civil engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewage ...

, a cut or cutting is where

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former te ...

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

from a relative rise along a route is removed. The term is also used in river management to speed a waterway's flow by short-cutting a

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank ...

. Cuts are typically used in

road A road is a linear way for the conveyance of traffic that mostly has an improved surface for use by vehicles (motorized and non-motorized) and pedestrians. Unlike streets, the main function of roads is transportation. There are many types of ...

rail Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters *Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' ( ...

, and

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

construction to reduce the length and

grade Grade most commonly refers to: * Grade (education), a measurement of a student's performance * Grade, the number of the year a student has reached in a given educational stage * Grade (slope), the steepness of a slope Grade or grading may also ref ...

of a route.

Cut and fill In earthmoving, cut and fill is the process of constructing a railway, road or canal whereby the amount of material from cuts roughly matches the amount of fill needed to make nearby embankments to minimize the amount of construction labor. ...

construction uses the spoils from cuts to fill in defiles to cost-effectively create relatively straight routes at steady grades. Cuts are used as alternatives to indirect routes, embankments, or

viaducts A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide va ...

. They also have the advantage of comparatively lower

noise pollution Noise pollution, also known as environmental noise or sound pollution, is the propagation of noise with ranging impacts on the activity of human or animal life, most of them are harmful to a degree. The source of outdoor noise worldwide is main ...

than

elevated An elevated railway or elevated train (also known as an el train for short) is a rapid transit railway with the Track (rail transport), tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure (usually constructed from steel, cast i ...

at-grade At-grade may refer to: * At-grade intersection, a crossing between roads on the same level * Road junction *Level crossing, where a road or path crosses a railway on the same level * Diamond crossing, where two railway tracks cross * At-grade railwa ...

solutions.

History

Railway Cutting at the summit of Talerddig bank - geograph

The term ''cutting'' appears in the 19th century literature to designate rock cuts developed to moderate grades of railway lines. ''Railway Age's Comprehensive Railroad Dictionary'' defines a cut as "a passage cut for the roadway through an obstacle of rock or dirt."

Creation

Beverley BMT sta house from platform jeh

Cuts can be created by multiple passes of a

shovel A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made o ...

grader A grader, also commonly referred to as a road grader, motor grader, or simply a blade, is a form of heavy equipment with a long blade used to create a flat surface during grading. Although the earliest models were towed behind horses, and lat ...

scraper Scrape, scraper or scraping may refer to: Biology and medicine * Abrasion (medical), a type of injury * Scraper (biology), grazer-scraper, a water animal that feeds on stones and other substrates by grazing algae, microorganism and other matter ...

excavator Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper (or stick), bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression fro ...

, or by blasting. One unusual means of creating a cut is to remove the roof of a tunnel through

daylighting Daylighting is the practice of placing windows, skylights, other openings, and Reflective surfaces (climate engineering), reflective surfaces so that sunlight (direct or indirect) can provide effective internal lighting. Particular attention is ...

. Material removed from cuts is ideally balanced by material needed for fills along the same route, but this is not always the case when cut material is unsuitable for use as fill. The word is also used in the same sense in mining, in particular

Open-pit mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

. The use of cuttings often provides byproducts as a form of

mineral extraction Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

, commonly sand, clay or gravel; the cost of building drains, reinforcing banks against

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated grade (slope), slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of ...

and a high

water table The water table is the upper surface of the zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with water. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated. T ...

are factors which commonly limit its use in certain areas.

Types of cut

There are at least two types of cut, sidehill cut and through cut. The former permits passage of a transportation route alongside of, or around a hill, where the slope is transverse to the roadway or the railway. A sidehill cut can be formed by means of sidecasting, i.e., cutting on the high side balanced by moving the material to build up the low side to achieve a flat surface for the route. In contrast, through cuts, where the adjacent grade is higher on both sides of the route, require removal of material from the area since it cannot be dumped alongside the route.Nichols and Day, ''Moving the Earth,'' p. 8.16. A ledge is a cut in the side of a

cliff In geography and geology, a cliff is an area of rock which has a general angle defined by the vertical, or nearly vertical. Cliffs are formed by the processes of weathering and erosion, with the effect of gravity. Cliffs are common on co ...

well above the bottom of a

gorge A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...

Lock cut

A lock cut is a section of a river or other inland waterway immediately upstream and downstream of a

lock Lock(s) may refer to: Common meanings *Lock and key, a mechanical device used to secure items of importance *Lock (water navigation), a device for boats to transit between different levels of water, as in a canal Arts and entertainment * ''Lock ...

which has been modified to provide locations for boats to

moor Moor or Moors may refer to: Nature and ecology * Moorland, a habitat characterized by low-growing vegetation and acidic soils. Ethnic and religious groups * Moors, Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, and Malta during ...

while waiting for the lock gates to open or to allow people to board or alight vessels.

Notable cuts

Canal

Culebra Cut The Culebra Cut, formerly called Gaillard Cut, is an artificial valley that cuts through the Continental Divide in Panama. The cut forms part of the Panama Canal, linking Gatun Lake, and thereby the Atlantic Ocean, to the Gulf of Panama and henc ...

(Gaillard Cut) on the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit ...

* Dawesville Cut *

Corinth Canal The Corinth Canal ( el, Διώρυγα της Κορίνθου, translit=Dhioryga tis Korinthou) is an artificial canal in Greece, that connects the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the ...

Rail

Asia

Hellfire Pass Hellfire Pass ( th, ช่องเขาขาด, known by the Japanese as ''Konyu Cutting'') is the name of a railway cutting on the former Burma Railway ("Death Railway") in Thailand which was built with forced labour during the Second Wo ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Americas

* Bergen Hill Cut and Bergen Arches,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

Duffy's Cut Duffy's Cut is the name given to a stretch of railroad tracks about west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, originally built for the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad in the summer and fall of 1832. The line later became part of the Pennsylvania Ra ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

Australia

Windmill Hill Cutting Windmill Hill Cutting is a large cutting on the dual gauge railway east of Toodyay in Western Australia. The cutting was constructed between 1963 and 1964 for the Eastern Railway route through the Avon Valley, and is part of the interstate s ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

* Big Hill Cutting, New South Wales

Europe

* Archaeological site of Atapuerca, Spain Excavation of Olive Mount, from Bury's Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1831 - artfinder 76057

* Olive Mount cutting, Liverpool, England *

Talerddig cutting The Newtown and Machynlleth Railway was a railway company in Wales. It built a line from a junction with the Llanidloes and Newtown Railway near Caersws to the market town of Machynlleth; the line opened in 1862. Newtown had become the hub of ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

Road

* Sideling Hill Cut on

I-68 Interstate 68 (I-68) is a Interstate Highway in the US states of West Virginia and Maryland, connecting I-79 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to I-70 in Hancock, Maryland. I-68 is also Corridor E of the Appalachian Development Highway Syst ...

Pikeville Cut-Through The Pikeville Cut-Through is a rock cut in Pikeville, Kentucky, Pikeville, Kentucky, United States, created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, through which passes a four-lane divided highway (Corridor B, numbered as U.S. Route 23 in Kentucky, ...

on U.S. Route 23 in Kentucky

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cut (Earthmoving) Construction Rail infrastructure Road cuttings Building engineering