Landslips

HSTEd said:

Ultimately we can't expect railways built by engineers with no modern engineering design tools to last forever, especially in the face of extreme weather like the wettest winter ever recorded.

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BrianW said:

Did Brunel, Stephenson etc do calculations or not; if so, with what 'information'?

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snowball said:

I think most people who post about trees on railway land are saying the opposite of that - too many trees have been allowed to grow and not enough are removed.

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HSTEd said:

Ultimately we can't expect railways built by engineers with no modern engineering design tools to last forever, especially in the face of extreme weather like the wettest winter ever recorded.

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Deepgreen said:

I suspect the presence of very tall trees is a problem in that they sway in windy weather and with saturated ground they more readily move/fall/slide down slopes. I travelled through Redhill yesterday and there was a poster in the subway about yet another slip between there and Tonbridge. It ended with the phrase "we apologies for any inconvenience..." and they don't seem to know the convention of using 'XX' for hours, rather than asterisks! It was out of date anyway as trains were running to Edenbridge.
View attachment 155597

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furnessvale said:

People say that trees stabilise ground, but whenever I see a large tree down I notice just how shallow rooted they appear to be.

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furnessvale said:

People say that trees stabilise ground, but whenever I see a large tree down I notice just how shallow rooted they appear to be.

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D6975 said:

Someone has done it for me.... I was about to start a thread on this very subject as it seems that barely a week goes by without news of another one. The high levels of railfall are undoubtedly partly responsible, but I too think that the sometimes excessive deforestation of railway property is playing a part. One can't help but wonder how long it is going to be before a train travelling at speed comes across a fresh one.

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RichardAsh1981 said:

Tree roots are indeed mostly in the top layer of the soil, typically in the first 600mm. What they do there is hold that layer of soil together, so that it doesn't get washed away by water flows etc. Deeper roots will form where needed for stability, but a root plate which is comparatively shallow but extends over a large area (equal to the height of the tree) is much more effective in making it stable than trying to root deeper.
Roots and surface vegetation also maintain the porosity of the soil so that water soaks in and flows down, rather than getting stuck on top of compacted soil surface and leading to surface flooding.

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RichardAsh1981 said:

Tree roots are indeed mostly in the top layer of the soil, typically in the first 600mm. What they do there is hold that layer of soil together, so that it doesn't get washed away by water flows etc. Deeper roots will form where needed for stability, but a root plate which is comparatively shallow but extends over a large area (equal to the height of the tree) is much more effective in making it stable than trying to root deeper.
Roots and surface vegetation also maintain the porosity of the soil so that water soaks in and flows down, rather than getting stuck on top of compacted soil surface and leading to surface flooding.

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snowball said:

I think most people who post about trees on railway land are saying the opposite of that - too many trees have been allowed to grow and not enough are removed.

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HSTEd said:

Ultimately we can't expect railways built by engineers with no modern engineering design tools to last forever, especially in the face of extreme weather like the wettest winter ever recorded.

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BrianW said:

The fact that Network Rail see no increase in funding in the foreseeable future, and putting faith in greater understanding by staff and proactive preventive measures is not risk-free; at best it is risk reallocation. Do we learn nothing from the Railtrack experiment experience?

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£45bn rail improvement plan puts climate change firmly in its sights

Network Rail today announced the start of its five-year, £45.4bn* rail improvement plan aimed at delivering a simpler, better, greener railway that provides the best level of train performance possible and that’s more geared-up than ever before to cope with the extremes of climate change.

www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

£45bn rail improvement plan puts climate change firmly in its sights

Network Rail today announced the start of its five-year, £45.4bn* rail improvement plan aimed at delivering a simpler, better, greener railway that provides the best level of train performance possible and that’s more geared-up than ever before to cope with the extremes of climate change.

...

Over the five years to 2029, Network Rail will invest around £2.8bn in activities**and technology that will help it better cope with extreme weather and climate change, which will help deliver a more reliable and better performing railway. Examples include:

Increased investment in looking after thousands of miles of drains, cuttings and embankments to make them more weather resilient
Recruiting almost 400 extra drainage engineers who will increase the care and maintenance of our drainage assets to be able to better handle increased and intense rainfall
Hundreds of key operational staff will attend Network Rail’s new ‘weather academy’ to help make them ‘amateur meteorologists’, better able to interpret forecasts and make better operation decisions such as when and where to slow trains in stormy conditions
More than 600,000 metres of drains will be built or rebuilt, redesigned or see increased maintenance to enable our railway to cope with much heavier rainfall and reduce flooding
Targeting over 20,000 cuttings or embankments for attention, with over 300 miles being strengthened through renewal and refurbishment and over 900 miles seeing planned maintenance
Installing significantly more ‘smart’ movement sensors to cuttings and embankments giving early warning of any changes enabling engineers to react, hopefully before a full landslip
Installing CCTV at high-risk flooding sites to enable better and faster response
Introducing new technology that will help us keep services running safely in difficult conditions, such as
o GUSTO – that uses topography to better predict windspeeds distinguishing valleys, trees and buildings enabling trains to run at higher speeds during stormy weather
o Precise ‘real-time’ world leading rainfall forecasting, detailing weather conditions every 500m that will link with asset condition data for even better train service management

...

