One of the country’s most important railway lines has been shut until mid-June for emergency repairs on a viaduct, disrupting the journeys of a million passengers.
About 240 trains normally cross the Thames on the Nuneham viaduct between Didcot and Oxford every day. But it was closed at short notice at 10.30am on April 3 after Network Rail decided it was no longer safe.
The decision was so sudden that some trains had to be turned around en route. John Smith, chief executive of GB Railfreight, said: “It came to a head within about two hours.”
Reconstruction will continue for ten weeks, and possibly longer, cutting off the route from London Paddington to Oxford and the Cotswolds, and between the Midlands and the south coast.
The disruption, however, is not the fault of management but probably the consequence of penny pinching in 1929, at the start of the Great Depression.
The original bridge, built in 1844 in the early days of the
Great Western Railway (GWR), was made of timber, and replaced in 1856 with an iron structure. That in turn was replaced in 1907 with two steel spans, and a pier in the middle of the river, and, in 1929, the abutment on the north bank was rebuilt with a brick structure.
Sources at
Network Rail say the only part of the bridge that has largely been left untouched since Victorian times is the abutment on the south bank. This needs to be replaced because it is to blame for dangerous movements — measured in millimetres — that have twisted the railway lines above. Alarming fissures have appeared in the brick arches.
It is not known why the abutment was not replaced in 1929, although it is likely that it was to save money in those straitened times. Structural diagrams in the archives are so vague that the reconstruction team does not know what to expect when they demolish it.
They may find it has timber rather than steel at its core and even the piles driven into the clay could be made of wood. When the abutment is rebuilt it will rest on steel piles driven at least 25 metres deep. The work will cost between £7 million and £10 million, and one source warned that it was unlikely to be ready by the target date of June 10.
Network Rail sources say there was never a risk of the viaduct collapsing. The stability of the south abutment was investigated in 2019 and last year, and a remote monitoring system was installed in January.
When the railway tracks started curving and twisting, a 20mph limit was imposed and then 5mph. Finally, in March, polymer grouting was injected into the foundations of the abutment and at just below track level, but it failed to stabilise it. By April 3, movements exceeded safe limits, and a structures engineer and a track engineer made the joint decision to shut it immediately.
In normal times, GWR operated 168 passenger trains from Paddington to Oxford each day, with the fastest journey taking 52 minutes, and Cross Country operated 32, including the route from Bournemouth on the south coast via Oxford and Birmingham to Manchester.
In the year to April 2022, five million passengers got on or off trains at Oxford. Train operators will have to be compensated.
While the viaduct is being fixed, GWR is providing 200 rail replacement bus services a day, adding 40 minutes to a typical journey from Didcot to Oxford.
The company is also in talks to switch some of its rolling stock to an alternative route from Marylebone station in London through the Chilterns to Oxford.
Even securing sufficient buses has been a struggle — a recent rule change on access for disabled people means coaches are deemed inaccessible, and buses must have flat floors.
Smith, of GB Railfreight, worries that the line closure may drive goods from the railways to the roads. “Customers are beginning to get a little frustrated,” he said. “It comes on the back of what has not been a very reliable railway over the past three or four months.”
Nuneham Viaduct links Southampton, the UK’s second-busiest container port, with the Midlands, and before it closed, nearly 900 containers crossed it each day. Smith is already diverting some goods bound for the north via London, but this week he will struggle to find enough train drivers because of another problem elsewhere in the network.
Engineering works are planned on the line that links Felixstowe, the UK’s busiest container port, with the Midlands, and it is also sending goods trains via the capital. Only a limited pool of drivers are familiar with the changed routes.
A recent report on the state of the railways by the Office of Rail and Road regulator, says that Network Rail “needs to make improvements to how it manages its assets” and said that of its five regions, three — North West & Central, Wales & Western, and Scotland’s Railway — failed to achieve their targets for the year. The Eastern region failed to examine 10,767 out of the 16,063 structures in its portfolio.
However, Network Rail plays down concerns that it lacks the funds to keep its network in good repair. It says it will receive £44.1 billion for the next five years, up from £40.8 billion in the period of 2019-24. It remotely monitors thousands of bridges, tunnels, embankments and points.
For one disgruntled Oxford resident, already frustrated by restrictions on travelling within the city, the latest blow is hard to stomach. John Mair, a former BBC producer, said: “You can’t get from one end of the city to the other, and now you can’t get on the fast route to London. Where’s the transport policy?”
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