Landslip closes tunnel for second time in one week

No trains will run between Honiton and Axminster until Monday due to Honiton Tunnel suffering a landslip at its entrance for the second time in a week, officials have said.

Network Rail Wessex said its teams had been working "round the clock" to stabilise the landslip on the site that had seen 30mm of rain between Friday and Saturday.

The route had just reopened on Wednesday after the landslip at the east Devon tunnel had caused it to close on Tuesday.

Rain has "significantly hampered" efforts to build a protective wall, Network Rail added.

Water was running down the embankment, depositing mud that needed constant cleaning up, it said.

Mark Killick, engineering and asset management director for Network Rail in the Southern Region, said the hill had been bringing "lots of mud" since Tuesday.

He said: "We started to see a large volume of water coming out of the side of the slope by the tunnel and that's been running down towards the track bringing with it lots of mud.

"This isn't surface water, this is water from deep within the ground and its proving really challenging to understand exactly where the water's tracking from and how we can divert it."

Mr Killick said temporary mitigations to hold back any material coming down the slope had "worked well" until Friday afternoon.

"The volume of material we saw coming down just wasn't practical to hold it back any further so we had to take the really difficult decision to close the line," he said.

The network said teams were drilling holes to place the supports for the permanent protective wall but the soft mud was making it "a difficult process".

It said it would delay the opening with remote monitoring, watchmen and additional ballast bags because it prioritised the "safety of our passengers and engineers".

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