Even more widespread disruption across the UK rail network - what can be done?

[JulienD]

For the last few days, a significant portion of the UK rail network has been disrupted. Trains were getting cancelled and delayed left and right. What is going on and what can be done to stop this ?

 

[Trainguy34]

For the last few days, a significant portion of the UK rail network has been disrupted. Trains were getting cancelled and delayed left and right. What is going on and what can be done to stop this ?

To put it simply, particularly in the southern end of the country, heat. It causes the points to expand and therefore fail/jam, and the tracks to buckle. When track isn't where it should be, you understandably can't run the trains.

It also causes signals to fail, (I think) because of the electrical relay boxes overheating, so trains have to be manually talked past signals or lines have to be blocked.

To stop this, particularly with the track and points, a white paint is used to make the rails absorb less heat and therefore make it less susceptible to buckling or failures.

 

[londonmidland]

Today has probably been one of the worst days across the EMR network in a very long time.

Multiple cancellations and delays of up to three hours due to various train faults, on both the EMR Regional and InterCity routes.

The UK rail network just can’t cope with this extreme heat, to put it bluntly.

 

[RailScot]

Any idea why GWR services were so frustrated on the 23/05? And why a thunderbird came charging through Slough station in the early evening. Multiple incidents taking place on the line?

 

[High Dyke]

Today has probably been one of the worst days across the EMR network in a very long time.

Multiple cancellations and delays of up to three hours due to various train faults, on both the EMR Regional and InterCity routes.

The UK rail network just can’t cope with this extreme heat, to put it bluntly.

I'm led to believe that many of the unit issues have been due to radiator fans getting clogged with pollen. Thus causing problems / failures.

It could be suggested that the rail industry doesn't procure units that are able to cope with such differing temperature conditions.

 

[waverley47]

I'm led to believe that many of the unit issues have been due to radiator fans getting clogged with pollen. Thus causing problems / failures.

It could be suggested that the rail industry doesn't procure units that are able to cope with such differing temperature conditions.

The problem.of course being that it's unreasonable to expect a piece of kit to function with the same performance and reliability in all possible conditions.

When contacts are let, or infrastructure built, the actual documentation will usually specify a given reliability in "normal expected conditions", and will specify what those conditions are. I might expect a car I buy to operate with one failure per 10000 miles, between -10 and 30 degrees. The car will still work outside those temperatures, however the likelihood of a failure increases.

Mainly, it's a failure of the UK to properly understand the impacts of climate change on our weather, and the extremes that it brings. Contracts let out for the 170s, which are still reasonably modern units all things considered, will have been taking into account the prevailing climate in the 90s, and given the highest summer temperature has been creeping up since then, and the units are just getting older, it's more likely that things go wrong with in units.

It's the same with infrastructure. The Victorians will have built things expecting the climate of the Victorian era to remain forever, and infrastructure is suffering with more extreme rain and longer, hotter dry spells becoming much more frequent. Upgrading the infrastructure to fit those modern changes in climate is hard.

 

[Strathclyder]

It's the same with infrastructure. The Victorians will have built things expecting the climate of the Victorian era to remain forever, and infrastructure is suffering with more extreme rain and longer, hotter dry spells becoming much more frequent. Upgrading the infrastructure to fit those modern changes in climate is hard.

And bringing the infrastructure up to scratch in this respect is going to be difficult and horrendously expensive at best, and that's if it's even practical to do so (it often isn't). So we can all expect this issue to only get worse in the years to come.

 

[The exile]

I'm led to believe that many of the unit issues have been due to radiator fans getting clogged with pollen. Thus causing problems / failures.

This is a rare combination of very high temperatures at peak pollen season - not helped by the fact that generations of rail managers have allowed a large source of that pollen to develop right next to the track.

 

[Snow1964]

The UK rail network just can’t cope with this extreme heat, to put it bluntly.

Is it extreme, or just rare ?

Really the trains and Infrastructure in South East should be able to cope with the regular few days into 30s degrees C that happen almost every year nowadays.