Andrew continued: “Climate change is the biggest challenge our railway faces. The extreme weather of the past year that has seen an unprecedented 14 named storms, has taken its toll on our railway – with experts predicting more of the same to come. We are responding to that challenge with a huge investment in making our railway more resilient and better performing for rail users during such events.

“We can never completely ‘weatherproof’ our railway, but we can be better prepared and mitigate the worst that Mother Nature throws at us, now, and into the future, to keep passengers and services safe and moving.”

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snowball said:

Network Rail is greatly increasing its spending on climate preparedness. See the announcements made three days ago and the thread created to cover them:

Network Rail CP7 Plans

NR has published its CP7 plans, and there are detailed documents on its web site, on a Region/Route basis. https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/publications-and-resources/our-delivery-plans-for-2024-2029/ There's a lot of generic stuff here, but some specific deliverables are mentioned...

www.railforums.co.uk

Quotes from a press release linked and quoted in that thread:

£45bn rail improvement plan puts climate change firmly in its sights

Network Rail today announced the start of its five-year, £45.4bn* rail improvement plan aimed at delivering a simpler, better, greener railway that provides the best level of train performance possible and that’s more geared-up than ever before to cope with the extremes of climate change.

www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

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snowball said:

I think most people who post about trees on railway land are saying the opposite of that - too many trees have been allowed to grow and not enough are removed.

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randyrippley said:

The problem is not that the trees are there, but that they haven't been coppiced or pollarded.
Tree roots will stabilise banks as long as they have no large mass above ground to create a downward leverage force.
Cut the trees down to near ground level every 8-10 years or so, allowing them to regrow from the stump or bole. Keeps the root system intact, but removes the out-of-balance forces that would otherwise uproot the trees.
Trees used to be grown that way to hold river banks together (especially willow and alder) but it works with almost any tree on any bank

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snowball said:

Network Rail is greatly increasing its spending on climate preparedness. See the announcements made three days ago and the thread created to cover them:

Network Rail CP7 Plans

NR has published its CP7 plans, and there are detailed documents on its web site, on a Region/Route basis. https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/publications-and-resources/our-delivery-plans-for-2024-2029/ There's a lot of generic stuff here, but some specific deliverables are mentioned...

www.railforums.co.uk

Quotes from a press release linked and quoted in that thread:

£45bn rail improvement plan puts climate change firmly in its sights

Network Rail today announced the start of its five-year, £45.4bn* rail improvement plan aimed at delivering a simpler, better, greener railway that provides the best level of train performance possible and that’s more geared-up than ever before to cope with the extremes of climate change.

www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

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robert thomas said:

This prompted a critical article in The Daily Telegraph which seems to suggest there is no problem and this is a waste of resources!

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robert thomas said:

This prompted a critical article in The Daily Telegraph which seems to suggest there is no problem and this is a waste of resources!

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Falling weather delays undermine rail chief’s climate warning

Network Rail says it will be spending £2.8bn to help it cope better with extreme weather and climate change

www.telegraph.co.uk

Weather-related train disruption has decreased over the past few years despite the Network Rail chief executive claiming climate change is “the biggest challenge our railway faces”, The Telegraph can reveal.

On Wednesday, the state-owned company said it would be spending £2.8 billion to help it cope better with extreme weather and climate change.

Its plans include training rail staff as “amateur meteorologists” and buying weather forecasting services that are accurate to within 500 metres.

Andrew Haines, the Network Rail chief executive, also said extreme weather had “taken its toll” on the network.

Yet data analysis by The Telegraph reveals that, for the last three years, the proportion of delays attributed to “weather, autumn and structure” has been decreasing.

“Weather, autumn and structure” covers delays caused by natural phenomena such as high wind or heavy rain, as well as autumn leaf fall. Leaf debris causes braking problems for trains, similar to the way in which ice causes cars to skid.

The increased climate spending pledge calls into question how wisely Network Rail is using its £45.4 billion budget for the next five years.

In 2020-21, train delays caused by “severe weather, autumn and structures” made up 10.3 per cent of all delay minutes counted by regulators, according to figures from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) analysed by The Telegraph.

By last year that share had declined to 7.7 per cent – just over a million minutes – out of 2023’s total train delays of 13.7 million minutes.



