{"id":14462,"date":"2015-02-04T07:46:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T07:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=14462"},"modified":"2015-02-04T07:46:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T07:46:51","slug":"harbury-tunnel-landslide-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/02\/04\/harbury-tunnel-landslide-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Harbury Tunnel landslide: an update from Network Rail"},"content":{"rendered":"
Harbury Tunnel landslide<\/h5>\n

Yesterday, Network Rail put out a press release providing a great deal more information<\/a> about the status of the Harbury Tunnel landslide in Central England<\/a>.\u00a0 From a landslides perspective the key information is that they had been undertaking stabilisation work on the slope after the landslides on 14th February 2014.\u00a0 They are now estimating that 350,000 tonnes of material will need to be removed, such that the railway line will remain closed for some weeks.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most helpful aspect is the images that they released of the site.\u00a0 This one shows an overview of the failed slope:<\/p>\n

\"Harbury<\/a>

Harbury Tunnel landslide courtesy of Network Rail<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Whilst this annotated image shows the failed slope in more detail:<\/p>\n

\"Harbury<\/a>

Harbury Tunnel landslide courtesy of Network Rail<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The openness and the clarity of information provided by Network Rail is very admirable.\u00a0 The Harbury Tunnel landslide is complex – the big (4 m) drop of material at the top of the slope appears to support a rotational mechanism, but the very complex deformation in the area of the gravel drains is more difficult to understand and requires proper mapping.\u00a0 The top image suggests that the slope is bulging in the toe area.\u00a0 Weather conditions are currently cold and mostly dry, and fortunately there is no heavy rainfall in the forecast for the coming days.\u00a0 Once the slope stops moving then it might be possible to start to carefully remove material from the crest, which will improve the stability of the site, allowing proper mitigation.<\/p>\n

An important question is centred on how this failure occurred during the stabilisation works.\u00a0 Network Rail and its consultants have both very skilled engineers and robust design and construction practices.\u00a0 It will be interesting to find out in due course what unanticipated factor led to this slope failure.\u00a0 At present no structures at the top of the slope have been affected, and the tunnel itself looks to be outside the boundaries of the slide.\u00a0 From those perspectives the Harbury Tunnel landslide could have been far worse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Network Rail released more information, and some good images, of the Harbury Tunnel landslide in Central England. The images suggest a complex failure mechanism involving 350,000 tonnes of material<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":14464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[580,182,469,959,80,6,355,133],"class_list":["post-14462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-embankment","tag-england","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-railway","tag-train","tag-tunnel","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}