If we we talking high 30s I would accept it as extreme, but a few days of 28-35 occurs so regularly, that anything that fails was poorly specified or not forgiving to maintenance standards that don't tolerate being near design standard.

 

[Parallel]

The GWR network fell to bits yesterday. On a journey that should’ve taken an hour ended up taking over three hours. Units were being failed left, right and centre, and the standard issue of the air conditioning on the 158s and 16x fleet failing (which has been going on for decades now) made for a very uncomfortable journey.

XC have been bad all weekend. I saw station staff become frustrated because so many XC services were cancelled or shortformed leaving passengers struck for long periods of time in this heat. I saw multiple 4 vice 8 car Voyagers operating between Plymouth and York completely wedged, leaving around 70+ passengers on platforms, with many trains between Cardiff and Nottingham, and Bristol and Manchester cancelled due to driver shortages. Things didn’t look any better on their Bournemouth to Manchester route either.

 

[mike57]

Is it extreme, or just rare ?

In 2026 it is neither extreme or rare unfortunately, I prepared this graph which shows the highest UK temperature reached each year for the previous 60 years a couple of years ago for another non railway discussion. It illustrates the problem clearly. Assumptions regarding operating temperatures which were reasonable pre 2000 are no longer appropriate, 40C was reached over a large swathe of England for the first time in 2022, and in a few years no doubt the current 40.3C record will be breached.

People still refer to the "Summer of 1976", but the maximum temperature that year was 35.9C, which has been exceeded on multiple occasions since 2000.

The other problem is that extreme heat (my defininition would be 30C+) used to be confined pretty much to 'high summer' i.e. mid June to August, but the heatwave season has extended to include May and September, adding to stress on systems.

The problem with heat is that a lot of the systems, electronics, engines, air con etc will see increaseed breakdowns when subject to higher temperatures, and there is also the issue of track and overhead catenary, which expands. There is no doubt we are going to have to design for 45C ambient tempetatures as the trend is still upwards, and that is going to cost money, and we are going to need to upgrade existing hardware to make it more heat tolerant, which will cost yet more money.

 

[Brush 4]

21st century trains are so fragile and delicate compared with the tougher early generation diesels.
Anyway, I have the answer, bring back steam. They are already boiling hot anyway, so more heat won't make any difference. Also, they set fire to the linesides, thus solving the NR neglect and saving money on vegetation clearance as well......

I commend it to the house.

 

[Swedenorer]

I was caught up in this on Sunday and for me the real problem was the PIS seemed to be churning out info (often contradictory or ever changing stuff) continually leaving you uncertain just what to do for the best. I suppose this may have been part of the fault but it did make me yearn for the days when the staff on the platform made announcements as and when fed with running info from the nearby signal box.

 

[dk1]

Yes heat and metal are never going to be a happy mix. Continued dry weather will then run the risk of lineside fires to add to the issue.

 

[DelW]

I'm led to believe that many of the unit issues have been due to radiator fans getting clogged with pollen. Thus causing problems / failures.

Tree pollen seems to me to be unusually heavy this year. On Sunday I took a picture of one of my local footpaths, which was covered so thickly in pollen that it looked as if it had snowed. I can easily imagined it clogging radiators very quickly.

 

[Swedenorer]

Tree pollen seems to me to be unusually heavy this year. On Sunday I took a picture of one of my local footpaths, which was covered so thickly in pollen that it looked as if it had snowed. I can easily imagined it clogging radiators very quickly.

It's the second lot down here too. A lot of it is Willow.

 

[Falcon1200]

Things have not been great recently; I travelled from Oxford to Didcot and back yesterday, outward train was late and on my return the service was in chaos! But weather related disruption is nothing new, I recall, one winter, a Sunday newspaper front page headline; 'British Rail gets stuck in the Ice Age'. This was in the 1970s when I was a paper boy....

 

[Bald Rick]

It’s two things.

1) the high temps.
2) the first round of high temps this year.

