News 90mph winds to batter UK on Monday

[Hawkwind]

Portsmouth uni is closed till midday :/

The bigger question is did the students notice?

 

[dysfunction]

I do love this attitude, if a branch has blown onto the track would you rather your train company run a slow train or would you rather your train hits it at 60 and derails. It does not matter how good your reactions are you can't stop a speeding train because you see a problem. Hence after the worst of the wind between 8-9 in my area a train will ride the rails at 5mph looking for debris. If there is none then normal service can resume.

As several members of my family work for the train company I don't really care what your answer is I am glad Network Rail are doing the right thing.

I have no problem with that at all. Im happy for them to get the line cleared.

However my line is still closed because a few leaves got blown onto the tracks. There has not been heavy wind here at all so there shouldn't be any delay.

 

[kirennia]

Was quite windy last night but didn't seem too bad. Then this morning I saw a lot of branches and one tree on the road... apparently 90mph around Havant area, resulting in trains being cancelled until around midday. Home working it is then!

 

[Aoami]

Was quite windy last night but didn't seem too bad. Then this morning I saw a lot of branches and one tree on the road... apparently 90mph around Havant area, resulting in trains being cancelled until around midday. Home working it is then!

fareham -> eastleigh/winchester is closed for the day. My brother had to get home to Norfolk to Hedge End and my dad had to drive him all the way to Basingstoke to find a train to put him on.

 

[Ctuchik]

The west coast here in Sweden is getting hit pretty badly now. Trees falling down and blowing around as if they were twigs, a few houses partially collapsing, signs coming lose and blowing around and all kinds of scary stuff. At the moment there's a class 3 warning out there (winds up to 30 - 35 meter per second), and pretty much everything except emergency stuff are closed or are about to close.. Here on the east coast it's still calm with only a bit of rain and mild gusts with the lights flickering every once in a while, but it will most likely get worse tomorrow morning.

 

[Ctuchik]

I have no problem with that at all. Im happy for them to get the line cleared.

However my line is still closed because a few leaves got blown onto the tracks. There has not been heavy wind here at all so there shouldn't be any delay.

No it's probably closed because somewhere DOWN the line shit is really fucked up. Just because your part is ok doesn't mean the rest of it is.

 

[old.user4556]

Can we agree that this wasn't overhyped?

 

[rynnor]

Media are bored - not much happening at the moment so they grabbed at it - I find it marginally preferable to news of the royals latest brat tho.

 

[old.Tohtori]

The west coast here in Sweden is getting hit pretty badly now. Trees falling down and blowing around as if they were twigs, a few houses partially collapsing, signs coming lose and blowing around and all kinds of scary stuff. At the moment there's a class 3 warning out there (winds up to 30 - 35 meter per second), and pretty much everything except emergency stuff are closed or are about to close.. Here on the east coast it's still calm with only a bit of rain and mild gusts with the lights flickering every once in a while, but it will most likely get worse tomorrow morning.

Well crap. Hopefully the sea tones it down a bit.

 

[soze]

I suffered my first casualty of the day. Driving home down the pitch black back roads and the council in their infinite wisdom decided to leave a chopped up tree on the side of the road on a cunting bend. Bye Bye wing mirror.

 

[Lamp]

Well, I got woken up by the sound of the wind about 7am

Looked out the window, saw the trees moving about a bit, some leaves being blown down the street, and the odd plastic bottle and that's about it. Oh, the odd big branch by the side of the road, apart from that, didn't see any damage.

Heard 2 ppl died when an uprooted tree broke a gas pipe. Three houses exploded.

 

[rynnor]

Why dont they cut down all the trees that are next to the railway tracks? It just seems to be an accident waiting to happen?

 

[soze]

Why dont they cut down all the trees that are next to the railway tracks? It just seems to be an accident waiting to happen?

