Red Heat Emergency week of 18th July 2022

[letterspider]

1 hour ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Do other countries typically cope with as wide variations in temperature better? We don't hear of failures elsewhere, only their successes. Does this mean they don't have any engineering failures though?

 

See 3 posts above: I remember it being -9 in the UK a few years ago & yesterday it was +42. That is a 51 degree difference.

Equatorial countries are usually hot but don't get very cold so their buildings, structures & machines are designed to cope with heat. If you could move an Egyptian railway to Alaska, it would fail completely in winter. Rails would contract so badly they would break apart. The huge air con units would be massive overkill & wasteful.

Countries nearer the poles are usually colder. If you could move a north Russian railway to Thailand, the rails would buckle badly & the locos would continually overheat.

 

I have been to Thailand a few times, enough to take an interest in their railways. Their history is full of schemes which have failed through investment mis-management, incidents which could have been avoided. I doubt Thailand is unusual in this respect either.

 

Yes I have a lot of experience of travelling on European trains. In the Alpine regions trains stop near ski resorts and the service is regular, I have used it. Currently it is 38'C here in the Italian Alps. I don't see any problems. These are wide temperature ranges which the European systems cope with.  This may have something to do with providing reliable tracks for international freight, something UK doesn't have to worry about (the Transmanche tunnel excepted)

[Pandora]

Appears to be progress on the ECML, though many cancellations and late starts,  the 0900 Edinburgh to Kings Cross departed right time then lost 52 minutes between  Durham area and KX,  arriving KX at 1428,  the Azuma covered Peterborough to KX in 55 minutes,  what is the speed at the time, are trains restricted to 100 or  110 mph or has full 125 mph linespeed been  restored?

Edited July 20, 2022 by Pandora

[mdvle]

8 hours ago, letterspider said:

Agree with what has been said about snowdrifts but hot weather affecting OLE and track isn't such a rare event and I am surprised British engineers struggle to match the ability of their colleagues on the continent,  many countries with inferior budgets.

 

Over here in the Toronto area we are having a typical July hot spell - overnight temperatures around 22C and daytime highs of 32C (feeling like 38C).

 

Despite these being typical for July - we will get around 10 days every year - various things happen:

• trains face speed restrictions - see this page from the commuter rail system for example https://www.gotransit.com/en/travelling-with-us/how-weather-affects-service/summer
• Environment Canada (think Met Office) has issued a heat warning.  This has a couple of effects, one it warns people to be careful but it also typically triggers municipalities into opening up cooling locations for people who don't have A/C and in the past extended hours at outdoor pools (varies by municipality).
• because it works harder the A/C on buses and trains is more prone to failure.

The opposite happens during the very cold in the winter - cold alerts get issued, warming places opened, more outreach to the homeless, and (more so with snow) disruptions to trains as switches get blocked - or as in the case in Edmonton in February 2021 the cold caused a rail to crack on the cities LRT system.

 

Which is a long way of saying don't assume things are operating perfectly elsewhere.

 

 

 

[Welly]

6 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

Do other countries typically cope with as wide variations in temperature better? We don't hear of failures elsewhere, only their successes. Does this mean they don't have any engineering failures though?

I can tell you that in July 2014 there was a 30 deg heatwave over Norway and Sweden lasting 2 weeks. I was travelling by train throughout that region and both SJ and NSB had normal service on their system except for the Northland railway from Trondheim to Bodu - the train is scheduled to take 10 hours to travel all the way but mine took 2 hours longer due to buckled rails and speed restrictions in the hottest parts. The guide had travelled the same line the previous week and the train took 5 hours longer than scheduled!

[Ncarter2]

12 hours ago, letterspider said:

Agree with what has been said about snowdrifts but hot weather affecting OLE and track isn't such a rare event and I am surprised British engineers struggle to match the ability of their colleagues on the continent,  many countries with inferior budgets.

The thing is the UK has various types of track construction, with legacy components through to current modern standards. The network is a patch work quilt. There are many different standards we use because of this. I happened to be in London this week when there were several thermal misalignments, the rail temp being 58, and during the hottest days/months, we see 50+ year on year. At the other end of the spectrum, I have experienced -14 rail temperatures, though -7 to -10 seem the more consistent in cold weather. That is a huge range and when you consider we use a stress free temperature of 27, most of the asset performs above what is expected. We do the best with what we have, the lack of significant investment for years has unfortunately left significant challenges that todays budgets are not big enough to deal with. I can’t imagine our European friends have 1950’s designed and constructed track in use on their main lines, or jointed S&C on timbers in higher speed track. All the track sections in the UK should work to seasonal preparedness, unfortunately, the window of opportunity to ensure it’s complete is small, the sections and not staffed like they were and the asset is being used and sweated more. There is also the access to get at the track, which is constrained in most areas. All the while this needs to be done, the day to day still needs to be completed. 
Can’t say for OHL, not my department. 

