• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

UK’s railways can no longer cope with the effects of the climate crisis

Status
Not open for further replies.

Class 170101

Established Member
Joined
1 Mar 2014
Messages
7,908
The summer of 1976 or the floods of today are somewhat irrelevant in themselves as individual events but taken with 2007 floods in Yorkshire, Summer 2018 and the Beast from the East, as well as many other individual weather events that other posters may care to mention, I would take the view that climate change is happening and that it is having an adverse impact on the way we live, work and play.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Speed43125

Member
Joined
20 Jul 2019
Messages
1,131
Location
Dunblane
Posted without motive. Why did you find it strange?
Sounds certainly like an attempt to discredit climate change. The use of the word invented, while arguably accurate, certainly seems to imply it's a made up phenomenon.
Most transport sector forums (this, airliners.net etc) tend to have more very conservative, traditionalist people on them who are the ones who tend to be supporters of climate change being false. As a result, I find I have to be a lot more cautious and careful then I would on say Reddit. As long as you weren't overly alluding to something, that's fine.
 

Taunton

Established Member
Joined
1 Aug 2013
Messages
10,018
The line over the Somerset Levels has always been a problem, the flooding nowadays is actually better than it was one or two generations ago, when flooding over the line at Langport (in particular) was a regular winter event.

Now if you look on the web for old pictures of it, you will find pictures of steam trains old and older straightforwardly coming through the water. Look for "floods" halfway down this page http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/taunton-to-yeovil.html Doesn't happen so much now, but the multi-million pound wonders we now have are not allowed to put one flange into water. So far more disruption than previously.
 

randyrippley

Established Member
Joined
21 Feb 2016
Messages
5,079
The line over the Somerset Levels has always been a problem, the flooding nowadays is actually better than it was one or two generations ago, when flooding over the line at Langport (in particular) was a regular winter event.

Now if you look on the web for old pictures of it, you will find pictures of steam trains old and older straightforwardly coming through the water. Look for "floods" halfway down this page http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/taunton-to-yeovil.html Doesn't happen so much now, but the multi-million pound wonders we now have are not allowed to put one flange into water. So far more disruption than previously.

I've looked at those photos several times and wondered just how close to the firebox those floods got, and whether there was a risk of sucking water back into the pistons.

But you're right - the floods used to be far worse. I can remember many winters standing on Ham Hill and seeing what was effectively an inland sea from Martock to the coast
 

Taunton

Established Member
Joined
1 Aug 2013
Messages
10,018
I've looked at those photos several times and wondered just how close to the firebox those floods got, and whether there was a risk of sucking water back into the pistons.
Oh, it used to get up to ashpan level and beyond, and put the fire out. I've written about this here before. Locos though typically had enough steam left in the boiler to get from Langport to Taunton with no fire, go on shed there to have it relit and be oiled all round. And on they would go …
 
Last edited by a moderator:

markymark2000

On Moderation
Joined
11 May 2015
Messages
3,536
Location
Western Part of the UK
What do other countries do to help cope with extreme heat, wetness or leaves on the line which we could take onboard? Is the issue that all the preventative measures would cost so much, it's not worth doing, it's cheaper to fix the issues as/when they occur?

Drainage does need to be worked on in some places but as with most railway schemes, why do little things like drainage when you can build HS2 and Crossrail which combined will solve all of the UKs travel problems....
 

al78

Established Member
Joined
7 Jan 2013
Messages
2,400
What do other countries do to help cope with extreme heat, wetness or leaves on the line which we could take onboard? Is the issue that all the preventative measures would cost so much, it's not worth doing, it's cheaper to fix the issues as/when they occur?

Drainage does need to be worked on in some places but as with most railway schemes, why do little things like drainage when you can build HS2 and Crossrail which combined will solve all of the UKs travel problems....

What we class as extreme in the UK would be a seasonal event in other countries. In such countries, these "extremes" are part of the normal climatology so the infrastructure has to be resiliant enough to deal with it, otherwise it would go tits up many times a year every year.

In the UK, it is not seen as financially economical to build resiliance in the transport networks to deal with weather that (is assumed to) occurs once every 20 or 50 years, so we have infrastructure that is optimised for near-average conditions, at the expense of falling over when conditions depart significantly from average.

