The state of the lineside - is it getting better?

[Bald Rick]

I travelled from Derby to Sheffield yesterday and I noticed there was scrap rail on the downside cess all the way between Derby and Clay Cross, a distance of 18 miles!

Some big renewal jobs coming up in the next couple of months.

 

[brianthegiant]

I can't remember how often on the Cornish ML, but around every 5 years the P/way used to burn off the cuttings and embankments. Complete devastation!! But just after 2 weeks it was all greening up again.
Vegetation ''eyesores'' are absolute heaven for wildlife - a sterile green lawn is like a desert!! Butterflies love a clump of Nettles!

Good point. Sadly a large % of hedgerows on agricultural land have been lost over the last 100 years, as fields are merged to allow for large machinery, one of many factors contributing to an alarming rate of species extinctions at present. The land on the side of railways and highways do to some degree mitigate hedgerow loss. I appreciate the need to control growth near running lines & structures. But it's good to see that vegetation is allowed to grow in redundant areas (disused sidings etc).

Tidiness is a sign that you are looking after your assets.

Why? There is no correlation between quantity of litter and reliability of NR track, signals etc. I would rather NR focus on reliability & capacity type issues than lineside aesthetics. I don't like litter (on account of my upbringing) & I always pick up litter when out hiking, but given the astronomical cost of putting workers safely on the lineside nowadays, I can see why this shouldn't be a priority for NR.

The politics of litter is quite interesting. it seems to be something of a western environmental concern, people in so many other countries just aren't bothered, even educated professionals. Someone I met visits an amazonian tribe periodically, at some point they started deliberately putting plastic bottles around the edge of their village, they'd seen lots of plastic bottles on visits to the town & thought it was a sign of progress/development/affluence whatever...