The hard work continues at Dawlish

Not only did the company need to start repairs, there was also a lot of debris that could have endangered public safety. Rocks and bricks were strewn across the beach, as were parts of Dawlish railway station!

Says Burnell: “It was a four-mile stretch that was closed. If you walked to it from Dawlish, you would keep finding bits of wall.”

The popular walkway along the wall was also closed (some of it still is). Public access could not be granted until it was safe.

“People do not understand the force of a big wave. It is frightening. It isn’t like anything else,” says Burnell.

The entire walkway has since been repaired with replacement stones, capping and general repairs where needed.

One of the first tasks was to remove the track that was dangling from the 80-metre hole in the sea wall, although Burnell says: “In actual fact, it made you think: ‘How tough are our welds?’ The track was hanging there, getting hammered by the sea, and they were holding.”

Even so, the problem of hanging track clearly had to be resolved.

Says Burnell: “We chopped the tracks down. One went onto the walkway to try and give stability, and the other was on the side of the slip for the same reason. It helped for a little bit afterwards.”

Because of the location of the railway through Dawlish, NR is often told there are problems that subsequently turn out to be not as severe as perhaps initially reported. This can sometimes lead to scepticism.

Says Burnell: “Because it is so exposed, the initial reaction is ‘it’s Dawlish’. But we have a specific repair team, and we have systems in place to deal with problems.”

He then surprises RAIL: “In many ways we were very, very lucky.”

How can NR have been lucky?

“People got calls about the wall, and just got going. There was no haggling over deals, it just happened.”

That teams were already at a possession at Whiteball Tunnel (between Tiverton and Taunton) was also fortunate. That project was concluding, with the railway set to re-open. A lot of the required equipment was therefore already close at hand, including a concrete machine that meant the wall could be sprayed with concrete. While no structural work could be done immediately, that would at least offer some protection.

Glynn Eley is Project Manager for Network Rail, the main contractor at the Dawlish Warren compound where the repair work is based these days. He explains that problems continue to be encountered regarding the repairs.

“We were not allowed to work on the beach,” he says. “We could not do test anchors for the wall, as we couldn’t drill down.”

He says the multi-coloured containers that are on site have certainly proven their worth. Battered, bruised and dented, they acted as another line of defence for the wall when the second round of storms hit.

They were delivered to Dawlish Warren on February 7. Road/railers were used to transport them to the site, a 21-tonne excavator was positioned to assist, and by low tide they were in place, loaded with up to five tonnes of ballast made up from what was left of that section of the sea wall. The work took 36 hours to complete.

Again NR was lucky, because the way the wall collapsed meant that the debris wasn’t scattered, but condensed in one area.

Eley recalls: “When I first arrived at the site there was a big hole. The track had been picked up and it was spray concreted. That saved the undercut house.”

Repairs are ongoing 24 hours a day. But the location is “tricky”, Eley admits. The tides create a problem. And then there is the wind to contend with. The southeasterly winds are the worst because they drive the waves against the wall (it was from this direction that the destructive waves of February 4 came).

It’s not even winter yet, and the waves have already caused problems for the repair team. Equipment has been damaged, while some buoys that were moored just off the site have been cut free and floated away.

When RAIL visited on October 2, Eley’s team were preparing suitability anchors, so that work can then progress on rebuilding the wall. It was being checked up to 27 metres in front of the containers. The problem is that there is not enough rock to drill into of sufficient quality.

“Currently there is rail at the top, and then AMCO is putting in a levelling screen at the low level. Then units will go into this, which will be anchored into the rock, and then we will backfill,” says Eley.

Ballast on the trackbed has been glued, having already been tamped. This means it is solid and shouldn’t move, even in the event of another storm. The entire wall hasn’t been treated, just the sections where waves are known to come over. Burnell says that there have yet to be any problems.

So when should the project be finished?

Says Eley: “When we started out it was ‘get it done as soon as possible’. Then it was ‘get it done by February’. But there are problems, such as finding the rocks. The project has been delayed. Possibly we may have to use revised methodology, so it is drifting to possibly March or April. The other problem is that you just cannot tell with the weather.”

Amco and NR use MeteoGroup for forecasting, but other sources can also be used. However, what is expected or predicted isn’t necessarily what happens, as RAIL’s visit illustrated.

The tide was due to be at its lowest at 1800. That’s when RAIL visited the site, only to find a southeasterly wind blowing the waves against the wall. The tide therefore didn’t go that far out, certainly not enough to enable access to the worksite. And this is September - when the winter storms hit, the delays could be much more prolonged.

“The weather window is the biggest challenge,” says Eley.

Recently, a barge appeared at Dawlish. This is used to transport materials to the site, otherwise they would have to come by rail, which Eley says would create massive problems.

The barge holds six pre-cast units, and Eley says that if Amco has a “good spell”, then over a 24-hour period they can all be installed in the wall. In total 164 units are to be fitted, each weighing 15 tonnes, with deliveries due to start as this issue of RAIL went to press. This means that the tide will cause fewer problems. The barge is served by tugs that arrive from nearby Teignmouth Docks.

A 250t crane is also located on the barge, and there is an option for a second barge to arrive if required. But they do not come cheap.

“The likelihood is that it will be here until January, says Eley. “There’s an alternative method of holding the units in place that will, in turn, hold the rock anchors. We’d like to finish by Christmas.”

Today there are around 30 people working on the repairs - at the project’s height there were 350 to 400.

“We were getting people from where we could,” says Burnell. “We also sucked up concrete supplies until the autumn.”

Most of the workers who were here at the start have now left, although a few remain.

Eley enthuses: “It is amazing. I should have retired. I’m seconded to Network Rail. I wanted to finish my career on it. I have never seen such collaborative work in my 45-year career. It has been brilliant.”

How did he get involved?

“I had just finished an accident and emergency department at Taunton. We were then called in.”

Another who has been at Dawlish almost from the start is AMCO Rail’s Chris Warburton, one of the ‘Great Westerners’ who appeared on YouTube (RAIL 759).