When it comes to climate change projections, the question is, are weather phenomena (i.e. floods, storms, heatwaves) that were once a 1 in 50 year event expected to become significantly more frequent, based on scientific estimates? If so, then questions need to be asked about whether the resiliance of the transport network (among others) needs to be improved in order to mitigate future consequences. Unfortuunately, human nature is such that planning for the future is negated in favour of the here and now (or is filed under someone elses problem), so I am skeptical anything meaningful will be done.
 

randyrippley

Established Member
Joined
21 Feb 2016
Messages
5,079
Funny thing is, much of the major drainage work on the Levels was actually done by Dutch engineers in the 1600s and 1700s. Somerset still has families with Dutch names such as Cornelius and Brooks (= Broekx in Dutch). The Romans did start it all off, while Muchelney and Glastonbury monks did a lot as well - but most of the major works were Dutch
 

Howardh

Established Member
Joined
17 May 2011
Messages
8,120
A lot of this flooding is man-made. Concreting over large amounts of land means the water has nowhere to soak away other than the over-loaded drains and rivers. Trees have been cut down in the catchment areas and again their roots hold back water (and trees use that water obviously). So what climate change there is is worsened by our stupidity in building without thinking.

There is one way water can be held back and that's to follow the example of beavers, could all upwater tributary streams have a small dam - just two natural or concrete boulders would do, during normal weather the water would go between them, but in heavy rain water would be held behind flooding the fields and then slowly flow through the gaps so you don't get the huge swell downstream?
 

Howardh

Established Member
Joined
17 May 2011
Messages
8,120
What we class as extreme in the UK would be a seasonal event in other countries. In such countries, these "extremes" are part of the normal climatology so the infrastructure has to be resiliant enough to deal with it, otherwise it would go tits up many times a year every year.
.
I was in Menorca when the September floods arrived and there was no way the local infrastructure coped with the sheer volume of water. I was "lucky" to be on the edge of it - coastal Spain really suffered; and last year Majorca got the brunt. These are annual "extremes" - the storms come as timetabled, the ferocity seems to increase. Interesting that after a slightly cooler summer, sea temperatures rose to well-above average temperatures in early Sept which may have been a factor in the immense downpours. When I was swimming in the sea in Ibiza in late September the sea temp was what you would expect in mid-August.
 

reddragon

Established Member
Joined
24 Mar 2016
Messages
3,145
Location
Churn (closed)
Many of our railway embankments are built of a clay & ash combination that do not like these increasing weather extremes.

The railway culverts & drainage have not been maintained well over the years. They were also designed for the greenfield run off of the 19th century and cannot cope with the quicker storm responses since we concreted everywhere and cut down the trees.

The easiest option is to enforce planning on driveways - they are not allowed to drain to highway, they must be self contained with soak-aways; to re-forest moorlands; to enforce SUDS (sustainable urban drainage).

The problem is climate change is now happening at increasing speeds but nobody is acting and worse still regulators act as an obstruction to change.
 

DarloRich

Veteran Member
Joined
12 Oct 2010
Messages
29,182
Location
Fenny Stratford
What do other countries do to help cope with extreme heat, wetness or leaves on the line which we could take onboard? Is the issue that all the preventative measures would cost so much, it's not worth doing, it's cheaper to fix the issues as/when they occur?

Drainage does need to be worked on in some places but as with most railway schemes, why do little things like drainage when you can build HS2 and Crossrail which combined will solve all of the UKs travel problems....

paging @Bald Rick
 

al78

Established Member
Joined
7 Jan 2013
Messages
2,400
I was in Menorca when the September floods arrived and there was no way the local infrastructure coped with the sheer volume of water. I was "lucky" to be on the edge of it - coastal Spain really suffered; and last year Majorca got the brunt. These are annual "extremes" - the storms come as timetabled, the ferocity seems to increase. Interesting that after a slightly cooler summer, sea temperatures rose to well-above average temperatures in early Sept which may have been a factor in the immense downpours. When I was swimming in the sea in Ibiza in late September the sea temp was what you would expect in mid-August.

That sounds like it was an extreme event for them. Very occasionally, the Mediterranean islands are impated by medicanes (Mediterranean hurricane-like weather systems) which bring strong winds and heavy rain. It is a bit like the infrastructure in England struggled occasionally in the winter of 2013/14, when the jet stream was unusually persistently further south than normal, steering deep and damaging low pressure systems across highly populated areas.
 

reddragon

Established Member
Joined
24 Mar 2016
Messages
3,145
Location
Churn (closed)
This is of course the main issue: -

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ed-by-poor-management-and-floodplain-building

“This is only a problem if you develop floodplains by building houses, businesses and factories on them, which is obviously what we have done over the years, so to some degree it’s a problem of our own making,” said Roy Mosley, the head of conservation and land management at Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust.

