Tag: Autumn

• Some Reasons Why Trains Are Late

  

  Dear reader, if you have ever travelled on Britain’s railway network, you will probably have noticed that there are sometimes delays. While many complain about these delays, the truth is that most trains arrive within a few minutes of the time promised. Not that it is not annoying when your train arrives late, especially when you have a connection to catch.

  The question, therefore, is why there are such delays. Is it incompetence on the part of the operators? A lack of Government investment, perhaps? Or is the answer a bit more complicated? While there are many causes of delay, I hope to illustrate a few using the medium of storytelling. While the story I am about to tell is entirely fictional, all of the events in it have unfolded in real life in one form or another. So without further ado…

  The time is ten past seven in the evening, the location Birmingham. Birmingham New Street to be exact. It is a relatively calm autumn evening, and the sun has long sunk below the horizon. Inside the rather uninspiring confines of the station, passengers wait eagerly for their various trains. The evening peak has begun to subside, and off-peak tickets are once again valid. In one of the platforms, a graceful Virgin Pendolino sits, doors open, ready for another smooth trip to London. Local trains scurry in and out, moving the commuters and the families, and those out for the evening. Somewhere, the slow train to Wales crawls in too, looking slightly out of place in its old Arriva colours, soon to be replaced by white and red.

  Meanwhile, on Platform 11, the 1912 to Plymouth has just departed. The platform, however, is not empty. The passengers still waiting are for the 1922, to Stansted Airport. This train is rather important since it links no less than 4 main lines, and the advance tickets for it are rather cheap. Duly, the little diesel train rumbles in at 1920, and digorges its passengers.

  Unfortunately, before the incoming passengers have finished getting on, the outbound ones are already boarding. There is an awkward shuffle when a passenger getting off with a suitcase tries to force their way off through the crowds streaming on. The passenger manages to squeeze their way off after some passengers on the platform decide to let her off. But they have lost time. By the time the last few people (running from the stairs, as it happens) have jumped on, it is now 1924. 2 minutes late, but no matter, the New Street dispatch staff are quick off their mark and the train rolls out of New Street losing no more time. For now.

  Meanwhile, miles down the line, a contractor has a problem. There’s a temporary speed restriction here because train drivers are reporting rough riding. This was eventually tracked down to drainage issues under the track, which could probably be solved if the current drains were renovated, but the railway was built over a hundred years ago and there are no proper drawings showing the drains. The contractor would rather not put in new drainage, since this will cost a lot more, and that money will have to come from somewhere, so the temporary speed restriction remains, while they search for the drains.

  The 1922 loses more time negotiating this speed restriction, and arrives at Nuneaton now running 4 minutes late. However, the train is not dispatched promptly as expected. The signal at the end of the platform remains at red. The driver and gaurd are confused, since the train is already late, and there should be no freight or passenger trains holding them up. Eventually the station staff speak to the guard. He nods and walks to the front cab to tell the driver.

  About 4 miles distant, a car lies crumpled and distorted just beyond a railway bridge. The occupants, a man and a woman, got lucky escaped with just cuts and bruises, but (though we are heartened to hear of their good fortune) this is not their story. With the car having struck the bridge at high speed, Network Rail needs to inspect the bridge to ensure it is safe for rail traffic. While they arrive quickly, the inspection, though it concludes that there is no serious damage, also concludes that a temporary speed restriction should be put in place, while repairs are carried out.

  The signal turns to yellow, and the train is dispatched, but this adds another 12 minutes to the delay. Our poor Cross Country train is now 16 minutes late, but worse is to come as Leicester (and the junctions around it) is coming up fast. A train coming from London (this one running on time) is already nearing the junction, and the signalling system’s automatic route setting has set the route for it already. Once again the nose of the train is illuminated by the glow of a red signal, and another minute and a half is lost. Frustrated passengers are beginning to get restless when Leicester’s platform 3 welcomes the train, 17 and a half minutes late.

  Stops at Melton Mowbray, Oakham and Stamford go well, but at Peterborough our heroes must wait once more for a Greater Anglia service to leave the platform, losing yet another 2 minutes. Meanwhile, to compound the tragedy, the freight train behind the Cross Country has to wait even longer. The freight customer will not be happy.

  The observant among you will have noticed that I mentioned that the season was autumn. This means (to the great surprise of absolutely no-one) that leaves fall from the trees. These leaves get turned into a very slippery mulch by trains crushing them, and this in turn means rail conditions akin to black ice. Now our train does have wheel slide protection, but because it can’t put the power down or brake as hard, the train loses a further minute on its journey…

  So what went wrong for our now 20 and a half minute late passengers? Well, a series of events, none of which were the railways’ fault. First the impatient passengers at New Street, then poor Victorian record keeping, and then an unsafe road system. All the delays after that were caused by trains that were themselves on time, and then the poor freight train behind was made late for doing nothing wrong. Indeed, this freight will go on to cause delays elsewhere – it isn’t just going to Peterborough.

  Next time you are on a delayed train, perhaps think about all these things. There is not always incompetence to blame, or profiteering or any such thing. All that remains is for me to wish you an excellent day, and hope that you will pass this on to someone who may enjoy it.

