Top civil engineer to see SVR damage

10:55am Tuesday 31st July 2007

BRITAIN'S top civil engineer is to visit Severn Valley Railway on Friday to witness for himself how the line has been devastated by flooding and study unique civil engineering solutions being adopted to rebuild it.

Professor Quentin Leiper, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the most influential man in his field, is to be given a conducted tour of some of the worst-hit sections of the line, three-quarters of which has been closed since mid-June, when rainstorms of unprecedented severity washed away numerous sections of the railway.

At Highley Station, scene of some of the worst devastation, Prof Leiper will be met by SVR general manager Nick Ralls at 10.45am and be shown the chasm in the track left by a deluge of floodwater which also wrecked three bungalows below the line.

A display of photographs cataloguing some of the 45 "incident sites", where the 16-mile line was hit by the storms in June and near-relentless rain during most of July, will be shown, including some of the aerial photographs which helped pinpoint potential further landslides.

Fully rebuilding the SVR line, originally estimated at around £1 million, is now expected to cost at least £2.5 million.

During his two-hour tour, conducted by SVR consulting civil engineer, Jonathan Symonds, of David Symonds Associates and SVR chief engineer, Phil Sowden, Prof Leiper, of Bridgnorth, will be shown some of the unique civil engineering solutions deployed to remedy the embankment washaways and flooding at Oldbury Viaduct and Knowlesands Tunnel near Bridgnorth, and at Hampton Loade.

Prof Leiper will also tour the new £5 million Engine House visitor centre and educational facility at Highley, which had been due to open its doors for the first time tomorrow but which, as a result of the flood damage to the line, is not now expected to open until early next year.

Mr Ralls said: "Professor Leiper is one of the most influential voices in civil engineering in this country and we hope we may be able to pull on his technical expertise and use his influence to help us with our recovery."

Despite all it has suffered over the last two months, SVR has not stopped operating trains, daily steam-hauled services continuing on the unaffected southern section of the railway between Kidderminster and Bewdley, although passenger numbers have been severely hit, currently running at only a quarter of normal levels.