Detecting leaves on line and other hazards

[Reorte]

39 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Can you remember what the lineside was like without its present day jungle and the flora and fauna that inhabited it and posed little or no danger to oassing trains?  I'm all for getting the lineside back to teh way it used to nad getting rid of the overgrown jungles which ruined so much of.  Leaves on the line creating a potential for collisons, trees on the line killing or severely injuring Drivers and injuring passengers - that seems to be a big price to pay just for a few extra trees where there were none previously.  I'm far more in favour of saving a few lives and life changing injuries rather than tolerating  a continued overgrowth of trees on the lineside especially as they are only recent arrivals.

I'm all for more woodland but it doesn't have to be on the lineside (although at least it hides things like palisade fencing). Buy up some fields and plant as many trees in them as are cut down next to the railway (although it's hard to think of a reason why the railway should have to pay for that).

[NorthEndCab]

£350m a year?

 

I’ll get you 250 guys with chainsaws for a bargain £349m a year and solve your problem. 

[Edwin_m]

6 hours ago, NorthEndCab said:

£350m a year?

 

I’ll get you 250 guys with chainsaws for a bargain £349m a year and solve your problem. 

Not always that easy.  

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/near-miss-with-track-workers-and-collision-with-a-tree-on-the-line-at-uphill-junction

[Northmoor]

6 hours ago, NorthEndCab said:

£350m a year?

 

I’ll get you 250 guys with chainsaws for a bargain £349m a year and solve your problem. 

Actually it won't solve the problem, because it's a myth that leaves are the problem; moisture is a far greater contributor and when leaves are wet, they stick to the rail if that's what they land on.  However, there are many low adhesion incidents reported on freshly-cleaned rails, but where condensation is forming.  There are also regularly incidents reported in locations where there is hardly a leaf within sight of the railway.

[Steven B]

On 04/02/2022 at 13:01, The Stationmaster said:

 Leaves on the line creating a potential for collisons, trees on the line killing or severely injuring Drivers and injuring passengers - that seems to be a big price to pay just for a few extra trees where there were none previously.

 

Shall we get rid of trees within striking distance of roads too? I'd guess they kill or injure more people than the ones next to railways.

 

Given the number of chainsaw and working at high related deaths and injuries most years, cutting down the trees is probably more dangerous than leaving them!

 

Steven B.

[Ncarter2]

5 hours ago, Steven B said:

 

Shall we get rid of trees within striking distance of roads too? I'd guess they kill or injure more people than the ones next to railways.

 

Given the number of chainsaw and working at high related deaths and injuries most years, cutting down the trees is probably more dangerous than leaving them!

 

Steven B.

Interesting, when a tree falls and seriously injures or kills somebody, the local news often reports on it, but you never see or hear about the trees struck by trains and the injury to drivers. Now, if it affects the passenger compartment, different story. It happens a lot more than the public are aware of.  Line side trees are a huge problem, even more so those that diseased and dying. So many line side neighbours will argue and fight for a tree to not be cut, yet when said tree ultimately comes down and damages their property, they very quickly ‘blame the railway’.

 

Now I’m not saying trees next to the road are any less a problem, but there is more a driver can do, most of the time. The poor train driver can generally do nothing, Salisbury is a very good example of this. We could always make the maximum line speed much much lower, I doubt that would go down well mind. 
 

NR has a plan to cut all line side vegetation/trees back, but it costs and there just is not the budget. 

Edited February 7, 2022 by Ncarter2

[Trog]

Another reason why adhesion is perhaps more of a problem these days is the improvement in the ride of modern vehicles. Rail head wear on straight track (not side wear) is apparently only about 10% of what it was in steam days. The shuffling and scuffing about that used to wear the rails would also have tended to clean them.

 

The other great unintended consequence of the improvement to vehicle ride was gauge corner cracking. Apparently it had always existed but was not a problem as the rail heads were wearing down at about the same rate as the cracks were growing so they never got to a critical depth, then those pesky chaps from the CM&EE made the trains shape up, roll straighter and stop hunting about wearing down the rail heads. 

[The Stationmaster]

4 hours ago, Steven B said:

 

Shall we get rid of trees within striking distance of roads too? I'd guess they kill or injure more people than the ones next to railways.

 

Given the number of chainsaw and working at high related deaths and injuries most years, cutting down the trees is probably more dangerous than leaving them!

 

Steven B.

Judging by the number of councils who get claims from people injured by falling trees or bits of trees or the massive amount leaf fall costs the railway industry it is probably cheaper to fell the trees,  Chainsaws are like most other tools - a lot safer if you use them properly.  The guys who deal with my trees are very professional - site safety assessment carried out before start of work, all the right protective gear, and this year they'll be using battery powered saws to help reduce the noise their work creates  (and they are properly qualified NR contractors as well with full track safety certification not that it has any place in my back garden).

 

But the cowboys who come round are a different kettle of fish - much cheaper (of course) but slapdash and they tend not to employ climbers but work in a very different way makinga lot more mess and likely to create extraneous damage.

[Ncarter2]

4 hours ago, Trog said:

Another reason why adhesion is perhaps more of a problem these days is the improvement in the ride of modern vehicles. Rail head wear on straight track (not side wear) is apparently only about 10% of what it was in steam days. The shuffling and scuffing about that used to wear the rails would also have tended to clean them.

 

I think modern vehicles braking systems may play a part as well, particularly those with disc brakes as opposed to tread brakes. Sliding through Watford Jn in a Voyager when it was hammering it down was interesting. To quote the poor ole driver ‘that’s going to be a please explain when we get to Euston’. I’ll give him his due, it was one of the slower approaches to the buffers I’d experienced. Some very disgruntled passengers walked by the cab. I understand that 700’s motor bogies are tread brakes, so definitely some advantages for them

scrubbing the wheels. 
 

 

[Ncarter2]

4 hours ago, Trog said:

The other great unintended consequence of the improvement to vehicle ride was gauge corner cracking. Apparently it had always existed but was not a problem as the rail heads were wearing down at about the same rate as the cracks were growing so they never got to a critical depth, then those pesky chaps from the CM&EE made the trains shape up, roll straighter and stop hunting about wearing down the rail heads. 

You can add to that BR, Rail Track and NR changing track design hasn’t helped. Mixtures of vertical and inclined track, varying track gauges, all upsets the balance of the bogies. Most drivers and staff would also say the older stock rides better, some of the modern vehicles ride very poor indeed. 
It used to be a case of the rails were softer than the wheels, but now we use harder steel as standard, with even harder grades as required. It does tend to resist cracking for longer, but if not kept in check, when it goes, it propagates at a faster rate.  
On my route, RCF propagation around vertical S&C on the straight can result is drastically reduced asset life, granted, we have Desiros which hammer the track. Induce hunting and it can take some distance to settle, another cause of cracks. Grinding is generally positive, but in some instances can have a negative impact and open cracks which then causes no end of issues.