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Tuesday 18 Oct 2005

LEAF FALL WEAPONS READY TO HIT THEIR TARGET

Region & Route:

National

More water-jetting trains and leaf-busting teams than ever before will be helping to get passengers to work on time this autumn.  They will be out across the network tackling the problem that affects railways around the world – leaves on the line.  More than 36% more miles of track this year will be blasted with this specialist high-pressure water jetting kit, making this the largest ever autumn campaign by Network Rail. A fleet of 54 ‘leaf-busting’ trains will be shooting out water at an equivalent pressure of 1,000/bar (up to 1000x faster than the water coming out of your tap) getting rid of ‘leaf mulch’.   The railway equivalent of black ice on the roads, leaf mulch forms a hard Teflon-like coating on the rail causing trains to slip and slide, which results in train delays, and can also damage both track and train. Director of Operations, Robin Gisby, said:  “Network Rail is determined to improve on the success of our autumn campaign last year in which delays were reduced by a massive 42%.  We started planning for this year 10 months ago and are working closely with the train operating companies to minimise the impact. “We will never entirely beat Mother Nature but we’re as prepared as we possibly can be.” Methods being used to tackle the ‘black ice’ of the rail industry include:

• 82 two-men leaf-busting teams strategically located across the country on-call round-the-clock
• Using the latest satellite navigation technology to reach hot-spots as soon as possible.  These two man crews use railhead scrubbers, sand sticks and Natrusolve, which dissolves the leaf mulch, to tackle the ‘black-ice’ of the railways

• Specific leaf fall weather forecasts from the Met Office
• A dedicated ‘leaf-busting’ unit has been set-up to tackle the impact of autumn on the network
• £3million has been spent on purchasing 48 new tanks specially designed to increase water jetting capacity and 50 new wagons for the trains

Train operators have been giving their drivers specialist ‘skid-pan’ training to cope with the slippery autumn conditions