OT - impressive bit of civil engineering

There's plenty of drone-owners who cover that sort of thing ...

e.g

Yes, but I doubt they could do continuous recording for 10 days. It'd take a fixed position camera - or several - to do the work justice, and a good editor to tie it all together.

They did that with the Werrington Diveunder, to build a tunnel to run diverging freight and passenger trains under the East Coast Main Line at Peterborough - you can't close one of the busiest lines in the country for very long.

The impressive thing about Werrington is not just the tunnel slide, but the approach ramps which are heavily engineered as well. And the tunnel itself is curved to match the radius of the junction.

Theo

The general rule for cuttings and embankments is to have an equal volume of each... And there is nothing wrong with artificial hills, either.

In message <10esadp$3rcqu$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Jeff Layman snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

Several of the HS2 bridges have been done in a similar manner. There was also one on the Midland Main Line in Hertfordshire over Xmas last year.

Watch out for the contractors walking around the area with large trouser legs, and soil falling out them :-)

Likewise.

It does leave me wondering what they are going to do to the M27 next to restrict the flow of traffic. It seems like it has been subjected to continuous road works ("Smart Motorway" conversion, extra emergency parking bays, replacement of the surface) for the best part of a decade.

Adrian

Well over a decade ago they dropped a bridge over the M42 (J4 and 5 AIR) in one go.

I love huge civil engineering projects. Have recently been hearing about the Dambusters and the scale of the dams they busted. Impressive even today.

We've been down here 13 years and it's only the first year or so after we arrived that I can remember the M27 being without some restriction or other. And, of course, there's the missing J6 and the "cut-price" A27 motorway between Portsmouth and Chichester.

There are a lot more missing bits of what was once planned to be the Folkestone -Honiton Trunk road which was planned from 1946 .From the 1970’s to now I have regularly made the journey from the South-West to Hampshire , there have been sections of the road that have improved the journey such as the extended Honiton By Pass, and bypassing of Wimborne ,Tolpuddle , Bere Regis, Dorchester ,Bridport ,Charmouth ,Axminster which I once drove through but there are places between them where the road has hardly changed. Building or improving the route around some places such as Chideock won’t be easy in todays political climate . Many of the new or improved sections constructed in the 1970’s and 1980’s had billboard style signs proclaiming they were works for the Folkestone-Honiton Trunk road but by the 1990’s the name seems to have been dropped. With if I’m lucky about 15-20 driving years left I don’t expect to see the road ever finished, arguably west of Dorchester it isn’t really needed as the A303 gradually gets upgraded but going Eastwards from Pompey Arundel badly needs bypassing as does Worthing , properties around Worthing were once purchased but sold off again years ago. At Crossbush where the route would have carried on to an Arundel bypass some bushes have now become trees.

GH

Funnily enough yesterday I was on the A27 between Fontwell and Shoreham for the first time in years. Arundel wasn't too bad surprisingly, but from the A24 at Broadwater (Grove Lodge roundabout) to Lancing was as bad as I remember it. And it was mid-morning, so not the rush hour.

With all the houses built now close to the A27, it'll never be developed into a motorway. How many times have they tried to settle on an Arundel bypass, and even flyovers at Chichester to avoid the roundabouts (also not too bad yesterday), but never agreed on anything?

The trip back on the A272 was longer in distance and time, but much more pleasant.

They did agree a route for the A27 through Binstead ancient woods and then the Chief Exec of the so-called South Downs National 'Park' (= talking shop) poked her oar in and instigated a judicial 'review'.

Now it is at a halt again. The M27 dual carriageway just stops dead just north of Littlehampton and has been like that since about 1983.

Meanwhile traffic congestion over those 40 years through Worthing has become almost impenetrable and not just during the rush hour.