# 7.1 Equake vs cape guage railway



## wigginsn (Jan 9, 2008)

Guess who won..

A couple of pics of the main railway line a few km from home after last weekends events.




















Cheers
Neil


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

WOW!! Neat pictures, they show both the vertical and horizontal offset.

Thanks.

Chuck N


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Amazing that no one was seriously hurt or died! Looks like it's going to take a long time to fix :-( 

Did you get any damage at your place?


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

Could have been a lot worse. I wonder if they derailed any trains. Later RJD


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## wigginsn (Jan 9, 2008)

RJ, I read somwhere there were 18 on the move in the South Is at the time but none derailed. All movements stopped of course.. I heard the first train running on this line about 48 hrs after the quake.



Jim, Yes, years of rebuilding I suspect. Went into town for the first time yesterday and did the rubberneck thing at lunchtime as you do.. 80 - 90% of buildings are intact and ok, the rest are - if you'll excuse the local colloquailism - munted. No damage at home, we were incredibly lucky. Minor cracks in brickwork and a broken CD player - they don't really count in the scheme of things. 


There was a flyover of the fault posted on YouTube, very interesting viewing esp for geologists I suspect. Hindsight has this 'new' fault last rupturing 16,000 yrs ago. 


*Aerial view of fault rupture line* 

Cheers
Neil


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## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

Ya see? If you had just converted to battery power, you wouldn't have had to thump the benchwork so darned hard to get past the dead spot in the track.









Later,

K


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## Jerry Barnes (Jan 2, 2008)

Wow, that was a neat video. Thanks.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Where's Gregg's building in that video? 

Wow, wonder how they reconcile survey / property lines now? 

Greg


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

Very interesting video!


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## Madman (Jan 5, 2008)

Incredible video. Not to make light of the circumstances you have found yourself in, but as Greg mentioned the property lines, one could wind up with more or less land. Or, if you travel by GPS, what now?


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## livesteam53 (Jan 4, 2008)

Neil, 
Thanks for the great photo's and Video's


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## wigginsn (Jan 9, 2008)

Not sure where Gregg's place is, there are plenty of ripped up paddocks to choose from thats for sure. 

You guys are on the money with the propoerty lines issue, its already been raised in the newspapers. Does this mean a complete resurvey, or do the lines stay with existing fencelines? Hey, can I have my shed back mate? Or can we cut a new door in the back so I can get the mower out?? 

Maybe it just becomes a can of worms when you go to sell your place. Not easy whichever way we cut it. 

Cheers 
Neil


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

I'm just guessing that the property lines will eventually be set by GPS, since it's the only frame of reference that has not changed. 

Otherwise, where do you start with your frame of reference? A place that has not shifted? Then GPS will agree anyway. 

If you start your frame of reference from an area that has shifted then you have a problem, whose property do you start on? 

This will be very interesting. 

Regards, Greg


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## jfrank (Jan 2, 2008)

I would not think that this is any different than when a river changes it's course or a beach erodes. The property lines stay the same. If your building moved onto someone else's property then you are out of luck.


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## Madman (Jan 5, 2008)

After I read John's post, and thought about what he said, I must agree with him. It's not where the land ends up, but where it ends up in relation to the fixed geographical grid. Before GPS didn't we measure from longitude and latitude? So if your building was 50 feet from a fixed imaginary grid line, then wound up 50 feet on the other side of that same grid line, it may not be your building any more, correct?


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

It all depends on how the original land boundaries were specified. And maybe whether the people involved are cooperative, or legalistic.

Some places describe land boundaries from latitude/longitude and others from some landmark.

I have read of land boundary changes being upheld in courts (U.S. anyway) where a river or creek was the specified boundary and when it changed course the land ownership changed. Yet, "all" of Iowa used to be on the east side of the Missouri River, but it changed course many years ago and now a small area on the west side is still a part of Iowa, but there are no Iowa roads that lead to or from it, you must drive to Nebraska to get to it.

