Bluebell Northern Extension - so what's occurring then?

Thanks all, for the enlightenment.

Noel

 

There are some images on John Sandys photosteam, linked from the Bluebell website, images taken earlier this afternoon that show the remains of the "earth bridge" being removed and much reduced. Breakthrough by the end of the week maybe? Much other work in progress.

Fingers crossed that the weather holds out for them.

 

Photos (not mine) here: NEP Photo Update, Tues, 15/01/13 - a set on Flickr

If you compare this photo, taken from the south end looking north; and this one, taken from the north end looking south, you can see the same digger in both photos, which gives some concept of how narrow the residual land bridge is.

Tom

 

I think the railway are taking careful advice from people who are!

It has been stated before by Chris White that the residual domestic waste (on the western side) can be profiled to near vertical, provided steps are taken to prevent water getting in. This is one reason why the current work has been so weather-dependent. All the time the waste is sitting with a covering of clay, it is perfectly stable. However, if you want to move any, first you have to remove the clay cap from that part of the waste, which is not a two minute job - and at that point you are susceptible to the waste getting wet and losing its structure if it starts to rain. Hence the difficulties that this phase of the project has faced with the weather. With any luck, the current cold (but dry) weather, coupled with evenings starting to become a bit longer, will allow work to proceed a bit more quickly now.

Tom

 

That's very interesting. I have a bank to the road outside my property that is giving way (and thus my garden with it!). The Council chap who came said that a bank should not be steeper than 30 degrees otherwise it would go on subsiding until it found that gradient. Bit of a nerve as it was his council that cut the bank originally! He offered gabions at the base (those are cages with stones in them). I demurred as we live in a pretty Conservation Area and I did not want anything so ugly. The bank slips a few inches every year, so it is not too bad, but the angle is nowhere near the near vertical cliffs at Imberhorne.

But I'll take your word for it Tom, as you have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

 

Depends entirely on the material. If it were granite, you could have vertical cliffs. If it were sand, they would be very shallow. Everything else will be somewhere in between.

The spoil material, which is basically 1970s domestic rubbish, is made up of rather more organic type material, and less plastic, than modern rubbish would be. So it seems to have rotted to something of the consistency of dark soil, but with a certain amount of rusted metal and partly degraded plastic. It seems to have a lot of strength provided it stays dry, but if it gets wet, (and especially if it then gets driven on while wet) it breaks down to a sort of slurry. At least, that is how I understand it. There was even talk during the extraction phase of separating out the "soil" from the "trash", as a means of reducing the volume of material that would qualify as landfill and the amount that would need to be removed from site. However, it turned out that the types of machinery needed to do that meant that it couldn't economically be separated on site - hence we just removed everything.

That said, everything on this project is a learning experience: no-one has ever systematically dug out an old rubbish tip before to see what happens. The Environment Agency has, I believed, learnt a lot from the project that can inform future policy.

A bit of conjecture, not based on evidence: I suspect (but don't know) that the Shanks' depots that received the waste were probably able to separate it out in a cost effective way (economies of scale, more space to work etc) and were thus able to produce a large volume of material basically like soil that was probably valuable in projects involved in development of brownfield and ex-industrial sites and re-landscaping them.

Tom

 

From your evidence of the benefit these organisations have received Tom, it would seem that an extra donation to Bluebell from The E.A. and Shanks should be in order!

Yes my soil is landslip soil and alluvial stream deposit so I expect the Council engineer was correct. However, if this Bluebell near vertical face to the cutting is a 'never before done' implementation, one suspects a niggling doubt about the expert assurances must remain.

'500 tons of old waste buries Santa Special' is not a headline anyone can look forward to reading.

 

Rudolph to the rescue!

I agree about the face of the cutting, much too vertical, particularly as the underlying material can be expected to be unstable. I'd expect that there is going to be more work there in the future. Anyone for gabions?

Regards

 

I suspect (we'll probably never know) that Shanks have priced that into the ultimate contract price for waste removal: I doubt the people on either side of the negotiations were mugs and probably all parties got what, for their key drivers, was a good deal. Shanks got waste that they could process, which after all is their key line of business; GBRf got use of their diesels and drivers at times they would otherwise have been standing idle not earning money; the Bluebell got the waste cleared before the tax deadline at a price we could (just) afford and cheaper and faster than doing the job by road.

As for the stability of the waste: I don't know what the exact angle is (it's always a bit deceptive looking when the photo might be taken a bit obliquely), but certainly it is calculated, rather than just left to chance, and you'll see in some photos angled markers that set out the slope. But yes, I think we'll all feel a bit more confident in a few years time when vegetation has grown up through the geotex membranes and stabilised everything!

