Media centre

Friday 28 Jan 2005

DRAMATIC REDUCTION IN AUTUMN DELAYS

Region & Route:

Train delays caused by leaves on the line fell by an enormous 84% in Lancashire and Cumbria last autumn, according to figures released today. In autumn 2003 trains were held up for 22,291 minutes because of leaves but last year that figure dropped to just 3,664 minutes, making Lancashire and Cumbria the best area on Network Rail’s London North Western route. Gary Openshaw, Network Rail’s general manager for the area paid tribute to his leaf-fall teams; “We had six teams of three people and it was their task to deal with all the leaf-fall problem areas. They did an excellent job, as the figures demonstrate. We also had mobile operations managers directing their work and a performance project specialist co-ordinating everything. Two of our staff travelled to Manchester every day to help the dedicated ‘autumn controller’ in the operational control.” The main weapon used in the battle against leaves is a substance called Sandite. It looks like gritty wallpaper paste and it helps trains to get a better grip on the rails. Network Rail has lineside machines at stations in known problem areas that automatically squirt Sandite on the tracks as trains pass by. This helps them to stop safely and start up without slipping. The leaf-fall teams have portable sand dispensers as well as a citrus-based liquid to lift the contamination off the rails. Armed with this equipment they were able to liaise with train drivers reporting problem areas, and get to the root of the trouble before it had a major impact on train services. A special railhead treatment train was also used to blast leaf contamination off the tracks with high-pressure water jets. The end result is that not only was there a dramatic reduction in delays to trains but there were no signals passed at danger as a result of leaves, and there was only one station overrun compared to four in 2003.