Message #119708

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Anyway, I wonder if the NZ Land Transport Agency should consider copying what the Southern Pacific Railroad did on the crossing of the Sierra Nevada at Donner Pass in California. They had a problem with HUGE amounts of snowfall in winter, which tended to completely bury the railway line (which was and still is a major transcontinental railway route in the USA) as well as the extreme avalanche danger following big snowstorms. So the Southern Pacific Railroad built snowsheds at all the worst spots. They weren't completely enclosed tunnels, but more in the nature of elongated sheds with ventilation slots in the downhill side which the trains travelled through. The heavy snowfall simply piled up over the snowsheds and avalanches passed right over them. The railway route over Donner Pass is now owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, and they still maintain snowsheds across the Sierra Nevada.

The idea could be adapted for SH3 through the Manawatu Gorge, with rockfall sheds built through the danger spots.

We'll probably have to wait until after the 5th Nats government though, because as Sir Bob Jones has written and said on many occasions, the Nats are too stupid to adopt new ideas or adapt ideas from somewhere else.

Perhaps the GREENs could promote the idea for when the current 5th Nats government has done their dash and been consigned to the dustbin of history.