[Fat Controller]

I have not seen anything on here about point detection problems;  my recollection is that these can be affected by extreme heat.

[RFS]

Well what a contrast! 39C outside on Tuesday, now it's 17C with light drizzle and feeling very fresh. Cool air now flooding into the house which is now down to 24C and falling.  Let's hope it stays like that.

[Mark Saunders]

1 hour ago, RFS said:

Well what a contrast! 39C outside on Tuesday, now it's 17C with light drizzle and feeling very fresh. Cool air now flooding into the house which is now down to 24C and falling.  Let's hope it stays like that.

By the end of the month normality will return and most will have forgotten till the next time!

[jjb1970]

It really is a cost-benefit calculation. Most things can be done if you invest enough resources, but how much do you want to spend? The hot spell is a handful of days so far, similarly in winter the problems tend to be a handful of days a year. How much more do people want to spend to expand the operating temperature range outwards? If you ask people trying to travel this week I'm sure almost everyone would say more needs to be done, but the same people would probably go nuts if fares and/or taxation was increased to make systems more resilient to extreme weather. While it isn't popular when these events hit it is perfectly legitimate to say a couple of days of inconvenience makes more sense spending £££££££££££££££££s for little benefit. However, for all that we probably face little choice to re-appraising what conditions our systems should be able to operate in given climate change. The question is, what is an appropriate condition based on where the climate is going?

[Pandora]

3 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

I have not seen anything on here about point detection problems;  my recollection is that these can be affected by extreme heat.

Yes,  heat and cold trigger point detection failures which  tend to occur when points are swung, if the points are not moved then less chance of an issue, in hot weather the signallers try not to swing points if they can avoid it, and, NR have installed monitoring and logging systems over the last 25 years,  from a central monitoring office,  they can see when points are starting to "play up"  such as slowing down as they switch, and send out S&T to investigate in advance of a failure

[Titan]

14 hours ago, Ncarter2 said:

Can’t say for OHL, not my department. 

 

It's pretty much the same story.  It was around the turn of the millennium that it was starting to become apparent that the temperature ranges to which they were being designed were no longer adequate. Nowadays we don't design for as cold a temperature as we used to - how long is it since we broke the record for the coldest temperature in the UK?  This means that Mk1 and Mk3 OLE can suffer, but OLE using newer design from the "Master Series" should be much better.  Hopefully we won't then get issues with tensioning weights falling so far they are resting on the ground, and maintenance crews going around with shovels to dig holes underneath them to restore tension!

[D9020 Nimbus]

40 years since the record for "coldest day" was set — -32°C in Braemar, Scotland,  January 1982. Same time the record for England was also set: -25°C in Shawbury, Shropshire. That was a period containing several severe winters — 1978/79/82/87 were all severe.

 

There have been other winters where there were very low temperatures — 1995 comes to mind, though there wasn't much snow. It's possible that one of the records might have changed since 1982, but I don't think so.

[AY Mod]

25 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

Same time the record for England was also set: -25°C in Shawbury, Shropshire

 

Yup, safthead here walked back a mile and a half from the pub that night. ❄️

[Reorte]

46 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

40 years since the record for "coldest day" was set — -32°C in Braemar, Scotland,  January 1982. Same time the record for England was also set: -25°C in Shawbury, Shropshire. That was a period containing several severe winters — 1978/79/82/87 were all severe.

 

There have been other winters where there were very low temperatures — 1995 comes to mind, though there wasn't much snow. It's possible that one of the records might have changed since 1982, but I don't think so.

Not as cold as that but there were a couple of pretty chilly winters around 2012. I don't recall any more recently being particularly noticeable though.

[melmerby]

30 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

Yup, safthead here walked back a mile and a half from the pub that night. ❄️

Still got any toes?😄

[AY Mod]

10 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Still got any toes?😄

 

I had enough vodka/antifreeze in the system!

 

We wuz 'ard in them days.

[rab]

5 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

By the end of the month normality will return and most will have forgotten till the next time!

 

School holidays starting soon so bound to be plenty of poor weather then. :)

[rab]

10 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

I had enough vodka/antifreeze in the system!

 

We wuz 'ard in them days.

