Major disruption on my travel on the West Coast Main Line, said to be Europe’s busiest mixed-traffic railway line. The train was held for more than two hours whilst railwaymen from the permanent way division tried to clear cattle from the tracks just south of Rudgeley in the Trent Valley. It looked like a whole herd had strayed on to the railway going for the untouched grass; the railwaymen cleared many of them in to adjacent fields but a group of four and another group of three remained nonchalantly munching the fresh grass besides the tracks. Eventually the train I was on proceeded at caution (5 MPH) until the area was passed and we encountered all the trains waiting in the other direction.
One of the more spectacular rail delays. It’s pretty rare to not be on the moo-ve because of cows. Although sometimes it’s sheep baaa-ing the way, that used to happen a lot on Shap Fell in Cumbria.
The fencing of the line is quite simple in the area where it happened so it’s not at all clear who is to blame. The river is the Trent.