  February 13, 2019

  Autumn, Delays, Passengers, Rail, Train, Trains

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• Leaves on the Line is Actually Not a Terrible Excuse

  Dear reader, I am sure that, if you live in the UK, “leaves on the line” is an excuse you have heard for the late running of a train. I am also sure that, if you have any sensory capabilities at all, you will have noticed that it is autumn, and, therefore, there are leaves falling from the trees.

  I will admit, it is not immediately obvious that these would cause a problem for trains. After all, trains tend to be large and quite heavy, whereas leaves are neither of those things. It is also true that a railway (at least in this country) tends to be a substantial construction, so much so that the track is often referred to as the “permanent way”. The question then arises as to why, if this is all true, leaves on the line should be a problem.

  To answer this question, we must first look at what makes trains so efficient, and to do that, we need to look at cars. You see, a car has rubber tyres, which run on a tarmac road. Both of these surfaces are rough, and as a result, the friction between them is high. Even when it is wet, the contact between tyre and road is not lubricated since the tyre is designed to channel water away from the contact (in all but the most extreme cases), and your car still grips the road. The other thing about car tyres is that they are quire wide and, therefore, the contact area is large, so even if some of it is slippery, chances are a good tyre will find grip somewhere.

  Trains are very different. Wheels on trains have steel tyres, which are very smooth, running on a steel rail which is also very smooth, leading to very low resistance. This is great in normal conditions, since the rolling resistance is very low and you can transport large loads with relatively little effort. However, as the wheels are quite thin, and there is not much “spring” in them, the contact area for each wheel is about the size of a pound coin. Suffice to say, it is very easy to get a train wheel to slip, with very little of the rail needing to be slippery.

  Now, it might surprise you to learn that the problem is not leaves per se. Dry leaves are, in themselves, not that slippery. Unfortunately, as leaves get crushed between the wheel and the rail, a leaf mulch is created. Add in a little water from rain, and perhaps some grease and other contaminants,  and you now have something akin to washing-up liquid on the rails, which the train will find it near-impossible to grip. Given that a mature tree might have some tens of thousands of leaves, and that there are 20,000 miles of track in the country, this is no rare problem.

  If the train cannot grip the rail properly, it cannot accelerate nearly as fast, and, equally, cannot brake properly either, without the wheels locking. This is potentially very dangerous, and so trains tend to travel at lower speeds, further increasing journey times and delays. Of course, when the poor passengers are told, there is not time to explain the problem properly, hence the “leaves on the line” excuse.

  Of course, railway engineers have not been sitting idle while the problem persists. Most passenger trains in the UK are now equipped with a system called WSP, or Wheel Slide Protection, which is a bit like your car’s anti-lock brakes and traction control rolled into one. However, while this does mitigate some of the problem, the train will still be slower if WSP is constantly cutting power to avoid slipping, or varying the brake to find grip. It does at least reduce the damage done to the wheel (and the rail) by slipping – which can be very expensive indeed.

  Another solution is the use of (and I apologise for the all the acronyms) RHTTs, or Rail Head Treatment Trains. These (very noisy) trains go around the network every autumn, spraying a substance called “sandite” onto the rails, which is a sort of gritty paste-like substance, improving grip dramatically. This is only a partial solution though, and the rails must be treated regularly if it is to be effective.

  The obvious solution is to just get rid of the trees next to the railway. This, like so many things in life, is much more complicated and expensive than it may seem. The decision to fell trees cannot be taken lightly, as the roots of trees may be helping to stabilise earthworks the railway depends on. Furthermore, tree felling near railways has come under fire from environmental groups such as the Woodland Trust and Greenpeace (not helped by some very dubious reporting in the Guardian newspaper). For tress not technically on railway land, landowners must be consulted, which can lead to its own problems, and, apart from anything else, felling a tree next to a railway line must be done with great care to avoid it falling onto the railway itself.

  One charge that could be levelled against the railway is that “this never used to happen”. And for once, the people saying this are, by and large, correct. In the days of steam, there were few trees next to railway lines, and consequently, there were few incidents of leaf mulch on the line. Why was this?

  Well, steam engines tend to produce sparks (after all, they rely on a large fire to work), and these sparks, when hitting dry vegetation, can lead to fire. Lineside fires were something that the old railways were understandably very keen to avoid, and so they made sure that linesides were kept perfectly manicured. Any tree that sprouted in this environment would have to come to terms with being on fire before or being chopped down long before leaves on the line became a problem.

  However, with steam trains being phased out in the 50s and 60s, lineside fires became less of a problem. The new diesel and electric trains did not produce sparks, and so the linesides could be left alone (which was quite convenient because it saved British Rail a lot of money). In fact, for a while, British Rail banned steam engines (even those run privately) from its lines entirely, partly to prevent lineside fires. Vegetation growing on the now-not-well-looked-after linesides has unfortunately resulted in the current situation.

  The supreme irony at the end of all this is that this article was itself delayed, though not through leaves. I have been rather busy, as mentioned in the public service announcement, but I have also begun writing for other places, which has rather taken up my time. Do not fear though – I will still be writing on here, just not with the frequency to which you may previously have become accustomed.

  It only remains for me to wish you an excellent day, and ask politely for you to pass this on to whomever might find it useful and/or interesting.

   

   

   

   

   

   

  November 13, 2018

  Autumn, British Rail, Excuses, Leaves, Rail, Railways, Trains

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