Watch: Team behind railway landslip repair talk about future of 160-year-old embankment

A week ago engineers closed the train line between Wellington and Oakengates stations in both directions after a major landslip.

Approximately 5,000 tonnes of material slipped beneath a 50-metre section of the railway close to Hadley Road after persistent heavy rainfall over the winter months weakened the earthwork beneath it.

Arriving at the site, it became immediately apparent that even our drone pictures had failed to truly capture the sheer size of the slip which has left a lot of Shropshire almost entirely cut off by rail.

The huge drop, where, without warning, the earth suddenly fell away just before 10am on Friday, March 10, was less than a metre from the tracks which take trains carrying thousands of people every day at speeds of around 75 miles per hour.

Adam Checkley, infrastructure director for Network Rail’s Central route was on site to explain what happened.

He said: "We got a report around about 9.45am from one of the drivers of a WMT [West Midlands Trains] service that was going into Oakengates station that there had been a landslip.

"We sent some teams down straight away and closed the line, as soon we got here we saw the sheer scale of what had happened and the line was closed at that point.

"The teams have been here ever since just getting ready to start putting the stone onto the embankment and sure it all up again."

Adam said the landslip was the biggest he had ever encountered in his railway career.

"It's the biggest one that we, potentially, have had at central route. So it's very significant for us. I've had two or three in the last year and this is dwarfs them all by quite some significant distance."

Workers immediately began cutting back and clearing vegetation to allow building work to be done.

In the coming days, tonnes of stone will be brought to the site, where the teams will begin building a step-like structure to reinforce the 160-year-old Victorian embankment.

Adam said: "It'll look like the biggest rockery you've ever seen, lots of grey stone in three of four different tiers to hold the whole embankment back up.

"We'll try and do some sustainability work with a bit of reforesting at the front where they've just been taken out. Make sure that it looks as pleasant as it can while people are walking past."

Usually, a massive project like this would take two to three years of planning, with eight to ten weeks on site. But the teams here are hoping to get it done by the end of the month.

Adam said: "Our stretch objective is to get this open for Easter, to allow people and get to and from loved ones, friends, family, going to see people during the Easter holidays, we don't want to stop that.

"This is quite a significant route for tourism as well, so we're desperately trying to get this reopened by Easter. We'll see how we get on, but that's our outline plan at the moment."

Landslips regularly occur on embankments when the ground becomes saturated with water after long periods of heavy rain. Following the wettest February on record and the age of the railway embankment, it's no surprise this one gave way.

Adam explained: "This is 160 years old worth of Victorian engineering and we've had a lot of rainfall and eventually the embankment said: I can't cope any more, I need some help."

With climate change causing more radical weather events, Adam expects to see more earthwork issues in the future.

"If you have a look at Network Rail nationally, there's been similar type of embankment and earthwork issues," he said.

"This is probably my third one now. In the last eight weeks, we've had two smaller ones that we've had to go and deal with and I had one last Easter.

"Unfortunately for us, it is happening a bit more regularly. To give confidence to the general travelling public, we've got great geotechnical engineers. We do our absolute level best to make sure that this is not the norm, but something that unfortunately does happen from time to time that we have to go and repair and resolve for the travelling public."

Network Rail has apologised to anyone facing disruption to their journey as a result of the landslip and is encouraging people to check before they travel.

From Monday, West Midland Railway hopes to start providing a limited train service between Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Shifnal.

Live travel information and updates will be provided online at: nationalrail.co.uk