Smoke from fire causes rail line to close

[deltic]

Is this story correct http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-14850179 or is there more to it.

"Smoke from a fire at a pallet yard in Hertfordshire disrupted train services on a nearby rail line.

More than 40 firefighters dealt with the fire at the site in Rye Road, Hoddesdon, from about 02:45 BST.

Smoke disrupted services on a nearby rail line and a bus service replaced trains between Hertford and Hoddesdon until mid-morning.

Fire chiefs said about 25% of the pallets at the site were set on fire in the incident."

Lines are rarely/ever? closed due to thick fog - how would drifting smoke be different or was the fire actually adjacent to the line?

 

[mallard]

Seems very odd to close a line due to smoke. Slowing them down due to sighting issues I can understand, but closing completely?

Nobody seems to mind too much about the smoke produced by steam locos...

 

[jonb]

I've heard from several sources that the heat from the fire caused the OHLE to sag in the affected area therefore making it unsafe to run trains through the affected area.

 

[Schnellzug]

What often happens if there are fires at scrapyards and so on is that they'll cordon it off becuase of the risk from gas cylinders exploding. Like they did on the M1 not so long ago.

 

[philjo]

Something similar has happened at least twice in the past on the ECML at Welham Green - the pallets are almost up to the railway fence.
It must be about 10 years ago when they had a big fire during the evening peak hour - the fire brigade had asked for the OHLE to be turned off while they dealt with the fire. The heat had also damaged the OHLE on the down slow line adjacent to the fire so when services were restored they could only run on the up lines until the wires were repaired (WAGN stoppers running wrong line on the up fast from Potters Bar to WGC & everything else going via the Hertford loop)


Also, the drifting smoke may have something toxic in it depending on what is burning (i.e. in the case of pallets what has been used to treat the wood).

 

[O L Leigh]

There are two pallet yards in the vicinity of Broxbourne Junction, both of which are right next to the line, the Rye Road yard being just past Rye House station on the Hertford East branch.

As a general principle, the fire brigade will not tackle fires close to high voltage power lines until the supply has been isolated. I expect this is what happened in this instance. Drifting smoke has nothing to do with it. I suspect this is just a low-ranking scribe in the Beeb trying to come up with some reason of the top of his/her head.

O L Leigh

 

[GB]

There was reports of sagging but this turned out not to be the case, or at least not the cause of the service disruption. The problem was the OLE needed isolating for the fire fighters to tackle the fire.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

On 23rd July I was at North Harrow ( Met Line ) and there was a small degree of smoke drifting across the station from a bonfire in a garden adjacent to the station. Not very much smoke at all, but the fire brigade still turned up and walked along the platform and called down to the garden to have the householder extinguish the bonfire.

So.....

I suspect it may be that the smoke can easily set off the fire alarms on stations ( from memory station alarms do not ring in public areas to prevent panic but the brigade will be automatically summoned ) and from this I deduce that there may be a similar problem with smoke being ingested into a train and triggering the alarms on board?

 

[causton]

Something similar has happened at least twice in the past on the ECML at Welham Green - the pallets are almost up to the railway fence.
It must be about 10 years ago when they had a big fire during the evening peak hour - the fire brigade had asked for the OHLE to be turned off while they dealt with the fire. The heat had also damaged the OHLE on the down slow line adjacent to the fire so when services were restored they could only run on the up lines until the wires were repaired (WAGN stoppers running wrong line on the up fast from Potters Bar to WGC & everything else going via the Hertford loop)

Interesting - never knew about this occasion! Of course, those pallets have set fire twice in the last couple of years IIRC - I remember one in the Welwyn Hatfield Times which ended up closing the ECML for a short while!