NR’s 100-year plan to keep Dawlish line open
NETWORK Rail is spending £15 million worth of Government money on a series of studies to establish what must be done in the next 100 years to keep the railway line through Dawlish and Teignmouth running.
As part of the project, ultra-high definition drone footage is being taken above the coastal line to help engineers build a model of the cliffs. Also, groundwork and surveying investigations will help to establish the business case for upgrading the line.
“I see the resulting work as being a package of works over a number of years,” Network Rail’s Western Route Managing Director Mark Langman told RAIL at one of the sites - Parson’s Tunnel, near Teignmouth.
“What we are doing is basing our work on a 100-year plan - taking into account things like climate change, what we know and what we’re forecasting. So it won’t be one big bang project, it will be a staged package of works, prioritising on key sites.”
Although Langman could not comment on the work that needs to be done to keep the line running through to Penzance, he ruled out building a ‘Dawlish Avoider’ line (the idea proposed by Plymouth Sutton and Devonport MP Luke Pollard, RAIL 852).
“After the sea wall event [where storms shut the line for two months in 2014], work was undertaken to look at the business case for an inland route to Plymouth, and what that demonstrated was a really low business case return rate,” said Langman.
“What an inland scheme doesn’t do is help towns like Dawlish and Torbay, who will still be cut off from the network. Doing this piece of work, looking at the longer-term, 100-year resilience of the coastal route, actually provides resilience to the railway in the South West and protects the towns’ connections to the network.”
As well as improving the line’s resilience, another positive could come out of the works - improved line speeds along the twisty line.
“Once we develop the coastal
schemes, we will look at speed upgrades along the sea wall,” said Langman.
“For instance, if there is realignment of the railway that might give us an opportunity to speed it up. But we’re not sure about that yet, and these investigations will tell us.”
Langman also revealed a desire to improve the “patchy” mobile phone signal along the line. RAIL travelled along the route to Cornwall in early May, and found the majority of the line between Exeter and Plymouth did not offer mobile internet signal - a major problem if you need to work while traveling.
“Mobile phone signal is patchy, and something I’m really keen on is to lead the way in looking to identify and fill gaps by working with telecoms providers and looking to see how we can use existing Network Rail infrastructure to see how we might be able to provide that.
“I think that’s a key part. It’s not just about the journey time, it’s also about connectivity and the ability to work on the train, as everyone needs to these days.”