In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED] m>, Adrian Stott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >Bruce Napier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> >>On 13 Jul 2007, at 19:35, Brian Dominic wrote: >> >>>> That seems to me to be remarkably un-urgent. >>>> >>> ........ because it's a freight-only line with an alternative route >>> available, and "they're only pleasure boaters".............. >>> >>Not quite right, AIUI. The Newmarket to Ely passenger service has been >>replaced with buses. Restoration of the rail service will take longer >>than restoring the navigation, which only depends on making the bridge >>safe, not reconstructing it. > >You're making my point. > >If the railway had to pay a substantial per-hour compensation fee for >the time its activities block the navigation, then the railway would >have a strong incentive to get the navigation reopened quickly, i.e. >not *after* it gets the trains running again.
That's actually what's likely to happen. Once the roadway has been built, including the ramps up and down the flood banks, and the cranes manoevred into place, the railway wagons - one of which is hanging over the river a couple of feet above water - and any unsafe bits of bridge removed, the EA will send divers in to check the river and (having removed any cargo and wreckage blocking the channel) will reopen the river to navigation. Reopening the railway may well take quite a bit longer as it will involve replacing parts of the bridge. I guess this could result in further shorter stoppages to navigation while girders are lifted into place. I'm not sure how much quicker the river could practicably have been reopened to navigation if your proposed compensation system had been in place. (On the other hand, it might well make the railway operators even more reluctant than they already are when it comes to reinstating crossings of active railways lines for waterways under restoration.) > >You can bet that would be the case if a train fell off a bridge over a >motorway. ...mainly because they wouldn't then have to spend several weeks building a road so that they could get their cranes to the site. They could drive them along the motorway. I don't quite understand why folks see it as such a big issue - a very unusual and unlikely accident (I don't recall a train accident causing a lengthy waterway closure in the last thirty years or so) has shut a route used only by pleasure boats for a couple of months, with an alternative route available for private boats. The only real losers seem to me to be the hire firms whose boats have been trapped on an inconvenient side of the blockage and have had to be shifted around it. It would be good if their expenses could be reclaimed from the rail operator(s). > >Isn't this yet another reason to transfer the EA navigations to BW? > Ah, maybe I do... -- Martin Ludgate
