That's a nice Victoria arch you have there, shame is someone

[vonuber]

.. filled it in:

article said:

The government’s roads agency could be forced to remove hundreds of tonnes of concrete it used to fill in a Victorian railway arch in a project that was condemned as the first act of “cultural vandalism” in a nationwide plan.

Eden district council told Highways England (HE) this week that it needs to apply for retrospective planning permission for a scheme that involved pouring an estimated 1,000 tonnes of concrete and aggregate under the bridge at Great Musgrave, Cumbria, at the start of nationwide programme to infill scores of historic structures.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/jul/21/highways-england-may-have-to-reverse-act-of-cultural-vandalism



Hans, are we the baddies?

[SmoothCriminal]

That is an abortion of a job but ta debate has to be had if we waste money maintaining disused railway structures.

[Randy Winkman]

I think that the current government feels that maintaining the roads infrastructure is more important than conserving historic structures. Perhaps they are right. We cant keep all of the old stuff.

[55palfers]

I think an article I read said all the bridge needed was pointing for about £5K.

This utter abomination cost over £100K.

These are historic structures and need to be treated with respect.

[Evoluzione]

What an abortion and total waste of money, it'll cost them as much to remove it!

[LaurasOtherHalf]

fking hell what a bunch of fking cowboys. They should have their arses handed to them for that.

[eharding]

Could prove embarrassing if they have to dig it up and the remains of some well known but recently mysteriously absent Cumbrian wrong-un's are found in there.

[irc]

Especially as there is an alternative system at half the cost with almost zero visual intrusion.



"Goldhawk Bridge Restoration Ltd has been “saving, strengthening and preserving heritage masonry arched structures all over the UK” for the past 20 years.

The company’s Masonry Arch Repair and Strengthening (MARS) system has been rolled out on more than 300 railway and highway bridges across the country – many much larger than the Great Musgrove structure."

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/infilling-...

[pquinn]

From the sound of it there's a bit of an agenda running inside Highways England at the moment.

[Ivan stewart]

I’d have the retard that signed that off
There with a pick and shovel for a few months making a start on repairing the damage .

[Evanivitch]

Couldn't they have just built it up with block and steel?

[Russ35]

There is a campaign group attempting to stop this sort of thing happening. They are called the HRE Group.

A couple of videos discusing the topic.





And a google map with all the 134 bridges shown. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1_9Gt...

[coppernorks]

SmoothCriminal said:

That is an abortion of a job but ta debate has to be had if we waste money maintaining disused railway structures.

Precisely, what was unique about this victorian railway bridge that was worth saving over thousands of
other long demolished victorian railway structures ?

[yellowjack]

coppernorks said:

Precisely, what was unique about this victorian railway bridge that was worth saving over thousands of
other long demolished victorian railway structures ?

Why the blazes does something have to be unique to deserve saving?

With more and more focus on "sustainable transport options" it should be the default position of any government, council, or government funded agency to retain, maintain, and reopen old railway lines wherever they survive. Not as railway lines, clearly, as they've already failed due to lack of income. But all around the UK are shining examples of old rail beds repurposed as "greenways" or whatever the latest buzzword is for walking and cycling trails. The bonus is that they can do a lot to move cycle traffic onto safe routes away from motor traffic. And they can be used for leisure and commuting purposes. They draw in visitors to local hospitality businesses. And as a side benefit it maintains historical structures and gives them a new lease of life.

It also means that the route of a railway is maintained, so if reopening as an actual commercial railway line is anywhere in the future, it won't have houses or massive distribution centres built over it. In fact, if it were up to me, I'd go further and set about issuing compulsory purchase orders to landowners who own sections of rail bed but do nothing with it (usually because of cuttings or embankments which render the land useless for anything other than a cycle path or a railway) out of spite. Local to me there are lines now converted to gravel cycleways with sections off limits "because private property" where there is no conceivable use for the rail bed other than as a cycle trail. Get them all opened up as greenways. Stop pissing about with pathetic stretches of on-road cycling infrastructure and set about reopening old rail beds as long distance cycle trails.

Bristol to Bath. Monsal Trail. Cloud Trail. The North Dorset Trailway. The Castleman Trail. Downslink. All great examples, and all busy with cyclists, walkers, etc. And there are countless others around the country.

And as an aside, there are canal bridges that look like they are falling down, yet there's no desperate scramble to demolish or infill them. Why? Because many are roads to nowhere and not the responsibility of Highways England.

On top of that there's the environmental cost of all that aggregate and cement. It's a finite resource, and every kilo of it wasted filling in bridges is a kilo we can't use to build better roads, new bridges, new houses, new high rise buildings. Not to mention all the vehicle movements needed to shift this stuff. And who wants to be stuck behind a parade of cement mixers or tipper trucks trundling around the country needlessly filling in structures that, by Highways England's own admission, are neither dangerous nor in urgent need of repair?

