retaining wall

plural retaining walls

1. civil engineeringAny of several structures used to restrain a vertical-faced mass of earth.

   Masonry flying arches strutting the retaining walls in Chorley cutting, Manchester-Blackpool line, L.M.S.R.

   1939 November, “Pertinent Paragraphs”, in Railway Magazine, page 358, photo caption

   3 more examples

   The viaduct is joined to the embankment by retaining walls, which have been strengthened since they were constructed by the addition of stay bolts extending right through the embankment and fastened outside each retaining wall.

   1952 July, W. R. Watson, “Sankey Viaduct and Embankment”, in Railway Magazine, page 487

   In order to accommodate the new platform 4 and the reversibly signalled slow line, a deep cutting had to be cut back and held up in places with a concrete retaining wall.

   1962 June, David Walters, “The new station and layout at Coventry”, in Modern Railways, page 405

   Biddle even notes how Brunel, after observing how one retaining wall had part-collapsed during the construction of one of the GWR's Bristol tunnels during heavy rains, "decided to leave it like that and planted it with ivy to represent a ruined medieval gateway".

   2020 August 26, Tim Dunn, “Great railway bores of our time!”, in Rail, page 43