Right- versus left-hand running

[DavidGrain]

I did actually feel the switchover at Aachen. This was in the dark so I could not see the actual change point.

From the Belgian border to Maastricht we ran left handed and I was never on a train which actually went through the station so I did not notice any change over as all my journeys started or finished there.

In Malmö before the City Tunnel was built the change over happened after Malmö Sud although I remember once running right handed all the way round Malmö to come into Malmö Central. Now that the City Tunnel takes you straight into Malmö the silly thing is that although I have made two journeys between Copenhagen and Malmö in the past few months I cannot remember switching from right to left.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

At some stations on the border between a right-hand and a left-hand running country the switchover is more noticeable than at others when travelling on cross-border trains. For example, at Roosendaal in the Netherlands (right-hand running) close to the border with left-hand running Belgium, trains actually switch side in the middle of the station. But at Aachen or Strasbourg it is less noticeable from what I remember.

The new LGV extension to Strasbourg splits into 2 single tracks for a flying junction, which then cross over each other before joining the classic (right hand) line.
This was of course the section at Eckwersheim on which the TGV crash occurred while testing in 2015.

From pictures of the crash site I think the southbound junction was sited exactly under the flyover bridge of the northbound line.​

I'm not sure the entire infrastructure at the junction is yet fully open, as it began public service with single line working on the undamaged (normally southbound) line.

 

[edwin_m]

At some stations on the border between a right-hand and a left-hand running country the switchover is more noticeable than at others when travelling on cross-border trains. For example, at Roosendaal in the Netherlands (right-hand running) close to the border with left-hand running Belgium, trains actually switch side in the middle of the station. But at Aachen or Strasbourg it is less noticeable from what I remember.

Don't know about Aachen, but isn't Strasbourg in the part of France that has right hand running anyway?

 

[MarcVD]

As far as I know both DB and SNCF in the East are right hand running so there is no change between right and left there...

In Aachen the 4 tracks that allow trains to & from Belgium are bi directional so trains can use any of them. There is no fast path, which isn't a problem, because all trains stop there to switch between 3 and 15 kV anyway.

 

[Groningen]

We had already this discussion. Somewhere around Nancy there is a flyover that makes left to right running (the old line Paris - Strasbourg) and v.v.. For the HSL in Netherlands the change of running is between Rotterdam Lombardijen and Barendrecht. You can find the flyover at Google Maps (51.872505, 4.536891) for trains coming from the south. The HSL from Rotterdam Centraal goes underneath that track from the south. So the Eindhoven - Den Haag Centraal and Breda - Amsterdam Centraal runs right to (51.659948, 4.683391) where it crosses all 4 tracks (travelling left) untill the next flyover given above where it returns to right.

 

[randyrippley]

......................These were used on single tracks such as Salisbury-Exeter but again I don't believe these were ever used to create multiple track bi-directional routes in the UK. ...............

The up sides of the Yeovil-Sherborne and Gillingham sections of dual track were reversible, but the down sides weren't

 

[DavidGrain]

The Ffestiniog Railway runs right handed through the passing loops. When large parts of the Chiltern line were still single track trains ran right handed through Bicester North station but this reverted to normal after the full redoubling of the line.

 

[Groningen]

There are special signs below the light signals in Roosendaal (Netherlands), that the signal is for the track on the left. It is a round blue sign with a white arrow pointing downstairs in a 45 degree angle to the left. If you use Google Streetview and search Stationsstraat, Roosendaal you see it. It is a sign normally used in Belgium; not in the Netherlands.

 

[AlexNL]

The Netherlands also have a sign to indicate to which track a signal applies, it's a black sign with a white arrow on it.

The reason for using a Belgian sign on Dutch soil is probably to reduce confusion. Typically the train will be driven by a Belgian driver, who is not used to the Dutch look.

 

[Taunton]

USA is predominantly on the right, but a few of their railways ran on the left, such as the major Chicago & North Western, now part of Union Pacific, but whose former lines still run as such. They are known as "Southpaw" lines, after a US sports expression for left-handed boxers.

In France the main railway system ran on the left but the Metro deliberately ran on the right, part of a move when built to stop the mainstream railways getting running powers.

The lines in Eastern France, Alsace-Lorraine, were originally French and ran on the left but were mostly simple single-track routes anyway. When Germany took the territory over in 1870 they quite easily changed this to right hand running. Over the next 50 years there was a considerable investment in the track, doubling, resignalling, and substantial industrialisation of the area, so when the French resumed the territory after 1918 it was now too difficult to change back. The new TGV line in Alsace however runs on the left throughout, the junction mentioned above where the accident happened is where it terminates and connects back to existing lines.

