Rail electrification 'ruining English countryside'

Railway chiefs have been accused of planning to despoil swathes of some of England’s most attractive countryside as part of work to electrify the Great Western mainline.

The work involves chopping down thousands of trees to make way for what critics describe as “brutally ugly and intrusive” steel gantries to carry the cables needed to power the line’s new electric engines.

Work has already taken place in the Chilterns, with a significant stretch of the new electrified line having been carved through two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

There are also fears future construction work along the stretch of line passing through the southern Cotswolds, between Swindon and Bath, will damage parts of one of Britain’s most loved landscapes.

There has already been criticism of the cost of electrifying the Great Western mainline, after it tripled from the original £874 million estimate to as much as £2.8bn, an overspend that threatens to put several other rail improvement schemes in doubt.

Now environmentalists and residents have been angered by the erection of dozens of the steel gantries through Goring Gap, which links the line between Reading and Didcot and lies between the Chilterns AONB and the North Wessex Downs AONB.

They point out these are now visible for miles around.

Goring Gap is widely recognised as one of the most picturesque landscapes in southern England and certainly the most beautiful stretch of the River Thames.

It was here that Kenneth Grahame set his 1908 children’s classic, Wind and the Willows. The area, and the river in particular, was also the setting for Jerome K Jerome’s picaresque novella Three Men in a Boat, a humorous account of a two week boating holiday on the Thames.

Critics say the electrification work has ruined vistas of what was widely regarded as one of the finest landscapes in southern England.

And they accuse Network Rail of abusing the power it has to carry out infrastructure work without the need to seek planning permission.

They are now demanding rail bosses replace the gantries with a more attractive, less intrusive design sympathetic to the landscape around it.

The Chilterns Conservation Board says that while it supports the electrification of the network, it fears it is being carried out with no regard to the landscape through which the line passes.

It said: “To the great concern of local residents and the Conservation Board, the gantries being installed along the Great Western line through the Chilterns AONB are large, ugly and intrusive, completely out of keeping with the landscape.”

The board’s planning office, Lucy Murfett, added: “The section through the AONB is getting the worst possible design of overhead gantry. I am sure we could work with Network Rail to get a better solution that would fit these lovely and nationally protected landscapes.”

Residents living in homes and villages along the line have also complained that the engineering work – which has taken place through the night during December, including over the Christmas period - has left them unable to sleep or relax.

Emma Harrison, a conference manager who lives a few miles from to the route, in Maidenhead, wrote on the Twitter social media site: “Another sleepless night in Maidenhead. Seriously loud! So much for restful Xmas break from work! Lived by train line for five years and never had disturbance like this.”

Marie Melvin, also from Maidenhead, said she had suffered from “sleep deprivation” since December 9. In an account on Twitter she describes being woken at 2.02 am, 2.21am and 3.07am by the noise of the electrification works.

“In early December it was a huge disturbance as I had to go to work after just 2 hours sleep. My concern is that it will carry on next week when we return to work. It's illegal to drive on little or no sleep, but we have to go to work,” she told The Telegraph.

Network Rail has used its powers, called Permitted Development Rights, to carry out the work without first seeking planning permission from local authorities.

But the Chiltern Conservation Board says that the company had failed in its statutory duty to protect an area of outstanding beauty and that it was required by law to “have regard to the purpose of conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the AONB when carrying out any work affecting an AONB.

The board said: “Its activities should at the very least keep this protected landscape the same, or ideally improve it.

“However, even its own environmental statement concludes that gantries on the line between goring and Moulsford would be prominent and would have a permanent and adverse impact on the landscape.”

Campaigners accuse Network Rail of having rushed through the electrification of the stretch of line between Reading and Didcot so that it could use the stretch to test its new Hitachi high speed trains “regardless of the consequences”.

The Railway Action Group, formed by residents and conservationists around Goring Gap and nearby South Stoke to campaign against what they described as a blight on the landscape, said:

“We welcome electrification and are fully in favour of the modernisation of the Great Western route. But to permanently disfigure the landscape in the process in this way is neither necessary, right, nor indeed, lawful, we believe.”

The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) has called for Network Rail to set up an independent design panel to review the design and setting of the gantries and the landscaping of the electrified line, in order to minimise the impact on the surrounding countryside.

Network Rail said its work on electrifying the Great Western mainline was essential for the future prosperity of the region.

It says: “We're modernising the Great Western route to create faster, more reliable services, better stations and increased freight capacity. This is the biggest investment in the Great Western railway since Brunel built it more than 150 years ago. Modernising the route will improve the experience of everyone who uses it and stimulate economic growth in the south west and beyond.”