In more detail:

1) the rate of failure of assets (infrastructure and rolling stock) increases when max ambient temps are 24C or more. The failure rate increases exponentially with temperature above that number. In the mid 30s C, the failure rate is typically 3 times that of ‘normal’ temps (0-23C)

2) Assets deteriorate with age, gradually. Eventually some assets will become more susceptible to failures in high temps. It is only a very small percentage of asets (small fractions of a percentage point) but there are a lot of assets. The first round of high temps will find them out. Asset is then fixed / replaced, and less likely to fail in the next round of hot temps. If, say, we get another heatwave with the same max temps in two weeks’ time, the rate of heat related failure will be lower.

 

[Haywain]

it extreme, or just rare ?

When temperature records are being broken, I think it can be regarded as extreme.

 

[Jamiescott1]

I have some friends visiting from canada. Their 2 day experience of gwr services from a thames valley branch to london are:
-services on Thames Valley branch cancelled due to signalling issues
-aircon not turned on, on 387 when outside temperature exceeded 32 degrees
- all GWR trains in the mainline from maidenhead cancelled today

 

[KNN]

2) Assets deteriorate with age, gradually. Eventually some assets will become more susceptible to failures in high temps. It is only a very small percentage of asets (small fractions of a percentage point) but there are a lot of assets. The first round of high temps will find them out. Asset is then fixed / replaced, and less likely to fail in the next round of hot temps. If, say, we get another heatwave with the same max temps in two weeks’ time, the rate of heat related failure will be lower.

Additionally, rapid expansion and contraction is more likely to cause a break than gradual temperature change. We've gone from 15 to 30 with almost no adjustment time.

 

[contrex]

Mainly, it's a failure of the UK to properly understand the impacts of climate change on our weather, and the extremes that it brings.

I'm sure that nice Mr Farage will change that. Or 'Nigel Garage' as my son calls him.

 

[Snow1964]

2) Assets deteriorate with age, gradually. Eventually some assets will become more susceptible to failures in high temps. It is only a very small percentage of asets (small fractions of a percentage point) but there are a lot of assets. The first round of high temps will find them out. Asset is then fixed / replaced, and less likely to fail in the next round of hot temps. If, say, we get another heatwave with the same max temps in two weeks’ time, the rate of heat related failure will be lower.

There is something known as preventative maintenance.

It is a pretty poor policy waiting for a disruptive breakdown as the cue to fix or repair something that is known to be deteriorating to the point where a day of warmer than average weather kills it off.

 

[EuxtonNeutral]

When temperature records are being broken, I think it can be regarded as extreme.

Extreme but not rare.

 

[E27007]

Today only two the four class 91 diagrams are worked by 91's, one diagram cancelled for the day, the other allocated to an Azuma set.
In heatwave conditions, Mk4 stock is prone to failure of air-conditioning sets, so possibly LNER do not want to risk the Mk4s out in service today.

 

[Harpo]

Extreme but not rare.

Extreme and rare.

This week has set new UK highs for both a May daytime and a May night time.

A radio piece before the weekend stated there had been 10 recorded days of 30c in May in the UK in the last century and that this one week alone was likely to produce 5 more.

The week or so of notice for this mini heatwave was totally insufficient to telescope all of the usual months of hot weather preparedness into it.

 

[Haywain]

Extreme but not rare.

If records are being broken it must be rare, but I know what you mean.

 

[Djgr]

If records are being broken it must be rare, but I know what you mean.

The first time it happens it's unique. The second time it happens it's rare.

 

[perstreperous]

I have been "recording the weather" since 2006, in the same place.

• 4 days warmer than the previous warmest May day (27.4C, 2016)
• 2 days >30C including today (31.3C already, so almost 4C above the previous record!)
• 22nd-23rd was nearly a "tropical night" (18.9C lowest temperature).

 

[MatthewHutton]

It’s two things.

1) the high temps.
2) the first round of high temps this year.

In more detail:

1) the rate of failure of assets (infrastructure and rolling stock) increases when max ambient temps are 24C or more. The failure rate increases exponentially with temperature above that number. In the mid 30s C, the failure rate is typically 3 times that of ‘normal’ temps (0-23C)

So probably a big difference is the UK still using lots of unreliable diesels and not much more reliable electric trains.