Never mind the heritage value, or the "cultural vandalism". This is madness simply because it's so short sighted. They say they can take out the fill, if another use is found for the route, but at what future cost? Which will inevitably mean that repurposing some of these old rail beds will be dismissed as "economically unviable". Closing them now means closing them forever, effectively. There definitely needs to be some joined-up-thinking going on at the highest level, and these plans challenged and booted out. They just don't make any sense.

Last month I was on a cycle path on an old railway line in the West Country. It was an old double line, and only one line had been tarmacked as a bike/walking path. For most of it's length the other line still had the rails down, and there was even a (pretty rotten) goods truck on the tracks at one point. With notices up concerning plans to take the last section of the route off the road, and to continue it on the old rail bed instead. The reason a lot of people give for not commuting by bike is "too much traffic". another popular reason is "it's too hilly". perhaps if you take away the motor traffic and delete any significant incline by opening up old railway lines as bike paths you'll find more people willing to take that trip to town, or their daily commute, by bicycle. With the net benefit of taking cars off the road and reducing congestion.

[irc]

Using old railbeds for cycle paths while reserving them for future rail use is a sensible idea.

In the USA some railtrails are hundreds of miles long.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katy_Trail_State_P...

The Katy Trail, 250 miles, largely down to a donation and campaign by one man.

[HappyClappy]

Make them clear it out and rebuild it brick by brick.

If they can’t afford then tell them to delve in to their diversity and inclusion training budget or their pension fund.

It’s about time these public sector leeches are brought to account.

[Ian Geary]

The article says the cost of repointing is only £5k.

But it's not. It's all the future maintenance cost, inspections, avoiding future liability and distribution etc.

I see the post above mine attempted humour (badly) with the notion training budgets could be raided. But any sensible commentator would realise the ongoing maintenance cost of redundant structures is going to massively outstrip trivial running costs like that.

Raiding pension budgets? Really? Why don't you volunteer your pension to preserve redundant structures if you're so keen on them? The idea of using employee's pension funds to cover running costs is fundamentally idiotic, and warrants no further discussion imo.


I have enjoyed cycling on old railways: worth way in Sussex, and the tissington trail in Derbyshire (though the latter doesn't really connect up with anywhere)

I grew up close to the Great Central Railway, who are trying to rebuild the bridges demolished by BR so they can LARP their childhood railway dreams. But it's largely privately funded, so if that's their thing: why not?


I think there is a need to review future use of redundant track, both for leisure use and alternative travel routes, before any irreversible decisions like this bridge are made

But unless tax payers (ie you) want to either pay more tax, or accept the deterioration of the highways as existing budgets are diverted, we have to be rational about preserving every bit of something that was ever built.

The heritage campaign groups etc have perhaps never had a job where they are trying to balance multiple commitments that exceed the resources they've been given.

The example in the article is obviously very ugly though, and needs a bit of landscaping I think.

[anonymous-user]

yellowjack said:

The reason a lot of people give for not commuting by bike is "too much traffic". another popular reason is "it's too hilly". perhaps if you take away the motor traffic and delete any significant incline by opening up old railway lines as bike paths you'll find more people willing to take that trip to town, or their daily commute, by bicycle. With the net benefit of taking cars off the road and reducing congestion.

I am looking at exactly this now - seeing how to encourage thousands more cycle journeys every day in a town within my patch.

"Delete the incline", well, yes let's move that hill.

Simple fact is there ARE too many hills where I'm looking, nobody rides up them, everyone (except non-commuting lycra hardcore TdF-loving types) pushes cycles up them. Or they ride around the base of the main hills via a FOOTpath through the local park (cycles not permitted in the park) to get around the hills.

0.9% of all traffic in the area is cycles - and this is the second largest urban area in one of the largest, richest, most populous counties in the UK. It has been that level for years. I can't see 0.9% being enough to justify opening up old rail lines or removing traffic from the roads.

And opening up the old rail network will not do anything significant for commuting cyclist. The old rail lines are branch lines between villages, any "desirable" commuting terminals will have railway station. Little Bumthorpe to Stranley St Martin on the Wold is, I'm sure, not a hugely busy commuter route.

[catso]

Not the first, there's a disused railway bridge about a mile from my house that had the same done to it last year.

Road bridge over a long abandoned railway line that is the only access to a small village and the bridge has had various movement gauges attached to it for that last 20 years or so as it was obviously at risk.

I don't know that anyone has complained about it though? but, the only people who ever see it are the locals that would have been completely cut off if it failed and, to be fair it has been landscaped so that the hill on either side is grass & wild flowers rather than just concrete. The footpath underneath now diverts up & over.

There are also a couple of railway over road bridges nearby that were knocked down as they were a height hazard on the main(ish) roads, though the nearest one to us on a very minor country lane still stands and hopefully will for some time as, at 14ft high and narrow, it stops the road being used as a shortcut for the high/heavy vehicles that the road isn't really capable of taking.

Generally speaking bridges that carried the trains rather than road traffic survive better due to the heavier duty construction...

[ChocolateFrog]

Regardless of the rights, wrongs and legalities.

What an abortion of a job.