 

What was the dilution rate for the vodka/antifreeze. :)

[letterspider]

19 hours ago, Ncarter2 said:

The thing is the UK has various types of track construction, with legacy components through to current modern standards. The network is a patch work quilt. There are many different standards we use because of this. I happened to be in London this week when there were several thermal misalignments, the rail temp being 58, and during the hottest days/months, we see 50+ year on year. At the other end of the spectrum, I have experienced -14 rail temperatures, though -7 to -10 seem the more consistent in cold weather. That is a huge range and when you consider we use a stress free temperature of 27, most of the asset performs above what is expected. We do the best with what we have, the lack of significant investment for years has unfortunately left significant challenges that todays budgets are not big enough to deal with. I can’t imagine our European friends have 1950’s designed and constructed track in use on their main lines, or jointed S&C on timbers in higher speed track. All the track sections in the UK should work to seasonal preparedness, unfortunately, the window of opportunity to ensure it’s complete is small, the sections and not staffed like they were and the asset is being used and sweated more. There is also the access to get at the track, which is constrained in most areas. All the while this needs to be done, the day to day still needs to be completed. 
Can’t say for OHL, not my department. 

 

 

I do agree that the there is a problem with maintenance costs upon a network that was world leading and pioneering during the Industrial Revolution but there must be a fundamental problem when inter city trains are failing to run; and the UK network has had too many fatal crashes over the years due to bad maintenance - too many lives lost. 

 

Apparently there is a shortage of nearly 50000 rail engineers to blamehttp://www.infrastructure-intelligence.com/article/nov-2020/uk-rail-industry-faces-critical-skills-shortage-2025-says-new-report

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

6 hours ago, Titan said:

how long is it since we broke the record for the coldest temperature in the UK? 

The England cold record was set in 1982 at -26C.

 

However, in Feb 2021, Braemar got to -23C, the lowest temp in 25 years.

Dec 2010 was generally very cold with temps below -10C widely (coldest Dec in over a century), with one England location recording -20C.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Titan]

6 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

The England cold record was set in 1982 at -26C.

 

 

I think that was the year me and my friends built an igloo that was tall enough for us to stand up in.

 

I will believe global warming is not a thing when the coldest record is broken as frequently as the hottest.

[Reorte]

54 minutes ago, Titan said:

 

I think that was the year me and my friends built an igloo that was tall enough for us to stand up in.

 

I will believe global warming is not a thing when the coldest record is broken as frequently as the hottest.

On an overall worldwide basis, locally things could go either way.

[Ncarter2]

2 hours ago, letterspider said:

 

 

I do agree that the there is a problem with maintenance costs upon a network that was world leading and pioneering during the Industrial Revolution but there must be a fundamental problem when inter city trains are failing to run; and the UK network has had too many fatal crashes over the years due to bad maintenance - too many lives lost. 

 

Apparently there is a shortage of nearly 50000 rail engineers to blamehttp://www.infrastructure-intelligence.com/article/nov-2020/uk-rail-industry-faces-critical-skills-shortage-2025-says-new-report

 

 

There are valid safety reasons, there are numerous things to consider, the engineering is only one aspect. Given the fallout, closing a line of route is never taken lightly. Let’s not forget, Tuesday’s temperatures are not something we typically experience, so why would we set up the infrastructure to cope with what is a ad hoc situation each year? It comes back to cost, spend billions of tax payer money to build in resilience to more extreme weather, or have a few days disruption. The condition and construction of our infrastructure is the single biggest issue, no if’s, no but’s. 
While I agree too many lives have been lost, I don’t think bad maintenance is the cause for that many compared with other reasons. 

[melmerby]

25 minutes ago, Reorte said:

On an overall worldwide basis, locally things could go either way.

But the Earth's mean temp is increasing, so any cold events are being outweighed by hot events.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, letterspider said:

the UK network has had too many fatal crashes over the years due to bad maintenance - too many lives lost. 

 

 

15 minutes ago, Ncarter2 said:

 
While I agree too many lives have been lost, I don’t think bad maintenance is the cause for that many compared with other reasons. 

Any life lost is one too many.

Suicides are the greatest contributor to railway deaths in the UK.

e.g. in 2020/2021 the were 253 suicides and 23 other deaths, 16 of the other deaths were members of the public, of which 11 were trespassers. Workforce fatalities are a recurring problem

One member of the public died on a train (Clarmont landslip) the first fatality in a train accident since Grayrigg in 2007, one fell off a platform into the path of a train some were hit by trains on level crossings.

Overall our railways are incredibly safe.