The risk faced by floodplain communities is exacerbated by the management of land upstream of the city. Intensive animal grazing leads to short grass and compacted soil, which is less able to absorb and hold water. There are no longer enough trees and plants to absorb rain and stop it from running straight into the river, Mosley said.
 

ChiefPlanner

Established Member
Joined
6 Sep 2011
Messages
7,768
Location
Herts
How many hundreds of thousands of houses - especially in suburban areas have lost their soakway front gardens to car parking ? , how many hundreds of thousands of hectares have been used for car parks (maybe used for a few hours a day) ..all relevant of course.

Locally , any "heavy" rainfall causes localised flooding / pooling for the simple reason that street cleaning / brushing is at best carried out twice a year , so debris of all sorts blocks the drains.

More to it than climate change , a lot to do with care of the local realm , though the former clearly has implications.

At least a ballasted railway is a soakway of some sort. (assuming the track drains are working !)
 

Kingspanner

Member
Joined
17 Jul 2019
Messages
325
Location
Dinsdale
How many hundreds of thousands of houses - especially in suburban areas have lost their soakway front gardens to car parking ? , how many hundreds of thousands of hectares have been used for car parks (maybe used for a few hours a day) ..all relevant of course.

Locally , any "heavy" rainfall causes localised flooding / pooling for the simple reason that street cleaning / brushing is at best carried out twice a year , so debris of all sorts blocks the drains.

More to it than climate change , a lot to do with care of the local realm , though the former clearly has implications.

At least a ballasted railway is a soakway of some sort. (assuming the track drains are working !)
Since you ask, here is a place to start https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096
 

reddragon

Established Member
Joined
24 Mar 2016
Messages
3,145
Location
Churn (closed)
If you go back in history, houses had soak-away drainage, no or gravel drives. Housing development was dense and served by buses / trams, shops were in terraces with houses above.

Today all properties are connected to drainage with no attenuation. In April 2017, Water companies lost many of their powers to limit flow volumes and SUDS have never been supported by developers. People have concreted their drives, eliminating historic soak-aways. New housing is spread out, haphazard and with lots of parking. Cars rule, with car parks everywhere. Shopping centres & out of town developments are dominated by parking. Nobody maintains road gulleys, watercourses or rivers.

Grouse burning & intense farming has stopped moorland retaining water. Trees have been cut down, ditches filled and land management stopped.

We allow development on flood plains.

Meadowhall is a victim of its own actions, simple as that!

Moderator note: can we please stick to the effects on railways from now on; if you wish to make a post that is not related to the effects on railways, please post it in General Discussion, thanks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Bald Rick

Veteran Member
Joined
28 Sep 2010
Messages
29,070
What do other countries do to help cope with extreme heat, wetness or leaves on the line which we could take onboard? Is the issue that all the preventative measures would cost so much, it's not worth doing, it's cheaper to fix the issues as/when they occur?

Drainage does need to be worked on in some places but as with most railway schemes, why do little things like drainage when you can build HS2 and Crossrail which combined will solve all of the UKs travel problems....


Sorry missed this until now.

Other railways have exactly the same issues. Indeed many of them come over here to learn from us.

Extreme heat - see other threads on the subject. Essentially other railways either restress the rails twice a year, or more usually put up with a higher rate of buckled rails in summer and more broken rails in winter. See the preponderance of derailments on US railroads. Speed restrictions are near ubiquitous on railways with high temperature ranges.

Leaves - they have the same issues as us, or cut down the trees. In the latter case rarely with the local objections we see here. Only tonight I have had a friend have a slight moan about Network Rail cutting down the trees alongside the railway by his house, and why it was done; I asked him if he’d ever been in the cab of a train at 125mph, gone round a corner and seen a tree on the line that you know you’re going to hit. I have. My trousers recovered.

Wetness, for which I take it you mean flooding. They have exactly the same problems as we do. See the Narbonne - Beziers main line being closed for nearly a month (and still closed) after flooding, or the bullet trains being written off last week in Japan. Just a few of many, many examples.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top