Since the world’s first passenger train service began in the north of England almost 200 years ago, UK railways have inherited more than 19,000 miles of track, which are increasingly stressed by variations in temperature and rainfall unprecedented Over the next five years, infrastructure owner Network Rail plans to spend $3.5 billion on system resilience.
“Climate change is the biggest challenge facing our railways,” said NR chief executive Andrew Haines, announcing the state-owned company’s £57bn five-year total spending plan. dollars through 2029. The “unprecedented” impact of 14 named storms hit the country. The UK last year “has taken its toll on our railways with experts predicting more of the same”.
Covering new works and maintenance, climate resilience spending will focus on stabilizing ground movements in around 20,000 embankments and cuts with improved drainage and better monitoring.
As well as predictive and monitoring technology, NR will train hundreds of key staff in the Weather Academy it set up in 2022 with the National Weather Service, Newcastle University and consultancy MetDesk Ltd.
After a period of record high temperatures, NR in the summer of 2022 established an Extreme Weather Resilience Working Group of independent experts including a veteran civil engineer and a climatologist.
With a heritage dating back to the September 1825 commissioning of the 26-mile Stockton and Darlington Railway, NR now “demonstrates a relatively high maturity in climate-resilient planning compared to other rail operators internationally and other sectors,” according to an assessment by the government’s Office of Roads and Rail.
Since the government’s Climate Change Act 2008, NR has tracked its work on climate resilience in reports for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. NR’s most recent report noted a “change of pace” in its efforts following a Scottish train derailment in 2020 on the Aberdeen to Glasgow line.
That August, a train derailed, crashing into a bridge and killing three. In the three hours before the crash, a month’s worth of rain had washed away the remains of a drainage ditch onto the runway, investigators said.
The drainage system was later found to be poorly constructed, but still the accident revealed “how disruptive and potentially dangerous Britain’s volatile climate can be,” said Simon French, chief inspector of Railway Accidents, at that time. “The rail industry needs to think about the implications of severe weather on its infrastructure.”