Regarding bi-di operation in Britain, I think a first was between Manchester Oxford Road and Piccadilly when services were through-routed there in about 1970. There were specific warning notices at both ends to PW etc staff warning that trains could run either way on both the lines there. I can't think of a "proper" earlier one.

 

[duesselmartin]

Interesting the suggestion that turning eastern France back to left hand running is too difficult.
Austria almost completed turning its system to right hand running. But why the bother?

 

[AlexNL]

In Sweden cars originally ran on the left side of the road. In the 60's the Swedes realised that it became increasingly difficult to change that, it was a "now or never" moment for them. So they passed the necessary legislation and on the 3rd of September 1967 everyone switched over to right hand side running, which is known as "Dagen H".

 

[Lucan]

In Sweden cars originally ran on the left side of the road. ... on the 3rd of September 1967 everyone switched over to right hand side running

Despite driving on the left until then, most Swedish cars were already left-hand-drive, presumably in anitication of the change.

 

[AlexNL]

Dagen H did lead to the demise of many tram systems, as it was too expensive to replace the existing vehicles which had their doors on the left hand side.

 

[MarcVD]

Interesting the suggestion that turning eastern France back to left hand running is too difficult.
Austria almost completed turning its system to right hand running. But why the bother?

It is certainly easier to change that on a network which is already almost entirely equipped for bi directional operation - which is reflected in the signalling of course but also in the track plans - than on a network where wrong main usage is still a rarity...

 

[Groningen]

There are many webcams on Youtube with railway action. In Ashland, Virginia Amtrak and freight run in both direction on the left or right track. There is an example that a Amtrak runs, a freight on the right and that passengers are standing at the wrong track. After the freight has passed; the passengers had to run forwards/backwards to reach the doors of the train. At the Altoona curve there are 3 tracks where the outer sides are normal, but the middle track can be used both ways.

 

[Adlington]

When after the First World War Poland regained her independence, railways in the southern part of the country were left-hand running, a legacy of that territory (Galicia) having been a part of Austria-Hungary till 1918. Don't know when this was switched to right-hand running, but in 1926 it was still unchanged.

Mind you, this was largely an academic problem, as there were only two double-track lines in the region in question.

 

[DavidGrain]

Many of the lines on the New York Subway have three tracks with the middle track bi-directional for express trains to Manhattan in the mornings and from Manhattan in the evenings

 

[JonasB]

Dagen H did lead to the demise of many tram systems, as it was too expensive to replace the existing vehicles which had their doors on the left hand side.

Replacing the buses was not an easy task as well, so in many cases it was probably seen as an excuse to get rid of trams that were considered a bit old fashioned at the time.

 

[Fireless]

The swedish "Dagen H" was a very convenient excuse to follow the contemporary philosophy of a car friendly city and realize the plans of getting rid of the trams (the decision for to abandon the Stockholm network was made in 1957).

Gothenburg needed to keep the trams running untill they could be replaced with their planned metro system, so they had invest.
Their new trams were delivered with either doors on the left or on the right and they ran them back to back, so they just had to turn those trains around for "Dagen H".
They also extended the network with new suburban lines designed to be an easy conversion.

Norrköping also survived with a brand new fleet (easier to do on a small network than on one of the big players).

 

[DavidGrain]

I was in Gothenburg in 1979 and travelled on the trams quite a bit. Although I remembered that Sweden had switched their roads over 22 years earlier I never thought at that time that I was there about the trams otherwise I might had studied the road and tram layout more.

 

[themiller]

In much of the former Austro-Hungarian empire road traffic drove on the left, and some of it stayed that way until German occupation in WW2. Sweden (and Iceland) didn't change until the 1960s. So perhaps not surprising the railways run on the left in some of those places too. Madrid Metro runs on the left while the railways mostly run on the right, but in Paris it's the other way round.

The only railway on Iceland was the construction railway for building the harbour in Reykjavik. The two steam locos survive - one in a museum and the other on the old harbourside in Reykjavik which is taken indoors during the winter. I have a photo of one loco somewhere but it's on a slide which I haven't yet scanned.

 

[themiller]

The only railway on Iceland was the construction railway for building the harbour in Reykjavik. The two steam locos survive - one in a museum and the other on the old harbourside in Reykjavik which is taken indoors during the winter. I have a photo of the loco somewhere but it's on a slide which I haven't yet scanned.

