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Friday 19 Sep 2025

Network Rail and South Western Railway gearing up for Autumn with newly named leaf-buster, ‘Ctrl Alt Deleaf’, taking to the tracks on the Wessex route

Region & Route:

Southern: Wessex

| Southern

Leaves are browning, autumn is around the corner and Network Rail alongside South Western Railway (SWR) are gearing up for its annual multi-million-pound battle against Mother Nature and ‘leaves on the line’, aiming to keep millions of passengers and trains safe and moving over the next three months. 

Network Rail has invested over £100m to tackle ‘leaves on the line’ – the annual scourge for Britain’s railways, and railways across the world - as damp, compressed leaves become the railway equivalent of black-ice on the road leading to slow running, delays and disruption.  

Entering the fray is a new hero this season; ‘Ctrl Alt Deleaf’! This leaf-kicking train - named by the public in a nationwide vote - will roll out for the first time next week from a depot at Effingham Junction, Surrey, where it’s been showing off its flashy new autumn-themed look. Its mission, along with an entire fleet of similar leaf-busters, is to blast leaf-mulch off the rails – treating some 1.12 million miles over the autumn - to keep them clean and keep journeys running smoothly across the country. 

This autumn, ‘Ctrl Alt Deleaf’ and its leaf-fighting partners cover close to 170,000 miles, almost seven times around the earth, across the Wessex route, which connects London with Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon.

 ‘Ctrl Alt Deleaf’ beat thousands of other contenders in the nationwide vote and saw-off other worthy contenders like ‘Leaf-Fall Weapon’, ‘Pulp Friction’, and ‘The Autumn Avenger’, to grab the top spot with half the votes.  

The name reveal follows a public competition in which more than 1,300 individual name nominations were submitted before being whittled down to a shortlist of four by a judging panel of railway historian, author and presenter Tim Dunn, Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, and Network Rail’s industry weather response director, Lisa Angus and then put to a public vote. 

Tim Dunn said: ‘It was fantastic to see so many members of the public get involved with naming a leaf-busting train. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit a name and vote for a winner!  The leaf-busting trains are a vital tool in Network Rail’s operation to tackle the impact of leaf fall on the railways. I'm delighted that the public has been able to honour these marvellous machines with such a fantastic name.’ 

Track and train working together to tackle leaves on the line

Network Rail and SWR are working together to tackle leaf fall this autumn and keep passenger journeys on track.

Last year, 39 SWR Class 158 and 159 trains were fitted with SWR-inspired and Network Rail-funded sand-applying technology to boost rail adhesion in wet conditions. This system will be used again this autumn after a successful first year in service.

These advanced sand applicators can distribute up to 5kg of sand onto the tracks per minute, and automatically apply sand when a train is braking. As a result, the distance it takes a train to stop is significantly reduced.

Network Rail is also using a rail cleaner, Interflon LeafGuard, which is quick-acting and does not require rinsing or wiping. Applied either by hand or via a Sand Rover – a specially-adapted 4x4 Land Rover vehicle which can travel on rails and on the road and scrape leaf mulch off the tracks with specially mounted wire brushes – this solution self-cleans and leaves behind a micro layer that is reactivated by rainwater and moisture, keeping the rail head surface clean for longer.

Drones are also being deployed to aerially inspect the railway and reduce the need for line closures while high-definition video cameras mounted onto the front of trains – known as Automated Intelligent Video Review (AIVR) – capture high-definition images and video to help maintenance teams identify areas that need extra attention.

Speaking on behalf of Network Rail and South Western Railway, Operations Director Tom Desmond said: “Leaves on the line get crushed onto the railway, becoming like black ice on the roads, lowering adhesion and impacting acceleration and braking. ‘Ctrl Alt Deleaf’ is an amusing name for a serious bit of kit, which will blast the rails with water to clear autumn leaf fall contamination.  As well as our MPVs, we have a dedicated team in Basingstoke that coordinate our response making sure we can react to events. We also have teams on the ground using products to break down leaf site in high-risk sites. Throughout the autumn a whole sweep of mitigations are put in place to help keep passengers moving.”

The railway’s black ice

Between October and December every year, roughly 500 billion leaves, weighing around half a million tonnes fall onto the railway. They stick to damp rails and passing trains crush them into a thin, hard layer on the rail which, a lot like black ice on the roads, can affect braking and acceleration.

Autumn timetables

Just like you wouldn’t accelerate over black ice on the roads, we can’t risk passenger safety by driving trains at full speed over leaves.

In areas with very heavy leaf-fall some train operators publish special autumn timetables with revised journey timings, including South Western Railway which operates across Network Rail’s Wessex route. These timetables allow extra time for train drivers to drive more cautiously due to the slippery conditions caused by leaf fall, ice and snow, so that they can get passengers to where they need to go safely and reliably.