is that it will now be very difficult to brush this one under the carpet.

 

The Transport minister has ordered  a couple of reviews into the issues at hand and both the proposals for alternatives and proposals to protect the existing line.

I have a feeling that West country politicians and business won't allow this one to drop from sight.

 

While there is clearly a political element (both capital P and 'little' p) at the end of the day any decision is going to boil down to comparative costs and economics plus some sort of risk/resilience estimate most likely based on historical precedents and, one hopes, future estimated weather trends.

 

Looking first at costs the restoration of the northern part of the Waverley route has been estimated at an outurn cost of c.£350 million for just under 30 miles, with no major civil engineering work apart from some bridges.  That is for basically a single line with minimal signalling provision on former railway formation for the vast majority of its length.  Okehampton to Bere Alston is 22 miles which ostensibly could cost c.£220 million - for a single line - plus a new viaduct at Meldon.   But there would also be a need for relaying on the remainder of the route plus signalling provision throughout plus passing places on the single lines which could easily double the cost, possibly even more, plus land acquisition.  Difficult to arrive at a realistic estimate but I doubt it would give much change out of the better part of £500 million, for what would basically be a diversionary route plus local services between Tavistock and Plymouth.

 

The GWR 1936 inland route (as per the original proposal and excluding the 1937 amendment) would have been 8 miles 61 ch long but due to residential development behind Dawlish and Teignmouth that alignment might no longer be possible and a longer line might result.  The most recent double line, fully signalled, railway to have been built in Britain was CTRL aka HS1 which cost =£84 million per mile and involved extensive tunnelling and some spectacular bridgeworks as well as rebuilding a London terminus.  It is thus probably misleading to use the figure for a 'Dawlish avoiding line' but it would involve tunnelling (originally four tunnels totalling 2 miles in length) and it won't be electrified (alas) but it would still not be cheap and would probably cost a lot more than the LSW route if the latter were reinstated as single line but it would be double line and be in regular use with a probable saving in journey time for long distance services due to higher attainable speeds.

 

The LSW route would of course cost a significant amount more to be rebuilt in its original double line form thus narrowing the difference in cost between it and the 'Dawlish avoiding line.

 

The third alternative is to carry out some serious sea-side protection works on the present coast route which would then continue to handle long distance trains as well as its local service on a regular basis possibly with some seasonal interference from the weather.  I haven't got a clue how much breakwaters or modern design seawalls cost but I suspect, together with works on the line itself, it is likely to be the least expensive option of the three and any sea defence works will also benefit the local community at Dawlish, who just happen to have far more votes than the ponies on Dartmoor.