England saw a record amount of rainfall in the 18 months to March. A total of 1,695mm of rain fell during this time, the largest amount since Met Office records began in 1836, while total train delays added up to 13.5 million minutes. Of those, 1.9 million – 14 per cent – were attributed to weather.

Martin Frobisher, Network Rail’s group safety and engineering director, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday: “Climate change is happening right now. It’s affecting the railway with flooding in winter and hotter summers than we’ve ever seen before.”

Mr Haines said: “Climate change is the biggest challenge our railway faces. The extreme weather of the past year that has seen an unprecedented 14 named storms has taken its toll on our railway – with experts predicting more of the same to come.”

The Government is backing the rail company’s plans, with Huw Merriman, the rail minister, saying people across the country relied on the railways.

“That’s why the network must be fit for the future, with the resilience to handle extreme weather while offering the reliability and level of service our passengers deserve,” he said.

“I am confident the plan set out by Network Rail today will help keep our railways on track for the coming years.”

ut John O’Connell, the chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers are tired of quixotic quangos trying to save the world rather than addressing problems at home.

“Network Rail is expected to deliver reliable, safe, and high-quality railway infrastructure, yet it’s diverting billions of pounds towards solutions to a problem that is having less and less of an impact on the network.”

Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, of the Conservatives’ Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said: “This money appears to be being spent on activities that would need to happen anyway, regardless of climate change.

“It’s clear we need a rail network that can handle all weathers, but I would be very interested to find out which observational data they are using to attribute this spending to climate change, and what predictions they are using about the future.”

Andrew Montford, the science writer and author of The Hockey Stick Illusion, said: “The kinds of weather that affect rail services are not getting worse. Winters are milder, wind speeds are falling, and extreme rainfall has barely changed. What is getting worse is the tendency of official bodies to make foolish statements about climate change.”

As part of its £2.8 billion climate spending, Network Rail has pledged that “hundreds of key operational staff” will attend a new “weather academy” to turn them into “amateur meteorologists”.

It said this would help them understand weather forecasts to make better operational decisions, such as when and where to slow trains down in stormy conditions.

Train delays have worsened recently despite an increased focus on problem areas such as the stretch between Reading and London Paddington, which will receive £140 million of maintenance under a new plan to improve reliability.



Over the year leading up to February 2024, the average delay per train in Britain was up 42.2 per cent on the same period two years earlier, ORR data show.

Network Rail’s £45.4 billion budget for the next five years is made up mainly of government grants and income from track access fees charged to train companies, themselves mostly funded by the taxpayer.

The company’s other climate-related spending targets include ground movement sensors to pick up when landslides are likely to happen and extra CCTV at high-risk flooding sites.

Last year, the Government provided £11.9 billion in taxpayer funding to run the railways, including £7.5 billion handed directly to Network Rail.

UPDATE:

Network Rail has said the overall proportion of train delays caused by weather decreased from 8.7 per cent in 2020-21 to 6.9 per cent in 2022-23, before increasing again to 8.1 per cent last year.

The infrastructure company says its delay data includes figures for journeys not published by the ORR, such as freight trains, and says that the effects of recent strikes depressed the proportion of weather-related delays. We are happy to make the situation clear.

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snowball said:

May be connected with the Telegraph's love of denying climate change?

I just did a search and found this, not paywalled:

Falling weather delays undermine rail chief’s climate warning

Network Rail says it will be spending £2.8bn to help it cope better with extreme weather and climate change

www.telegraph.co.uk

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robert thomas said:

This prompted a critical article in The Daily Telegraph which seems to suggest there is no problem and this is a waste of resources!

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Bald Rick said:

That Telegraph article is complete nonsense.

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Bald Rick said:

That Telegraph article is complete nonsense.

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BrianW said:

It hardly needs more folk to 'pile in' on this biased piece. Use of expressions like 'state-owned', 'official bodies' making 'foolish statements', 'taxpayers tired of quixotic quangos', 'government grants' and 'taxpayer funding' are highly suggestive of a certain standpoint and related view. I'd consign it indirectly to the toilet if it weren't a waste of printer cartridge.

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Snow1964 said:

Network Rail has posted photo of the problem on Redhill-Tonbridge line

No trains for at least two weeks between Tonbridge and Redhill due to emergency repair work

The line between Tonbridge and Redhill will be closed for at least two weeks while Network Rail undertakes urgent repairs to the embankment that carries the railway.

www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

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AY1975 said:

Rather oddly, if you look up any train on the Redhill-Tonbridge line on Real Time Trains for Good Friday 29th March (or any time from 1st to 14th April) it shows cancelled throughout, yet for some trains on Saturday 30th and Easter Sunday 31st March it shows them as having run between Redhill and Edenbridge.

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