The Curse of the Column strikes again! Hardly had the ink dried on my hopefully upbeat November piece about the Esk Valley line than a winter of discontent began to unfold. And not just because of the actions – or rather inactions – of members of the Rail, Maritime & Transport union, or the paralysing effects of the ‘Beast from the East’.
First, the school train, luckily early on its journey, so with relatively few passengers, collided with a cow on the line, with substantial damage to the former and terminal damage to the latter.
Next, following a ‘misunderstanding’, a train was taken through points which had previously been securely chocked for the opposite route at the end of the passing loop at Glaisdale, causing sufficient damage to close the line for two days and put the passing loop again temporarily out of use.
Then came the pièce de résistance. Just days before Network Rail was due to replace said damaged points, some genius tried to drive an over-height truck beneath the bridge at Castleton at such speed that the impact shifted the entire bridge deck sideways by some 100mm, sufficient to render it potentially unsafe and distort the track above, leaving both the railway and the road below…
