Monday 3 Apr 2006
NETWORK RAIL POURS £2 MILLION DOWN THE DRAIN – AND KEEPS BADGERS SAFE
- Region & Route:
Network Rail has poured a total of £2 million pounds into five separate drainage and earthwork schemes on railway lines in the North West, which will protect them and keep them reliable for passengers.
One of the projects, at Aikbank, between Wigton and Aspatria on the Cumbria coast railway, has also benefited some local badgers who have been provided with a new sett at a secret location, keeping them safe from local badger baiters.
Gary Openshaw, Network Rail’s Area General Manager for Lancs & Cumbria said: “The heavy rainfall in the county can present real challenges for the railway, much of which runs through flood plains. Network Rail is tackling this with a huge investment in the area allowing our earthwork and drainage experts to deal with this effectively.”
The five projects are:
Birdcage Walk in Shap (between Penrith and Oxenholme): £590,000 to create new slope face drains leading down to track level. The work is expected to be finished by the end of April
Scout Green (two miles south of Shap): £425,000 is being invested to prevent water running onto the railway, re-grading to lessen the angle of the slope, and installing drains along the top and leading down to the tracks to channel the water away. The site will be covered in rabbit netting to prevent them burrowing into the embankment. The work will be finished at the end of April.
Lakenthwaite (six miles from Oxenholme): £189,000 to put a drain along the top of the eight metre high embankment, with slope drains leading down to the railway line
Wreay (five miles from Carlisle on the West Coast Main Line) installation of a new slope drain and improvements to the track drainage. This should be finished in early April
Aikbank (between Wigton and Aspatria on the Cumbria coast railway): vegetation clearance, re-grading of the slope, lessening of the angle of the embankment, and installation of slope drains to take the water to track level. Work was completed by the end of March
About Network Rail
We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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