Bridge collapse

[charles]

Or "let's keep our cutomers happy"

[Nightjar]

The bridge is the responsibility of Network Rail, not of any of the rail companies running the services. I presume that they have a duty to the rail companies to minimise disruption where possible.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A friend of mine who work's in that industry once muttered 'if all the money they want to spend on HS2 were spend on getting rid of level crossing, fixing bridges that are falling down, and relaying existing track where needed, more passengers would get where they are going with far less disruption....

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 09:07:00 on Sat, 6 Aug 2016, Nightjar remarked:

They will be paying compensation to the train operators (who in turn may be passing part of that on to passengers).

[Weatherlawyer]

I heard that when the large companies owned pre-nationalised it was well run on a profitable or else basis and that after it was run to death in WW2 the amount of reparations required was too much for the newly elected socialist government to accept.

Whatever the case the sale to speculators by Thatcher seems to have been ill thought out judging by the findings of numerous enquiries after the crashes and disasters.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Are all bridges over railways the responsibility of Network Rail - rather than of the appropriate highway etc authority?

[charles]

If the road was there before the railway, yes. Motorway bridges probably not. We have a road in our village which crosses the railway line (opened 1885). The approaches to the bridge were in danger of collapsing 3 years ago and the whole lot (not the bridge itself) were rebuilt. The Highways Authority (Surrey CC) did the work, but the bill was paid by Newtwork Rail.

[Nightjar]

The general rule, which can be changed by agreement, is that whoever builds a bridge over or under a railway or watercourse or other road (or their successors) is responsible for maintaining it. In this case, the bridge was almost certainly built by the railway, when they made the cutting.

[Fredxxx]

Interesting. I believed that railways would build the bridge over a new road and charge it to the local authority. The LA having no right to build bridges over rail lines.

I an thinking of an example some 20 years ago, where the LA enforced the building of a bridge through the courts as the railway co was dragging their feet.

Has that changed since?

Maintenance of a bridge shouldn't be expected for 100 years or so, so would fall on the body responsible for building it. A LA's notional timescale of action, tendering etc, would be very different from a rail company's.

[charles]

how does "never" compare with "never"?

[Fredxxx]

On 06/08/2016 18:12, charles wrote:

[Nightjar]

I am only giving the general case, which applies in the absence of any specific agreement. While it would also be the guiding principle for any new construction, as I said, it can be varied by agreement between the authorities concerned.

There have been some significant exceptions - box girder bridges built in the 1960s needed major work within a fairly short time and a lot of structures built around the same time using high alumina cement crumbled, due to improper use of the material. With road bridges there is also the potential problem of impact damage.

For infrastructure, I would have thought they would be broadly similar.

[damduck-egg]

Out of the four companies that operated most of the railway network the two whose business was mainly North of London and up to Scotland were hardly profitable. The LMS and LNER whose traffic came from the industrial Midlands and North had been greatly affected by the depression of the 30's and never recovered. The LMS had made a small return on investment but a lot of it came from other sources such as ferries and hotels and for what was one of the largest companies in the world at the time it was a poor one. The LNER never made a profit in its existence, the Mallard and Flying Scotsman giving an illusion that it was a prosperous operation when the bread and butter was coming from the declining carriage of coal . The managements did not do too much to oppose nationisation as it gave them a solution out of a sticky spot, the two companies serving the more prosperous South and West the Southern and GWR were in a better position but it was only the GWR that made serious noises about opposing state ownership and were already looking to the future by trying out a couple of Gas Turbine Locos.

G.Harman

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And, of course, the Forth Road Bridge. Went on a school trip to see it being built.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's one of those myths so beloved of the right wing that the railways were profitable and ran perfectly just before nationalization. When in fact there were plenty of smaller lines that never made a profit from the day they were built. And then add in the lack of investment and damage in the war years.

[charles]

Salt water doesn't nasty things to steel and iron. That is why the original Forth Bridge (rail) was continually being repainted.

[charles]

It should have read "Salt water does nasty...."

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And has lasted rather more than 50 years. ;-)

[Capitol]

Yes, when it's obsolete it's frequently reliable! Being over engineered helped also.

[Andrew]

The Humber road bridge is suffering from corrosion inside the cable bundles.

They have installed microphones that are connected to sensitive recording devices that listen for the ping when an individual strand breaks. From this they can deduce when to start imposing weight limits.

Saw this on 'Coast' (I think).

The original Severn Road Bridge needed extensive internal strngthening of the box sections after a similar design collapsed sowewhere down in West Wales, or the West Country during construction.