But then again, where my son used to live, apparently the surveyors somehow screwed things up platting the town on paper and in marking where to build the houses. When the GPS and Satellite images became available and were superimposed to create new "accurate" plats it was discovered that the deck on the east side of his house was in the middle of the street and his west property line was a few feet INSIDE the neighbors house... Everything was built skewed to the east by about 35 ft. The county just re-drew (or at least told my son that is what they were going to do!) the paper maps to represent what people thought it should be according to where the street actually is. Nobody really lost anything because the drawings now just represent what they have been living with all this time. But, I suppose the properties (pastures/farm fields) surrounding the town may have to be described a bit different as to total acreage.

Let's hope people are cooperative about this natural disaster.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

This will be an interesting story to follow. I would imagine it would be more contentious in heavily populated areas. 

Regards, Greg


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## SE18 (Feb 21, 2008)

thanks for posting; the advantage of having group members near and far! 

regarding property, PBS's the News Hour last night ran a clip about a farmer in Bangladesh who lost his farm due to river (Brahmaputra?) taking it clean away. It had been in family for generations. The new banks of the river were on another farmer's land so he lost out. In the case of land shifting in New Zealand, I'd imagine the same would happen. The farm is probably defined in terms of lattitude and longitude so that if you acquire your neighbor's farmland, it's yours. If you acquire his house, however, that would be a different matter altogether.


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## Biblegrove RR (Jan 4, 2008)

wow! looks like my layout after a gully washer!


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## wigginsn (Jan 9, 2008)

One more for ya..

This one is on the line that ran through the fault. There was a train on the tracks at the time, and it pulled up 30m short.











Quoting from the newsletter that interviewed the driver the next day


He was driving two light locos coupled together, returning a disabled one to Rolleston, when
the loco reared so high the headlights stopped shining on the track in front of him.

“At first I thought I was derailing, but it felt far too violent for that, and when I looked out of
the window I was still on the tracks.”[/i]

R0.1 with S curves anyone? 


Cheers
Neil


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By wigginsn on 09 Sep 2010 04:08 PM 
One more for ya..

This one is on the line that ran through the fault. There was a train on the tracks at the time, and it pulled up 30m short.











Quoting from the newsletter that interviewed the driver the next day


He was driving two light locos coupled together, returning a disabled one to Rolleston, when
the loco reared so high the headlights stopped shining on the track in front of him.

“At first I thought I was derailing, but it felt far too violent for that, and when I looked out of
the window I was still on the tracks.”[/i]

R0.1 with S curves anyone? 


Cheers
Neil 





Sorry... I just do not believe that is a real photo of real damage caused by the earthquake. If it is true, there must be views from other angles.


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## caferacer (Jul 22, 2010)

Neil thats the shot that we saw here in Australia on TV and in the News papers our daugthers place USE to be up the road from this the fault line is going dead set thru the middle of the rails unreal photos the power of Mother earth thanks for sharing caferacer


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

I saw a shot of that taken from a helicopter, somewhere in a news article a few days ago.


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## wigginsn (Jan 9, 2008)

I'll try and find another source for you Semper, its almost too good to be true isn't it. This section of track also appeared on local news clips as video - this was the first still I came across.

In the meantime this is where the pic came from.. I have no reason to disbelieve, I've been getting these newsletters for a while now.

KiwiRail Newsletter 6 Sept 2010


Cheers
Neil 


Edit: Whoops didn't hit refresh for the last two replies. Thanks guys.


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

Here's the aerial photo I saw. It was in a slide show of quake damage pics, and I couldn't find a link to the specific image so I copied it and loaded it onto my website:

http://www.raydunakin.com/Miscwebfiles/NZquakeTracks1.jpg


The website where I found the slide show is here:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/4095395/Latest-photos-7-1-quake


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## wigginsn (Jan 9, 2008)

Thanks Ray, I was searching for the slideshow as well, I remember I couldn't grab copies of any images at the time. Looks like they are rolling updates on the website and the older photos are off?

Here yer go Semp, Still shot of the repairs taken from the opposite angle - similar to Rays.











and a YouTube link to an aerial flyover of general carnage. Railway shot is about 1 minute in. Looks like the pic above may have been lifted from the vid..?

