Flooding

It now appears we are in for a wet Summer and one Government Deoartment estimates that one home in six is liable to flooding.
Last year the SVR suffered from flooding and many preserved lines have "Valley Railway" in their names. Just out of interest and not scaremongering, which preserved lines are prone to flooding please?

 

Is the NYMR, it was built on an ancient flood channel or so may prone to it again (although I don't think many glaciers are melting up there!)

 

Bear in mind that this statistic is rather misleading. The reason I say that is because, in the headlong rush to build squillions of new homes over the past decade or so, many have been built in truly stupid locations - i.e. on flood plains.

(If you're ever down Ashford (Kent) way, have a look at all those lovely swish new homes around Kingsnorth, all built on the flood plain of the East Stour. All moved into by well-heeled people wanting a nice house... with not a second thought about the local geography of the area and the possibility of them flooding).

The point I'm making is that it may sound like a 'shock, horror, the weather is getting worse, everyone is at risk' statistic, but in reality landowners with wet fields on flood plain have smelled an easy buck from builders building houses that the government says are 'needed'. And from the moment they are built, those houses are inherently likely to flood at times of high rainfall.

In the past, when these locations naturally flooded (hence the term 'flood plain'!), it never made the news because it was only the landowners and livestock or crops that were affected. But once there's houses there, it all goes up in the air and it makes the news,

Thus, the more homes are built in these locations, the worse that 'one home in six is liable to flooding' statistic is going to look.

The statistic should, IMHO, more realistically be looked at from the other end - the issue is not that the British climate is necessarily getting wetter, it's far more about the increasing prevalance of stupid (i.e. prone to flooding) locations that modern houses are being built in.

 

its not just building on flood plains thats the problem, the sheer amount of development reduces the lands ability to soak up rainfall too.(ie the water runs off tarmac, roofs etc straight into drains and then the river system without soaking into the ground.

 

Did you know the regulations changed recently, and you have to use special permeable materials if you want to 'concrete' over your garden over a certain size or get permission: "If the surface to be covered is more than five square metres planning permission will be needed for laying traditional, impermeable driveways that do not provide for the water to run to a permeable area" I know a planning officer, and the guidance is to only approve in exceptional circumstances, insisting on proper drainage- a good thing regarding the old flooding if you ask me!

 

I wonder how many people are aware of these new regulations. They are a really good idea, but who's going to bother getting planning permission to pave over their small front garden? I wonder if builders merchants/B&Q are going to warn their customers?

Richard

 

The Severn Valley actually suffered the flooding and washouts 2 years ago. Doesn't time fly when you are enjoying yourself!

 

The Kent & East Sussex Railway between Rolvenden and Bodiam is prone to flooding as it follows the low lying Rother Valley area. In 2000 a short section of embankment was washed out on the then newly opened section between Northiam and Bodiam.

 

That's interesting. I've been firing and driving up and down the K&ESR for thirty years and am only aware of a couple of floods encroaching on the track. The surrounding land often floods but not the railway. The washout towards Bodiam was caused by a failure of the river Rother embankment.

 

I wonder if the "Travelling Community" are aware. They tend to build huge encampments without any permision including roads and driveways on green-field sites in a matter of a bank holiday weekend without obtaining permision for any of it! Grrrr...

 

that would be me.

 

N.Y.M.R. = North Yorkshire Moor Railway.

The only problem as I can remember is the Moor is on high ground and made up of peat which holds water when it rains and releases is slowly in to the streams that flow to the North, into the sea at Whitby and South into Pickering which is a bottle neck for the stream. Pickering does suffer from flooding from time to time but it does need to rain very heavy and for sometime to cause a flood.

The valley in which the railway runs in part is not a flood channel but the path that the Glacier took from the Moor, which is on high ground, towards the sea.

 

Oh right, thanks for clearing that up I think I may of got it mixed up with Malham Cove

 

Suggest you invest in a pair of these
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and one of these
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;-)

 

fecks sake dont let on....they could all be washed out to sea at any moment....

 

There is another issue too; that of taking the water away from your foundations, so encouraging subsidence, particularly in clay areas. We had such a problem in 2003 and the solution was to take up the block paving, put down a permeable layer and then hard landscaping. We used different sizes of pebbles and broken slate on top of the permeable sheet plastic. The local kids reckon it looks like the sea-side, the slate representing the sea and the pebbles the beach.

Regards

 

Should have set up an ice-cream kiosk. You could have made a killing

 

At the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway, some spots are wetter than others but we have already spent considerable time and money doing drainage work to prevent serious problems in the future. There is a straight section just south of Wirksworth that used to be particularly bad and as you can see in the first photograph it was being used as a running line whilst flooded under a TSR. Then the railway decided to spend considerable time and money and turned it into the second photograph - well worth the effort.

 

I must visit the Ecclesbourne Valley canal one day \/