<
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/19/uk-rail-faces-fight-to-stay-on-track-as-climate-crisis-erodes-routes>
"Under the chalk cliffs east of Folkestone sits the Warren, a coastal
wilderness largely owned by the railway, hosting a nature trail for walkers, as
well as the Victorian rail line that runs on to Dover.
It is also, problematically for Network Rail, an active landslide. “Our
monitoring here,” says Derek Butcher, principal geotechnical engineer for the
southern region, “shows we’re actually moving ever closer to France – despite
Brexit.”
The geological combination of permeable chalk above gault clay means this has
long been a known risk area: a massive landslide in 1915 moved the tracks about
50 metres towards the sea, and the line stayed closed for nearly four years
because manpower had been diverted to the first world war trenches. Although
numerous sea defences and drains have been built since, the line has taken a
battering again as a run of the wettest winters on record piled up in the past
10 years.
The Warren is just one of many risk sites. Unprecedented rainfall in the last
18 months – hot on the heels of record-breaking summer heat – has in every
sense shifted the ground for the railway. Resilience to extreme weather of all
kinds is a preoccupation in planning.
The kind of money that not long ago would have electrified a railway line is
now going, in large part, down the drains. Network Rail has dedicated £2.8bn in
the next five years simply to bolster Britain’s tracks against the changing
climate – and its leaders have warned that it may never be enough to save all
the routes that exist today.
Recorded landslips on the British railway alone have almost doubled in
frequency, from 475 to 848 in the five years either side of 2019. At the
Warren, recent movement of the earth is clearly visible on a large fault line
that runs from the rail tracks to the sea."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
