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Discussion about railroad topics everywhere outside of Canada and the United States.

Moderators: Komachi, David Benton

 #1463416  by george matthews
 
Train services throughout Scotland have been suspended during the current Siberian weather conditions.

It's been very cold everywhere. Snow has fallen in strength in much of Britain. (None in Dorset where I live.)
 #1463504  by george matthews
 
Snow has now reached Dorset, which has been free of it so far since the current cold period began. Probably not enough yet to prevent rail operation. But much heavier snow in the north has affected rail services.
 #1463651  by george matthews
 
Friday has seen the southwestern mainline blocked in the New Forest with a train from Waterloo stuck for 15 hours, without heat for most of the time.

Train services have been suspended in large parts of the country as a result of snow fall on Thursday night.
 #1463725  by george matthews
 
In Dorset there seems to be a mild thaw. Water is pouring off my roof as the snow there melts. If that is the situation everywhere the rail lines will reopen and train services will resume.
 #1463770  by RRspatch
 
Been watching the Railcam.uk streams on YouTube. Doesn't look like a lot of snow to me ... maybe three inches at most.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_HMyfBPuAs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The above link is for a camera at Barking which I assume is near London.

It seems to me, looking at the video linked below, that BR had less problems with snow in the past -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4pJwcE7JI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Snow (1963) - Geoffrey Jones | BFI National Archive

My favorite parts of this film is at 1:17 with the signal box operator throwing a switch while a coal fired fireplace in the background and a steam train blasting through a snow drift at 2:05 .... can't do that with a 66 I guess ....

BTW - if it helps any, the Amtrak NEC was completely shut down between Washington and Boston yesterday due to a "nor'easter" blizzard which caused trees to blow into the catenary.
 #1463786  by george matthews
 
I think this weather incident is unusual. Some reports are saying that it hasn't been as bad since 1963 - which I remember. At that time there were unusual amounts of snow remarkably late in the year. I can remember that I was intending to travel at Easter from Edinburgh to Norfolk to go sailing on the Broads there (a large system of rivers and canals, very popular for boating). The week before Easter there was snow much like the situation just now. But by the time I was going to travel south - just before Easter - the snow had gone and the temperatures had risen. I think that is very likely this time.

The problem is, how should transport industries prepare for weather events? Where there is snow every year, as for example in Canada, obviously one can assemble all the apparatus needed to clear travel routes. But if it only happens every 50 years it is difficult to justify buying apparatus unlikely to be needed very often.

Rail services are already being resumed in the south, and will recover further north as the snow melts.

I have just been out on my bike to visit a local shop. The snow is melting slowly and I travelled a few hundred yards to a local shop - which I couldn't do on Friday.
 #1463964  by george matthews
 
On Sunday the snow in the south, for example on the southwestern line from Waterloo to Weymouth, the snow has mostly melted with air temperatures up to about 2 or 3 C. But the line from Bournemouth to Weymouth was still without services on Sunday.

Rail services are expected to be much closer to normal on Monday - a relief for thousands needing them to get to work.

These lines are 750 v DC from third rail, and are vulnerable when ice covers the powered rail. The ice should have gone by the time services are due to begin on Monday morning - and special de-icer trains have been scraping the third rail to hasten its recovery.
 #1464026  by johnthefireman
 
RRspatch wrote:My favorite parts of this film is at 1:17 with the signal box operator throwing a switch while a coal fired fireplace in the background...
Thanks for this - I also love that scene. I can remember that 1963 winter - I was still at school.

It reminds me of another winter some time in the 1980s when, home on leave from Sudan, I was taking a train to Halifax for a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house. I pitched up at Kings Cross to find chaos, with timetables all to pot and trains being sent off when and where possible. I eventually managed to get on a train going north and found myself late in the evening in a snowbound station somewhere in Yorkshire - can't remember exactly where - with a bunch of other hapless travellers trying to get connections to onward destinations. The platform staff told us that they were expecting a train but the heating wasn't working on it. They had no idea when the next train would come. When it pulled into the station we all piled on as a freezing cold train in the hand is worth more than the heated one which might or might not come later. There was ice on the inside of the windows and it was truly freezing, like an ice box. Eventually we got to Halifax. On those old carriages you had to open the window in the door to reach the handle outside so as to open the door - there were no inside door handles - but the windows were all frozen solid and wouldn't open. There was a pack of passengers running up and down the train corridor frantically trying to find a window that would open. Finally somebody found one, and we were all able to pile out through that one door. Can't imagine that on a modern train. Either the computer would have shut the train down when the heating failed, or health and safety regulations would have required the train to be taken out of service anyway. To end the story, I managed to catch a bus to the end of my mate's road and arrived, to everyone's surprise, in good time to have a drink or three before the clock struck midnight.
 #1464709  by george matthews
 
There was a time when I was on leave from Saudi at Christmas and went to visit a friend near Oxford from Bournemouth. I was trapped there for several days with snowbound roads. The trains did resume eventually but the first problem was the buses from a village that couldn't travel on the rural roads.
 #1464763  by David Benton
 
I recall a smattering of snow at Clapham Junction , one morning on the way to work. But it was gone by lunchtime . I was disappointed , as I was hoping for a white Christmas , had never seen one before. We planned to go to Scotland for a new years eve , but never made it. I think it did snow heavily that New Years in Scotland. This would be late 80's .
 #1464784  by george matthews
 
David Benton wrote:I recall a smattering of snow at Clapham Junction , one morning on the way to work. But it was gone by lunchtime . I was disappointed , as I was hoping for a white Christmas , had never seen one before. We planned to go to Scotland for a new years eve , but never made it. I think it did snow heavily that New Years in Scotland. This would be late 80's .
It's Spring now. It's very unlikely there will be more harmful snow, even in Scotland. Yesterday in Dorset there were even hints of warmth in the air.
 #1464787  by johnthefireman
 
Here in Kenya we're having heavy rains, which is great after a long drought, but floods closed part of the Nairobi commuter rail network last week.
 #1464796  by george matthews
 
johnthefireman wrote:Here in Kenya we're having heavy rains, which is great after a long drought, but floods closed part of the Nairobi commuter rail network last week.
Do the commuter trains use the old metre gauge station?
 #1464802  by johnthefireman
 
Yes. In recent years the commuter network has expanded, with two new stations, Soykimau and Imara Daima, which I think were the first new stations built in Kenya for half a century or so. They are both close to the Mombasa Road serving the suburb of South C and attempting to provide a "park and ride" facility to reduce the commuter traffic coming in to the city from that direction. Soykimau also serves the new Standard Gauge Railway station, linking it to the old Nairobi Station in the city centre.