Hook landslip: Repair teams work around the clock

Engineers are working around the clock to repair a landslip that has been disrupting rail services in Hampshire.

A 144ft (44m) stretch of railway embankment collapsed near Hook after heavy rain on 15 January.

Trains to Waterloo from Weymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Exeter and Salisbury were terminating at Basingstoke but are now running again.

The collapsed embankment is being reinforced with 100 12m-long steel sheets.

Passengers are asked to check the latest information before they travel

Half a mile of temporary road has been built to get machines on to the site and the track layout has been reconfigured from four tracks to two, allowing services pass at a reduced speed.

Mark Killick, of Network Rail, said: "Once the sheet pile is completed, we will have to remove all the loose material from behind and then build up the embankment so we can put the track back in its place.

"It's a huge task. We are working around the clock, 24 hours a day, and we will do that until the job is completed."

There have previously been landslips on the same site - one in 1960 and another alongside it in 2019.

The work to repair the latest damage is expected to take several weeks.

Analysis

Paul Clifton, BBC South transport correspondent

The drone shots tell the story. A huge landslip, right beside a similar one just four years ago. The clay isn't ideal embankment material but there are 6,000 clay railway embankments in the south of England.

Network Rail's southern region has recorded 200 earthworks failures in the last three years - 25 resulted in substantial line closures. Improving resilience to changing weather is one of the railway's greatest challenges - we can expect to see increasing disruption like this.

To keep trains running, the idea of temporarily slewing one track across the embankment is very unusual. Normally there are four tracks here. Now there are two. Where the line curves to 'bypass' the landslip, there is a 50 mile an hour speed limit. So a full timetable is not possible. And the route will have to close completely again to put the tracks back in their correct position.

The repairs will take weeks but at least passengers from Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and Hampshire can get past while the embankment is reconstructed.