Hereford to Newport line reopens

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00:00Hi, I'm Ryan Barrett, Program Manager for Web Resilience and Climate Adaptation for

00:04the Wales and Borders route and I'm here on the line between Newport and Hereford where

00:09we've had some washouts of the track formation as a result of Storm Claudia on Friday the 14th

00:17of November. We've been working here since Friday to reinstate the line ready for passenger services

00:25on Tuesday. So Storm Claudia was a very intense storm. The river levels were the highest that had

00:32ever been recorded. Much of Monmouth and the surrounding areas had seen severe floods

00:38to the area as well. The particular section of railway that we're stood on saw the waters over

00:44top the railway and remove the track support zone from underneath our level crossing here.

00:50The storm lasted around 14 to 15 hours so it was fast and intense which is why we saw such significant

00:59damages. This particular section of track had a considerable investment in 2021 where we rock

01:06armoured 800 metres of the embankment to stop these washouts from occurring. The only weak point in the

01:15system was the level crossing and due to the level of the water on the river Mono the water eroded away

01:24and scoured away the embankment where the level crossing was and left a big hole in our embankment.

01:33Without the resilience works that we did in 2021 the effects of Storm Claudia would have been much bigger

01:39on this line. We would have expected tens of meters of our embankment to be washed away.

01:44Our teams have worked tirelessly to get this back up to a place where we can start running trains again

01:51and we'll be looking now into the future of what we can do to make this level crossing more resilient.

01:59We've had numerous people here on site working 24 hours a day. The speed of the fix has been

02:06unprecedented as well. Our teams have mobilised got the materials and plant and workforce to site which has

02:12been a great great effort all around. I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone that's been

02:18involved working on this line to reinstating back up and running. We've had tampers, we've had machines,

02:24we've had hundreds of tons of ballast all delivered to site to get it open and ready for our freight and

02:31passenger services.