Lineside vegetation - should we employ more sheep?

[styles]

Network Rail Scotland brought in sheep to clear up giant hogweed on the Dundee to Aberdeen line.

The sheep cleared it rapidly and the NR engineers discovered 200 boxes worth of apples and slows to pick.

Are sheep the future of line side vegetation management?

Remember our four-legged vegetation team in Perth?

After spending the summer grazing giant hogweed, they've done an amazing job- and uncovered an orchard of more than 50 fruit trees in the process!

Our volunteers got picking, with 200+ boxes donated to local foodbanks and charities.

 

[testertrev]

Great stuff! Goats may be better as they will eat pretty much anything put in their way, not sure of the practicalities' though to avoid lineside incursions!

 

[Haywain]

The sheep cleared it rapidly and the NR engineers discovered 200 boxes worth of apples and slows to pick.

Slows?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Slows?

Possible typo for 'Sloes' (= the berry fruit of Blackthorn bushes)?

 

[styles]

Possible typo for 'Sloes' (= the berry fruit of Blackthorn bushes)?

Indeed, sloes. Good for syrup, or a treacle replacement.

 

[Palmerston]

I've often thought Monkey Puzzle trees are the ideal lineside vegetation.

• Hardly drop any leaves ever;
• Grow quite slow;
• Spiky enough to deter trespassers.

 

[Merle Haggard]

Humans or animals touching the plant results in blisters and severe irritation. I just wonder how sheep faces, lips and digestive systems are different.

 

[LickeyIncliner]

Humans or animals touching the plant results in blisters and severe irritation. I just wonder how sheep faces, lips and digestive systems are different.

Apparently they can eat it without harm and actually get to prefer it

https://invasivespecies.scot/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/SISI-Sheep-grazing-management-guidance.pdf

 

[cats_five]

Must be fencing issues though. Don't want trains hitting them.

 

[The exile]

Must be fencing issues though. Don't want trains hitting them.

There used to be a tethered goat on the cutting side between Sydney Gardens and Bathampton Junction (by Hampton Row for the locals). The perfect circle of cropped grass was remarkable.

 

[Magdalia]

Network Rail have used sheep for a long time, see this from 2011:

SHEEP SHEAR COST OF MAINTAINING RAILWAY BEAUTY SPOT

Information for journalists, press, bloggers and the media about Network Rail. Contact the press office to receive news, updates, press releases, videos, pictures, and factsheets, and to arrange interviews, filming and photography

www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk

The four-legged additions to the workforce will dramatically cut the company’s annual £50,000 bill to maintain Great Stukelely railway cutting in Huntingdon, home to rare orchids and wildflowers and a designated site of special scientific interest (SSSI). Network Rail owns and manages 146 SSSIs across Britain, which are protected by law because of their importance to the nation’s natural heritage for their habitats, plants, animals or geology.

The Great Stukeley site stretches for 2 miles along the East Coast Main Line, one of the busiest railway lines in the country, and covers approximately 35 hectares. Regular and careful maintenance is required because rare flowers and native grasses risk being crowded out of their natural habitat if invading species are not regularly cut back – a laborious and costly process.

That is set to change thanks to a new arrangement with Huntingdonshire District Council, which has agreed to take on responsibility for managing the site on Network Rail’s behalf. By signing up to a Natural England Environmental Stewardship scheme, funding is now available to the council to help maintain the site and provide a qualified shepherd to manage the flock of twenty Wiltshire Horn sheep that have been brought in to graze there.