2020
NZ6921 : Railway through sculpture
taken 3 years ago, near to Brotton, Redcar And Cleveland, England
Railway through sculpture
Two uses for steel, one functional and one ornamental. The single track railway runs as a branch from Saltburn, past Skinningrove Steelworks and on to Boulby Potash Mine. Trains of fifteen wagons full of Potash seem to pass about once an hour, pulled by Freightliner locomotives. How long this can go on for is an open question - the top of the cliffs here are the Cleveland Ironstone Formation, below which is the Staithes Sandstone Formation. But the bottom of the cliff is the much softer Redcar Mudstone Formation, into which the sea can readily cut, undercutting the stronger rocks above. Huntcliff is crumbling fast, with a Roman Signal Station excavated in 1911 now almost completely disappeared. The railway is pushed right to edge by the slopes of Warsett Hill round which it winds its way to avoid steeper gradients, but erosion must soon require that the railway be relocated inland. The footpath feels even more precarious as it is squeezed between the railway's shore-side fence and the crumbling cliffs themselves. Perhaps the sculpture depicting things one might find on the beach is meant as a distraction from the likelihood of walkers themselves becoming flotsam on the beach a hundred metres below.
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