Tirytory

Ooh I was always wanted to live in Bourneville! So pretty...and so close to the city centre. All those lovely shops!

Pulaski

The railway right of way owners have got rather good/brutal (your choice of description) at clearing trees, shrubs, and undergrowth from alongside the tracks after all the jokes about trains suffering from problems caused by the wrong sort of leaves falling on the lines.
I used to live a few minutes walk from a small suburban centre in SW London, with a station, shops and a couple of pubs, and during the day there was no clue of the wildlife lurking in the railway embankments. However in the early hours of the morning there would be 40-50 foxes milling around in the road.
I used to think that. Then I moved to New York, and landed a job that turned into a nightmare, and life became thoroughly miserable and very stressful. The trains across the narrow valley, blasting their horns 2-3 times an hour from 5am to past 1am, became a form of torture, that would keep me awake at night. I knew that when the trains started in the morning another day of misery was on the way.

Vadio

There's another problem concerning vegetation along some RR lines....Japanese Knotweed. If you don't know about this highly invasive plant, read up on it, and learn to recognize it. Do NOT buy ANY property that is anywhere near a knotweed infestation.

Some of the horror stories look like the writings of conspiracy theorists, but as one who has seen the way this stuff grows, be afraid....be very afraid.

robin1234

We have Japanese knotweed in a couple of places on our land. Yes, it's a challenge, but manageable. It is edible, if you pick the young shoots. And goats love it! Mowing keeps it down, (or keeps it contained.) So only if it's a place you can't mow, such as rocky or uneven ground, is it difficult to contain.

Vadio

You wouldn't dare mow Japanese knotweed here - it will crop up in places you can't even imagine, sometimes 7 meters (horizontal distance) from another clump. Because it propagates via rhizomes, it's less about what you see but what you can't see.

If you cut it, or try to pull it up, you can't put the stuff in with normal garden waste. It's considered a controlled waste, and can be burned in some places, or taken away only by a firm holding a license in others. Horrible, horrible stuff once established.

Some lenders will not give a mortgage if there's knotweed on the property or within a certain distance on adjacent properties. Definitely something that has to be considered here.

Sally Redux

Went past it on the train yesterday and it looked even closer from that side

dunroving

If you could spit out the window and land in the back garden, it is too close.

Sally Redux

I reckon I could have hit the kitchen window

robin1234

Wouldn't it be hard to spit straight from a moving train? Like vomiting over the side of a ship, trajectory could be unexpected

Maybe send us a video.

Pulaski

Are the tracks just close, or elevated and close?

robin1234

Yes, we make sure to burn our cut knotweed or simply leave it to dry on the site already under knotweed. But yes, you are right about the horizontal distance it spreads. This means that, when controlling it by mowing, the mowed portion has to be twenty feet or more wide, otherwise it will come up in the next flower bed, patch of brush etc. I learnt my knotweed control methods from a National Trust gardener. Garden in Ide Hill, Kent (I forget the name of it.) They had a patch that they were able to mow 100%. Unfortunately, both my patches have tree stumps, immovable rock piles etc., so can only be mowed around the edges to keep them from spreading. Knotweed burns spectacularly, even when wet and newly cut.

dunroving

TBH I think that should say "many lenders".

Vadio

I think you are quite correct!!

Sally Redux

Who do you think I am - Einstein?


You just put your lips together and blow.

Vadio

Almost the dreaded math 'word problem'......you know the one...

"two trains are traveling from A to B. Train 1 is traveling at 70MPH and Train 2 is traveling at 75 MPH. At what point will Sally be able to spit and hit both trains as they pass the house she is not going to buy...." :-)