* Aerial Damage vid*
*
*
Cheers
Neil


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks for the additional info. 

This is the 4th time I have tried to respond about this, but my PC has gone silly each time before I could get Submit clicked. Right after I posted my previous skeptical reply I went looking on the net for more info and found much of what you have responded with. 

That kink in the track is quite interesting. Remarkable how it remained flat to the ground and the ties appear to be still securely attached (shows that the track is well built and well maintained!) The kink surely must have formed by a shortening of the distance between the ends of the track. The adjacent land is not disturbed much, only the ballast seems to have been flung sideways by the track flexing. I have been trying to calculate how much shorter the distance between the end points that track is now, I am sure it is not really by very much (inches only... It doesn't take much to produce a lot of sideways deflection). 

It looks like the citizenry have jumped into the task of repair and rebuilding in a big way. Well done! Is there any foreign aid being offered? What is needed?


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## Pete Chimney (Jan 12, 2008)

Greg

The same problem exists for everyone in CA who lives on the west side of the San Andreas Fault system. Every year all of that property is slowly sliding to the NNW and shfting position, usually by about 12 mm or 1/2" per year.

A great place to view the right lateral faulting along the San Andreas Fault is in the town of Hollister, California. In Hollister the San Andreas creeps slowly with but does not lock up andaccumulate strain.One can visit streets in Hollister and see where curbs have been offset. Likewise there are tears in asphalt street paving much like those seen in New Zealand. The final place to view the action of the San Andreas fault is at Pinnaclse National monument just south of Hollister. The Pinnacles are a pile of Miocene-aged volanic rocks. These rocks erupted over the San Andreas fault which, with right-lateral slip, has moved part of this pile north. The other half of the original volcanic pile is still down near Los Angeles. The rate of motion over 26 million years averages to about 12mm or 1/2" inch per year.


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Semp:

Some of the picture captions that I have seen have mentioned pressure ridges. Those are caused by compression, which is what you see happening to the tracks. There must have been significant shortening where the track crossed the fault.

Chuck N


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By wigginsn on 09 Sep 2010 04:08 PM 












As an exercise to determine how much compression it is, I made some gross assumptions about what is in the photo.
1. The total length of the rail that was compressed is 100-ft.
2. The deflection area is mirror imaged on itself. The photo showing only about 2/3rds of the area; i.e.: the middle of the damaged area is in the middle of that center section of the two greatest (and opposite) peaks of deflection.
3. The highest deflection is 5ft, the next smallest is 2.5ft and the smallest deflected peak is 1.25ft.
4. There are 6 peaks and 7 segments to the deflections.
Calculations will assume sharp anges to the peaks and straight lines between them... i.e.: a straight segment zig-zag line.

So... 

100-ft divided into 7 segments means the segments are 14.286ft long.

The segments are the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the original track location and the deflection to the peak. 

Thus the first triangle has sides of: 14.286-ft (rail segment), 1.25-ft (deflection) and 14.231-ft (present portion of the original path distance covered).

The 2nd triangle has sides of: 14.286-ft (rail segment), 3.75-ft (1st deflection + 2nd deflection) and 13.786-ft (present portion of the original path distance covered). 

The 3rd triangle has sides of: 14.286-ft (rail segment), 7.50-ft (2nd deflection + 3rd deflection) and 12.154-ft (present portion of the original path distance covered). 

The center segment must be divided in half to accommodate that I intend to double 1/2 of the area to get the present distance, so the triangle has sides of 7.142-ft. (1/2 rail segment), 5.00-ft (3rd deflection) and 5.095-ft (present portion of the original path distance covered).

Doubling the sum of the "present portion of the original path distance covered"s will be the new total distance covered by the track after the ends were compressed toward each other... or 90.533-ft.

Thus the area was compressed about 9-ft 5.6-in.

Maybe a picture would help...










Edit: Fixed a typo in the numbers... (The answer didn't change, just the sum of the 2nd and 3rd deflections).


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