Incidentally, before anyone gets too excited about the other landfill site heading south: quite apart from the tax liability of clearing it, that one is apparently outgassing a lot of methane, which this one wasn't. I think clearing that cutting would be a considerably more technically complex task. So unless the tax regime and available technology both change dramatically, I can't see us ever going south past Newick and Chailey in my lifetime (and I'm only in my forties from a long-lived family...)

Tom

 

Possible source of revenue there? Capturing escaping methane has been talked about in the past.

Just a thought...

Mark

 

Yes, but in order to do that, we'd have to own that cutting (the one I'm talking about is another filled-in cutting on the closed southern portion of the line, not the Imberhorne cutting). And if we owned it, some damn fool would suggest we cleared it and started running trains south towards Lewes, thereby removing the source of revenue from selling methane...

Tom

 

Orion, I know you seem to take great delight in taking potshots in the Bluebell threads. But just for the record - are you suggesting that the civil engineering advice obtained by the Bluebell is flawed? And if so, would you care to say on what civil engineering credentials you base that view (beyond looking at photographs that may, by virtue of the angle they are taken at, over-emphasise the steepness). Have you, for example, been able to visit the cutting and take samples of the material in order to form a judgement on what sort of strength it has and what would therefore be a safe slope? Do you even know what the angle is?

I make no personal claims for civil engineering expertise, but I am sure the project team are taking advice that is rather more firmly based in expertise than saying that the slope looks "much too vertical". Personally, I prefer to believe that the people on the ground are managing the project in a manner that is sound! Remember, if they have got the slope seriously wrong, the ORR won't grant permission to run trains, and the insurers won't give us insurance.

Tom

 

I realised that, Tom. As you say, it might start speculation... I wasn't sure how much past SP we were talking, tbh.

Never mind.

Cheers
Mark

 

Couple of miles I think. We've talked on the ChitChat Group about an extension for about two miles to a park and ride site in Newick adjacent to the A272 (slightly better road connections and space for more car parking), complete with large, Dungeness-style return loop so we could turn locos. I believe one or two of the correspondents may have been hitting the bottle before posting that particular idea!

More seriously, there has to be a kind of natural limit about just how big a railway you can have that is sustainable within the fare structure. I think two miles north to East Grinstead will result in a major increase in traffic that will more than compensate for the 22% more track to maintain and loco / carriage mileage needed just to run the same service. But I suspect going even two miles south would massively increase costs (because we'd probably end up needing a three-train service just to provide acceptable frequency), but you couldn't increase fares as you are not really offering much more for the money. 11 miles feels like a decent length of line; I can't see us extending any more, especially just to reach another tiny village, for a long while.

Tom

 

....and there's Ardingly and possibly Haywards Heath (to which the Bluebell seem to be already committed) to tackle before thinking about extending south. I guess it's good to have these options available for the future. It provides some challenges for the volunteers. I admire the K&WVR for maintaining their enthusiasm over some 40+ years - and for continuing to offer such a good product - when they had a complete branch line (with no potential extension) more or less from day 1.

I think the Bluebell management are right to say, "let's get to EG and then have a good long pause for breath before thinking about any more extensions." There is much that will need doing - from completing the station building to catching up on the backlog in the loco department. I don't know whether the PW slack on Freshfield Bank has been sorted yet, as I haven't had a ride on the line for a few months. I'm sure that working members can add to the "to do" list, but the managment's position definitely sounds to be common sense, much as there's something in many an anthusiast that can't bear to see a section of closed railway without dreaming - in many cases quite unrealistically - of what it would be like if it were re-opened. (I'm guilty of these fantasies myself at times, particularly after some 15 years living close to the most scenic closed branch line in Sussex - I'm not pointing any fingers here!)

 

Going O/T for a moment

Some years back there was talk of looking at reopening to the other Ingrow for a diesel TMD plus high days and holidays shuttle service. No idea what became of it?

Going back on thread the news from the Bluebell is really good to read

Patrick

 

Well with a line running about 11 miles long and possibly at some point in the future a future extension to Ardingly and Haywards Heath (not sure how the line fits in from Copyhold Junction into Haywards Heath station where I can't see where a Bluebell platform can be built either now or when the station is redeveloped) there's not a great need to go south of Sheffield Park really.

 

To me the only reason to go south would be, as stated, to access a park and ride site.
Which may be a good thing given the restrictions on access to some stations on the line.