Leaves action pays off

Clear up: workers remove annual leaves
13 April 2012

Train passengers escaped misery today as Network Rail's strategy to clear leaves from the lines appeared to have paid off.

The perennial problem of fallen leaves sticking to the tracks and causing travel chaos has been a painful but long-running joke.

When crushed, the leaves form a hard Teflon-like coating which causes train wheels to slip and slide.

But with the heavy rain and strong winds over the weekend there was a concerted effort to avoid such problems.

Network Rail employed more than 30 multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) to run sandite - a sand and glue concoction - over thousands of miles of line to scrape off the mulch.

The MPVs, which clear the tracks twice a day at 2am and 2pm, also rely on very high-pressure water jets to force the leaves off the tracks.

A Network Rail spokesman said hundreds of three-man teams had gone out to hot spots to remove leaves by hand if necessary.

He said the South East had been most seriously affected by the wintry conditions over the last 24 hours, with some winds gusting up to 50mph.

"At the moment we are doing extremely well," he said. "We have come through the worst - the worst was yesterday, overnight and first thing this morning."

Spokesmen for Anglia Railways, South West Trains and Thameslink all said their services had run without significant delay due to leaves this morning.

A spokesman for South Central Trains said there had been slipping on the lines caused by leaves around Oxted, near Redhill, which had delayed one train by 12 minutes.

"The forecast was for much worse and we were expecting it to be a bad day but it is not nearly as bad as we expected," he said.

A spokesman from the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) said that, although leaves were a concern, trouble had been avoided this morning.

He said: "South Central are having a few problems but across the country it is not actually that bad at the moment.

"We have been taking a look at the network because there was a lot of nervousness over the weekend.

"The problem is out there but Network Rail's efforts over the weekend are paying off at the moment."

He went on: "We are expecting a couple more days of rather unsettled weather and the train companies all have emergency timetables if things go belly-up.
"It is not over yet, there are leaves still needing to be cleared."

The ATOC spokesman said operations to clear leaves off the lines had started two weeks ago and were set to continue until December.

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