Land Slip - Easenhall Cutting, Brinklow, Oxford Canal

[IanD]

3 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

Last year a columnist in "Modern Railways"  mentioned how, in times gone by,  emergency maintenance at an inaccessible spot would mean a gang walking there, carrying their tools, lunch, water, a Primus stove for heating their kettle, and a pack of toilet paper. Nowadays H&S means they have to construct a temporary access road leading to a wheelchair-accessible amenity block, all of which results in delays and a vast increase in costs. 

Seems unlikely, so is this actually true (on the canal) or an invention to stir up Daily Wail readers?

 

Especially the wheelchair-accessible bit, since it seems unlikely there will be any onsite construction workers in wheelchairs going down the embankment... 😉

Edited March 19 by IanD

[Captain Pegg]

4 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

Last year a columnist in "Modern Railways"  mentioned how, in times gone by,  emergency maintenance at an inaccessible spot would mean a gang walking there, carrying their tools, lunch, water, a Primus stove for heating their kettle, and a pack of toilet paper. Nowadays H&S means they have to construct a temporary access road leading to a wheelchair-accessible amenity block, all of which results in delays and a vast increase in costs. 

So that’s easier than enabling heavy plant and lorries access to a place where there’s a thousand tonnes of earth to be moved?

 

And who needs messing and toilet facilities in the workplace?

 

It’s a partial truth at best anyway, and one that’s not really related to re-construction of earthworks.

 

There’s very little “modern” in the thinking that goes into Modern Railways.

[Hudds Lad]

59 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

And who needs messing and toilet facilities in the workplace?

It's a definite improvement over a carrier bag in the back of the transit that we used in my old landscape gardening days  

[MtB]

4 hours ago, IanD said:

Seems unlikely, so is this actually true (on the canal) or an invention to stir up Daily Wail readers?

 

Especially the wheelchair-accessible bit, since it seems unlikely there will be any onsite construction workers in wheelchairs going down the embankment... 😉

 

I suspect it isn't just the workers doing the grunt work who will be on the site. There might be civil engineers, project managers, surveyors and all manner of people who could be wheelchair users and still capable of doing their jobs. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mike Todd]

On 15/03/2024 at 17:08, Tracy D'arth said:

See the latest C&RT update today.  Makes one wonder how they ever dug the canal in the first place.......................

Remember that when the canal was dug (and then improved) soil mechanics was in the future. Canal engineers were very much in the business of trial and error - sometimes the errors were more spectacular than others and sometimes they 'learnt lessons'. The regular problems with deeper cuttings, especially here and on quite a bit of the Shroppie, also had to face strenuous commercial pressures to contain construction costs - removing earth for a cutting was not cheap! (Just a team of several thousand of labourers and their supporters) I do not know exactly, but I am led to believe that, if built today, these cuttings would have had to be very much wider at the top than they are. As a result there is always a risk of slippage.

 

I also wonder how far the (very) modern trend to allowing vegetation to decorate canals banks is a factor. Many pictures from some time back show canals very shorn of trees and undergrowth. I also am aware that there seems to be two schools of thought: keep them clear to avoid storm damage when trees are brought down, the other that growth helps to bind the soil together and reduce erosion. I don't know enough to assess the balance. The current 'political' context favours greenery at any price - sometimes the longer term cost is now being shown to be greater.

 

But I speculate.

[jonesthenuke]

2 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

I also wonder how far the (very) modern trend to allowing vegetation to decorate canals banks is a factor. Many pictures from some time back show canals very shorn of trees and undergrowth. I also am aware that there seems to be two schools of thought: keep them clear to avoid storm damage when trees are brought down, the other that growth helps to bind the soil together and reduce erosion. I don't know enough to assess the balance. The current 'political' context favours greenery at any price - sometimes the longer term cost is now being shown to be greater.

But I speculate.

The trees do seem like a big risk to me. They add a lot of weight, but also catch the wind and then topple and collapse. Sadly, allowing unrestricted tree growth is very much the norm on cuttings for roads and motorways these days. Consequently I suspect more incidents will result. Having said that, I fully agree that the Easenhall cutting looks to be too steep an angle given that the soil appears to be soft throughout the depth of the cut.

Edited March 19 by jonesthenuke
Editorial

[john.k]

Loose soil looks to be very prone to erosion ...........some vegetation will be required to combat erosion .........if the slipped soil is removed,then some other kind of fill will be needed to stabilize the area...............probably bolting and mesh with sprayed coating .

[Grassman]

14 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

 

I also wonder how far the (very) modern trend to allowing vegetation to decorate canals banks is a factor. Many pictures from some time back show canals very shorn of trees and undergrowth. I also am aware that there seems to be two schools of thought: keep them clear to avoid storm damage when trees are brought down, the other that growth helps to bind the soil together and reduce erosion. I don't know enough to assess the balance. The current 'political' context favours greenery at any price - sometimes the longer term cost is now being shown to be greater.