Found them!

 

[edwin_m]

There have actually been three railways on Iceland, all of an industrial nature, and I doubt any of them ever had double track so left or right hand running wouldn't have been an issue.

 

[colchesterken]

A couple of weeks ago I was trainspotting at Agde station level crossing ( South Of France ) waiting for TGV home
When a long freight train came along on the wrong side in the direction of Perpignan, at the same time a TGV came by on the left at about 100 mph, clearly an overtaking arrangement, worked very well

 

[Belperpete]

A number of lines in the UK were signalled with SIMBIDs - simplified BiDi. This had only minimal signalling in the wrong direction, and the AWS magnets were not suppressed for wrong-road moves. One of the significant costs was the patrolmen's lockouts, that patrolmen use to block wrong-road moves, so that they aren't hit from behind while patrolling. I think the main issue was that it wasn't as cheap as had been envisaged (this was in the era of relay interlockings, so the extra circuits meant not insignificant additional cable costs). I think that not suppressing the AWS magnets was also not popular, and so latter schemes did suppress them, which also further increased the costs. But the major cost was no doubt providing the additional crossovers needed. In practice, the wrong-line working was rarely if ever used, and I think it became seen as poor value for money. For a train to be routed wrong-road needs a very large gap in the traffic on the other road, which is rarely available on most lines in the UK. And it is rarely possible to undertake engineering work on one line without being foul of the other line.

 

[thenorthern]

I think I was told that the only country where the road traffic normally moves on the left but the rail traffic normally moves on the right is Indonesia which may have something to do with Dutch influence.

In a lot of countries such as Portugal, Argentina, France, Italy, Israel, Nigeria and Tunisia have right hand traffic for roads but left hand traffic for trains.

Left hand traffic is of course based on the fact that it was common to ride a horse on the left hand side of the road.

 

[edwin_m]

A number of lines in the UK were signalled with SIMBIDs - simplified BiDi. This had only minimal signalling in the wrong direction, and the AWS magnets were not suppressed for wrong-road moves. One of the significant costs was the patrolmen's lockouts, that patrolmen use to block wrong-road moves, so that they aren't hit from behind while patrolling. I think the main issue was that it wasn't as cheap as had been envisaged (this was in the era of relay interlockings, so the extra circuits meant not insignificant additional cable costs). I think that not suppressing the AWS magnets was also not popular, and so latter schemes did suppress them, which also further increased the costs. But the major cost was no doubt providing the additional crossovers needed. In practice, the wrong-line working was rarely if ever used, and I think it became seen as poor value for money. For a train to be routed wrong-road needs a very large gap in the traffic on the other road, which is rarely available on most lines in the UK. And it is rarely possible to undertake engineering work on one line without being foul of the other line.

The only significant bi-directional sections re-signalled in the era of relay interlockings (as far as I'm aware) were London to Bristol and part of Leicester to Bedford. The advent of solid state and computer-based interlockings has changed the equation, so that the two-track sections of the northern ECML and I think also the western GEML are bi-directional. The Trent Valley four-tracking is bi-directional on the inner two tracks so any two can be closed for enginering access at quiet service times. Not sure what has been done on the recent GWML re-signallings.

 

[MarkyT]

AWS issues were the most problematic with bidirectional retrofitted in relay areas, specifically suppression of all the normal direction permanent magnets for movements in the reverse direction. That was a primary motivation for comiing up with the SIMBIDS idea, which invented a new sign for the bang road move that meant 'ignore all AWS caution indications until further notice'. Without this concept, significant quantities of additional circuits would have been needed which would in many cases have required complete renewal of all lineside cabling throughout the entire section at great expense. Some other more minor cost savings were allowed under SIMBIDS, such as not providing separate signal post telephones for the additional signals, thus expecting drivers to cross the line to reach the phone at the adjacent normal direction signal. All these compromises led to SIMBIDS being permitted to be used only for planned, published engineering work, or under carefully defined emergency conditions, rather than for general planned traffic and real time contingency. It has not been permitted on new schemes for decades now, and as EdwinW implies in digital based signalling the only significant extra equipment cost in full bidi is the suppression inductors themselves at the AWS sites. Note the number of signals in the reverse direction compared to that in the normal direction is not relevant to the definition of SIMBIDS. That is a separate business decision as to capacity required the reverse direction.