New geophysical and geotechnical approaches to characterise under utilised earthworks

Transferring the freight burden from road to railwould bring about many environmental benefits.
The Rail Contribution to the Energy Review (Dept. for Transport 2006) indicated that rail freight produces eight
times less CO2 per tonne.km than road freight. Implementing this strategy successfully will require further
development of rail infrastructure to cope with additional capacity. Many new proposals, such as the EuroRail
Freight Route, would utilise redundant and under-used infrastructure, much of which was constructed during the
latter part of the nineteenth century. Earthworks of this age should be regarded as unique if they are to be improved
or upgraded. Such upgrades would require investigations into the condition of the existing earthworks to assess
the materials, variability in the geotechnical properties and engineering performance along the proposed route.
This paper presents a section of embankment from the Great Central Railway as a case history that demonstrates
the integration of a number of geophysical and geotechnical data to assess the condition of an embankment in
relation to fill materials and track geometry. It emerged that embankment structure and strength information can
be provided via combined use of non-intrusive mechanical and electrical techniques such as continuous surface
wave profiling and resistivity surveying. It is envisaged that this information can be used to strategically plan
intrusive investigations and works to improve the infrastructure.