I think that Network Rail documentary said it is because train tracks are ugly and if they were previously hidden by trees and Network Rial cut them down then residents can complain and they have had to re plat trees in the past.

Also the other side would be would you rather see trees going past the window or drab office buildings. Maybe they just need no trees within xyz feet of the tracks?

 

[caLLous]

They destroyed enough "nature" putting the tracks in in the first place, the least they could do is leave some of it there afterwards. A 100-foot-wide (or whatever) swathe of nothing just to pre-empt a once-in-a-generation storm vs. a day or 2 of inconvenience clearing up the tracks.

 

[Raven]

Won't somebody think of the children though!?

 

[Zarjazz]

Won't somebody think of the children though!?

Less often since Jimmy Savile died.

 

[rynnor]

They destroyed enough "nature" putting the tracks in in the first place, the least they could do is leave some of it there afterwards. A 100-foot-wide (or whatever) swathe of nothing just to pre-empt a once-in-a-generation storm vs. a day or 2 of inconvenience clearing up the tracks.

Trees fall down all the time though (particularly recently with multiple types of tree disease) - if you have thousands of trees by the track you can expect one to fall almost anytime. The % of ground covered by railway tracks is tiny - farming destroyed the forests.

 

[Edmond]

Also i would imagine the roots of the trees go under the track, if you start cutting them down i bet the tracks would start to move and sink due to the roots dying underneath them.

A friend had a big tree cut down next to his house a few yrs ago and within 6 months the house had subsidence

 

[rynnor]

Also i would imagine the roots of the trees go under the track, if you start cutting them down i bet the tracks would start to move and sink due to the roots dying underneath them.

A friend had a big tree cut down next to his house a few yrs ago and within 6 months the house had subsidence

If that's true their growth would also wreck the rails anyway and have to be cut down.

 

[sayward]

Of course I had an appointment in London on Monday. Fat chance. No trains. Hope they are running tomorrow,

 

[Aoami]

Had to get picked up from work because there are still no trains on my line, what a palava.

 

[Olgaline]

Also:

View attachment 16762

Indeed, but thats England for you, it's the same when they get a 3 snowflake winter season and start randomly crashing into stuff

 

[Edmond]

what a palava.

Sounds more like a Hulla-Baloo!!

 

[Lamp]

Nah. Leave the trees there.

Put flame-throwers and industrial buzz-saws on robotic arms on the front of each train and small laser-guided missiles for scrotes who like to throw shit off bridges.

EVERYONE would want to become a train driver. Train strike? Pff! 10 minutes in one of those and Bob Crow would never open his fat overpaid mouth again.

 

[sayward]

Wednesday was just as bad. A broken down train somewhere so none of the trains on time, Train they did run was crammed because no previous trains had run thro Gatwick and East Croydon. And I'd stupidly forgotten it's half term. So everything was manic.

 

[soze]

Broken down trains are a pain because we only have single tracks and not a lot of places to switch. So as soon as one breaks down they have to send a Thunderbird to pull it back to a depot. And this can take well over an hour in Essex. If trains could run on the other track for half a mile while avoiding the broken down train it would mean they did not have to stop the whole network in one direction.

 

[sayward]

southern rail are telling me I can't get a refund on a pre paid ticket! There were NO trains!

 

[Tom]

Trees fall down all the time though (particularly recently with multiple types of tree disease) - if you have thousands of trees by the track you can expect one to fall almost anytime. The % of ground covered by railway tracks is tiny - farming destroyed the forests.

A good percentage of Britain's forests were destroyed well before agriculture was developed. We're talking thousands of years ago.

 

[rynnor]

A good percentage of Britain's forests were destroyed well before agriculture was developed. We're talking thousands of years ago.

Clearance for farming has taken place since Neolithic times (3500BC approx) - its thought that by 500 BC half the forests had been cleared for agriculture.

By 1066 is was down to 15%.

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/QJF_...f/$file/QJF_legacy_of_fragmentation_may06.pdf