 

But I speculate.

 

Recently when we were doing the offside veg cutting we had one of CRT's ecology persons tag along with us for the day. It was a nightmare because they kept saying you can't cut this, you can't cut that, even in parts where trees were causing a major problem, not just to navigation but also where they were compromising the safety of boaters too. 

[jonesthenuke]

25 minutes ago, Grassman said:

 

Recently when we were doing the offside veg cutting we had one of CRT's ecology persons tag along with us for the day. It was a nightmare because they kept saying you can't cut this, you can't cut that, even in parts where trees were causing a major problem, not just to navigation but also where they were compromising the safety of boaters too. 

On the Bradley Canal restoration there is a large tree with three trunks  below the lowest lock. The tree sits in the bed of the canal where the bywash used to emerge. The CRT ecologist will not allow us to remove it even though it's in the bed of the canal. D'Oh!

[john.k]

Dont live in Canberra then..........the place is actually ruled by the Greens .............if a limb falls from a tree and smashes your house,the greens will not allow you to remove other limbs from the same tree.

[Ronaldo47]

The trouble is that,  in lowland England, any piece of land that is neglected will usually revert to forest. Locally we have Shenfield Common, which Victorian photos show used to be open grassland with a few trees. I believe animals used to graze there. Now only the northern-most tip is grass, the rest having reverted to dense woodland all by itself.  

Edited March 20 by Ronaldo47

[roland elsdon]

2 minutes ago, john.k said:

Dont live in Canberra then..........the place is actually ruled by the Greens .............if a limb falls from a tree and smashes your house,the greens will not allow you to remove other limbs from the same tree.

It was a fence not a house. It was a nature strip tree , and the council came and dealt with it after the junk doco.

 

not a fricking great 1870s canal cutting.

we lived in brinklow for some time, that cutting has always been wet, unstable and a liability.

It always appeared to hold together by tree roots, and luck. The repaired towing path narrowed a shallow channel and pushed boats nearer the off towpath side.

 

course in the end it was vandalism that did for it, not a hasty bit of cutting a new  canal as part of the shortening scheme.

Original line goes nowhere near the cutting.

[ditchcrawler]

10 hours ago, john.k said:

Loose soil looks to be very prone to erosion ...........some vegetation will be required to combat erosion .........if the slipped soil is removed,then some other kind of fill will be needed to stabilize the area...............probably bolting and mesh with sprayed coating .

I wonder what they would bolt to?

[Captain Pegg]

13 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I wonder what they would bolt to?

There is perhaps some confusion here between soil nailing and rock bolting.

 

And I see the myth that trees support unstable slopes is being perpetuated.

 

[ditchcrawler]

Just read the tree/ wood removal is complete and now down to Kier to shift the muck

[ditchcrawler]

I guess Britis Rail or whatever the name is this week have a bigger budget than CRT Railway line to reopen after 20-day Shropshire embankment repair - BBC News

[Jon57]

27 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I guess Britis Rail or whatever the name is this week have a bigger budget than CRT Railway line to reopen after 20-day Shropshire embankment repair - BBC News

Not all ways that easy. 

[Slim]

Quite interesting to compare this incident with the Baltimore bridge collapse. 3-days in and they're already saying that they expect the port to be open within a month. Yes, I know it's a totally different problem but..................

Hammersmith Bridge anyone............

Edited March 29 by Slim

[Paul C]

7 minutes ago, Slim said:

Quite interesting to compare this incident with the Baltimore bridge collapse. 3-days in and they're already saying that they expect the port to be open within a month. Yes, I know it's a totally different problem but..................

Hammersmith Bridge anyone............

 

The problem is, if a cost-benefit analysis was done, it would probably be shown that the canal isn't worth opening again. £££ saved for CRT

[ditchcrawler]

2 hours ago, Paul C said:

 

The problem is, if a cost-benefit analysis was done, it would probably be shown that the canal isn't worth opening again. £££ saved for CRT

Cost benefit, non are worth keeping open as the whole system lose a fortune every year

[MtB]

1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

Cost benefit, non are worth keeping open as the whole system lose a fortune every year

 

ESPECIALLY once sale of the filled-in land is factored in.

 

 

[magnetman]

1 hour ago, MtB said:

 

ESPECIALLY once sale of the filled-in land is factored in.

 

 

Interesting idea. Use canals for landfill then remediate the surface and build on it. win win situation. 

 

 

[Slim]

3 hours ago, magnetman said:

Interesting idea. Use canals for landfill then remediate the surface and build on it. win win situation. 

 

 

Is that not what will happen to most of the urban network within the foreseeable future? If not physically filled in then blocked up with residential houseboats.

[James Owen]

There's been a fair drop of rain recently, this has resulted in more trees down over the cut now and further slippage spilling over the towing path and into the water.

[ditchcrawler]

I have just watched Monsoon Railways on TV, They had 100 mts of track washed away and rebuilt it all in 4 days by hand with it still in flood