Protecting the railways

WHILST admiring the photograph of Clun Castle in Edge Hill cutting (October issue, page 56), I was struck yet again by a picture illustrating extensive growth of shrubs and greenery on railway infrastructure. A rock cutting was not designed to be an arboretum!

I suspect this must be a phenomenon throughout the railway network. Indeed I have noted such ongoing growth over recent years on a bridge and a viaduct nearby in Slateford, Edinburgh. The deleterious impact of such growth, and the difficulty of its removal once established, must be both extensive and costly.

Allied to the above, reference by ‘Industry Update’ (page 37), of the failure of revenue protection, calls into question the stewardship of the railway assets by its management, a failure which must exacerbate the financial and other burdens faced by the railways.

Beyond that, how does the request/ pleading for investment sit with a situation where there appears to be a failure to protect what is already there? In the domestic sphere, such a failure would not only put one’s security at risk, but probably also excite the interest of one’s house insurers. Gordon Jefferson Balerno, Midlothian