Dawlish sea wall promenade to open this summer

Network Rail said the work had transformed the Dawlish coastline

A new sea wall built after a railway was destroyed in a storm will open its promenade to the public in the summer.

The wall protects the track at Dawlish in Devon from the sea after it was ravaged by huge waves eight years ago.

Most of Devon and Cornwall was without a railway line to the rest of the country for several weeks after the storm between 4 and 5 February 2014.

Network Rail said the £80m scheme was due to be completed in 2023 and would protect the railway for 100 years.

Phil Morton, Network Rail project manager, said: "This is the last push, which will allow us to open up the beach and then the promenade in the summer."

The sea defences at Dawlish were destroyed in 2014 and the line was closed for six weeks

Construction on the Department for Transport-funded project, which includes the larger sea wall and improvements to Dawlish station, started in May 2019.

The first section of new sea wall was completed in July 2020 and construction of the 415m (1,362ft) second section began in November 2020.

Network Rail said work on the second section was progressing well, with contractors BAM Nuttall successfully installing all 143 concrete wall panels and curved wave returns on top of the panels.

Mr Morton said the project would protect the town and railway for 100 years.

"We took a scale model of the wall into a basin - so a bit like a big swimming pool - and we fired loads of waves at it that we expect to get within 100 years," he said.

"It's been tested by a couple of recent storm events and it's performed exactly as we expected."

The first section of sea wall along Marine Parade west of Dawlish station was finished in July 2020

Network Rail said there was still a lot of work to do, including temporarily diverting the Dawlish river water as part of work on a new stilling basin and on rebuilding the seaward platform and resurfacing the landward platform at Dawlish Station.

It said a team of engineers would be working around the clock over four consecutive weekends in February to complete this work.

Yan Sayles, BAM Nuttall project manager, said there had been a lot of issues during the build including a materials shortage and the pandemic.

He said: "From that point of view we're ahead of where we thought we would be.

"It's a challenge all the way through to keep momentum and keep the job going... thankfully the people we've got here really did put themselves out to carry on working."