Set Back As Badgers Undermine 11 km Of Railway
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Gazette International.
These four paragraphs outline the problems.
Deutsche Bahn reports that burrowing badgers have undermined about 11 km of embankment on the Fröndenberg – Unna railway, and repairs are likely to be very expensive and take a long time as the damage is more extensive than expected.
In some places the repairs will be equivalent to new construction, and DB says the planning and approval phase alone could take several years as the route passes through protected environments. Local media reports that the financial viability of reopening is being questioned.
DB first discovered the damage in 2022, and initiated repairs using a concrete spraying process. It also began to examine the rest of the route and 140 sett entrances have now been discovered, leading to an extensive tunnel system which is believed to have a total length of around 1 500 m spread over the entire length of the embankment.
The line runs through a nature reserve, so investigations had to be suspended over the summer until a special permit was obtained. Trees and bushes also needed to be cut back. Regional train service RB54 remains suspended between Unna and Fröndenberg and replaced by buses, extending journey times by 7 min.
Note.
- The railway appears to be only single-track from Google Maps.
- Unna station is the Easternmost station of the Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn.
- The RB 54 – Hönnetal-Bahn runs between Fröndenberg and Unna.
I wouldn’t be surprised that this serious problem will be resolved by either closing the railway permanently or by using an expensive rebuild.
How Network Rail Deal With Badgers
I did find this document on the Network Rail web site, which appears to be part of a Safety Course.
There is this page on the Network Rail web site, which is entitled Badgers Sett To Keep Their Homes As Railway Works Around.
Unfortunately for the Germans, they seem to have whole armies of badgers, whereas we seem to have just a couple of families in the second document.
It does look like in the video in the second example, that a certain amopunt of psychology is used to persuade the badgers to do, what Network Rail wants them to do.
Sheep And The M62
When I was at Liverpool University in the 1960s, the Veterinary Department had a contract to design fencing to keep the hardy Pennine sheep off the motorway.
They found that the sheep had little difficulty climbing over a six foot high wire mesh fence.
Perhaps DB should ask Liverpool, if they have any tips!
Matthew Paris Proposes A Humane Solution To The Badger Problem
In his column today in The Times, Matthew Paris tells a tale about how the llamas he keeps have chased the badgers away.
Matthew’s proposal may sound silly, but I’ve had many a drink with a friend, where he has told me endless tales about his llamas and their instincts and habits. Some of his used to stand up tall and spit at passengers waiting to catch a bus. I believe the stop was moved.
So will be seeing farmers using llamas to protect their animals from badgers.
Or will friends of the badgers try to get the keeping of llamas near badger sets made illegal?
After Too Many Foxes And Badgers, Now Too Many Rabbits
This is actually quite an old story from the BBC, but it turned up in today’s Times.
At least though, when compared to foxes and badgers, you can make the buggers work, as after they’ve been strangled and skinned, they make an excellent supper.
The best rabbit I’ve eaten was on the island of Salina, where they are one of the few sources of local fresh meat. In one case, I had rabbit, with the other local delicacy; capers.
I’m sure if foxes and badgers were a source of food, they wouldn’t be such a pest to so many.
Badgers, Foxes and Deer
As I write this, there is a debate going on about the badger cull on Radio 5. Living in Hackney, I have no vested interest, as what happens won’t effect me directly.
When I first moved back to Suffolk at the start of the 1970s, I never saw a badger until perhaps 2006, and then on one night coming back from a restaurant I saw several in the lanes north of Haverhill. Over the last twenty years, I started to see dead badgers increasingly on the road.
Foxes too, were very rare in East Suffolk, where I lived until about the mid-1990s. I had never seen one alive, but I had smelt the odd fox. In West Suffolk, we had foxes everywhere and now in Hackney, I saw one cross the road in front of me, as I walked with a friend to the local church.
Deer too, have shown a remarkable rise in numbers. In fact, the only claim, I ever made on my car insurance in recent years, was when a deer jumped in front of my car, when C was driving.
All of these animals have no natural predator in the UK, and they are rapidly increasing in numbers.
There will come a time, when we will need to cull badgers, foxes and deer, very strongly, as otherwise we’ll be overrun with them. As it is foxes and badgers are carnivores, so what effect will unsustainable high levels have on our other native birds and animals? As it is already, some believe that foxes are feeding aggressively on our hedgehog population, as I reported here.
If we don’t keep our large mammals to a healthy level, we will be seeing a lot of other problems.
The Anonymous Widower 