Lineside vegetation compromises railway safety

In RAIL 869’s Comment, Richard Clinnick asks what the railways are for. Anyone would think from reading John Varley’s article in the same issue that they are for cultivation.

Is this attitude part of our native undervaluing of the railways as a vital prime mover? To be properly informed and to have a balanced debate, we must recognise the full range of problems caused by lineside vegetation. Those problems may include: Track circuit failures. Slipping and sliding, caused (like track circuit failures) by leaf mulch and the demise of tread brakes.

Trees and branches falling onto the track, overhead wiring, and/or lineside apparatus.

Encroachment into the kinematic envelope.

Root encroachment against or into drains.

Root or seed propagation into the ballast.

Seclusion for criminal activity, which may include cable theft, trespass, fly tipping, suicide, level crossing misuse, terrorism, vandalism and/or on-train disorder.

Impairment/obstruction of detrainment or train inspection activities, and of places of safety, because of dense foliage encroachment on the cess. Obstruction of access points. Walking surfaces made slippery by leaf mulch and leaf accumulation, or made hazardous by trailing roots.

Clogging of drains and ballast by leaves and leaf mulch.

Obscuring of signals, including signallers’ visibility from the box of their own signals.

Obscuring of speed restriction or other signage, and of the driver’s lateral and forward view - particularly in this context of trees or branches fallen onto a curving line ahead.

Obscuring of passengers’ views from train windows, making train journeys as potentially dull as passing through very long tunnels.

Encouragement of trespass by foragers attracted to ripe edible fruit on trees and bushes.

Concealment of smart modern frequent trains from public awareness of their existence and availability, amounting to loss of inter-visibility between the railway and the community.

The photographs in RAIL 869 on page 52 (top) and 54 (bottom) illustrate much of the above.

Against all this, it does have to be recognised that tree and shrub roots can help stabilise sloping ground, but I can’t think of any other operational benefits. And by the way, I like trees - in their proper place, such as in my garden, in the countryside in general, in residential streets and in parks, but not (please) on the railway.

Steam-era photographs show immaculate linesides kept completely free of vegetation apart from short grass. I’ve noticed that Transport for London has recently been clearing vegetation from its surface linesides - where steam trains most certainly do not operate.

Railways are for moving people and goods, and there’s an end of it. That imperative must not be compromised by treating our tracksides as shrubberies, country parks, wildlife ranges or arboreta. Let’s leave that role to the motorways and trunk roads if it suits them any better, which I somewhat doubt.

On the railway, we must make safety paramount - in deed as well as in soundbite.