Problem on the Shoppie

[Tracy D'arth]

Rail cuttings are regularly cleared of tree growth, in the steam days they were burnt out with the hot ash falling from the engines.

 

Canal cuttings have not been maintained. The trees have been allowed to grow until their mass becomes too great  for the ground to retain their root ball. Then they slide down hill or the wind uproots them.

[MtB]

1 hour ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Rail cuttings are regularly cleared of tree growth, in the steam days they were burnt out with the hot ash falling from the engines.

 

Canal cuttings have not been maintained. The trees have been allowed to grow until their mass becomes too great  for the ground to retain their root ball. Then they slide down hill or the wind uproots them.

 

Yes my understanding too is that the solution is simple and obvious - remove the trees. But this is too expensive, and CTRT would probably get grief from poorly informed locals conservationists objecting to the destruction of loads of CO2-guzzling woodland. 

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Rail cuttings are regularly cleared of tree growth, in the steam days they were burnt out with the hot ash falling from the engines.

 

Rail cuttings were regularly cleared - including as a result of bits of still-burning coal being hurled out of steam engine funnels. Since the end of steam most rail cuttings have become as overgrown as canal cuttings. It is only in recent years that Network Rail have been forced to clear the areas near the track (but not those further away) to address the leaves-on-the-line issue. And that tree clearance has led to howls of protest from tree-huggers.

 

I think the cutting problems on the Shroppie are in part a result of Telford pushing the bounds of knowledge at the time, and the cuttings were constructed with too-steep side slopes. The later railway engineers had the benefit of learning from Telford's mistakes.

Not much that CRT can do about it now. Easing the cut slopes will require the acquisition of land either side, as well as the actual excavation and removal of material from the cuttings, and the cost would be horrendous. 

[MtB]

21 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Easing the cut slopes will require the acquisition of land either side, as well as the actual excavation and removal of material from the cuttings, and the cost would be horrendous. 

 

I guess allowing the landslips to happen is the best option for CRT, as this neatly saves them from having to acquire the land either side. It becomes the problem of the land owners I imagine. Or do the landowners have some sort of 'right to support' from adjoining CRT land perhaps? 

 

I'm sure the CRT lawyers will have considered all this in fine detail and be ready to fend off any claims for 'support'. 

[Bod]

14 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Rail cuttings are regularly cleared of tree growth, in the steam days they were burnt out with the hot ash falling from the engines.

 

Canal cuttings have not been maintained. The trees have been allowed to grow until their mass becomes too great  for the ground to retain their root ball. Then they slide down hill or the wind uproots them.

The simple answer is to coppice the woodland, gives the advantage of the roots being in place to stablize the soil, and no great weight of trunks and branches above ground, to catch the wind. 

 

Bod

[Tracy D'arth]

3 hours ago, Bod said:

The simple answer is to coppice the woodland, gives the advantage of the roots being in place to stablize the soil, and no great weight of trunks and branches above ground, to catch the wind. 

 

Bod

Exactly, that is what my woodsman wanted to do and sell the timber for fuel. He tried to get C7RT to lend him a motor and a hopper but they didn't want to know. It would have cost them nothing, he would have worked in the winter when the canal was quiet. He had all his own saws, winches and gear.

[Ronaldo47]

Slippage of railway cuttings and embankments in this part of Essex has been a problem for decades because the clay used, while stable enough when first dug out, becomes weaker on exposure to the atmosphere and will slip when saturated.The solution has been to provide the areas affected with dutch drains ( gravel-filled trenches)  runnng down the slopes to provide drainage and/or toe weighting.  

Edited September 6, 2021 by Ronaldo47
typos