Weatherproofing the railway

[Silenos]

In the light of the recent events on the network…

All the science tells us that extreme weather events are going to become much more frequent, and less extreme but severe weather is going to be common, even if governments succeed in minimising further CO2 emissions (which seems dubious). Does this mean that we just have to accept that rail travel becomes a lottery, in which you will never be certain of reaching your destination on any given day, or are there (probably expensive) measures that could be taken to increase resilience of the rail network to bad weather?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Might need to accept that, weather wise, it's essentially becoming something of a "Goldilocks railway" (i.e. it mustn't be too hot, too cold, too windy, or too wet) and so everything has to be just right, otherwise it'll quickly all go to pot.

 

[Thirteen]

I'm not sure there is any realistic ways to weather proof the railways. Just in the same way that roads can't be weather proofed from flooding, snow or extreme heat or that planes can't operate during storms.

 

[AndrewE]

I'm not sure there is any realistic ways to weather proof the railways. Just in the same way that roads can't be weather proofed from flooding, snow or extreme heat or that planes can't operate during storms.

Well, for a start you could reconstruct all the track back to how it should be: a deep bed of free-draining ballast down to well below the bottom of the sleepers, with cross-drainage below that and ample trackside drainage - all maintained rather than the benign cost-saving neglect we have had for a few decades! That is why track floods or we have an epidemic of wet beds and broken rails.
Unless the surrounding area is actually under water trains should be able to keep running on that.

 

[Meerkat]

A massive deveg programme, and when NIMBYs complain show them the photo of that HST cab.
Need a mode agnostic national infrastructure fund that hardens critical transport links against flooding and wind, maybe with special planning powers - a lot of the flooding isn’t fixable within the railway boundary.
A recognition that the Victorians weren’t quite the brilliant engineers we assume, and that they may have left us a good few substandard earthworks, particularly in the face of wilder weather.

 

[Falcon1200]

I'm not sure there is any realistic ways to weather proof the railways.

Indeed, sometimes we just have to accept that nature will win; In the bad weather of recent days, multiple roads as well as railways have been closed, a tornado has ripped the roofs of houses, a fisherman died and another is missing in Scotland, and three men died crossing a ford in North Yorkshire

That is why track floods or we have an epidemic of wet beds and broken rails.

Not always, low lying lines are vulnerable to flooding and only massive pumps and LA-style concrete drainage channels would make a difference. And most of the water that floods railways comes from the surrounding land anyway!

 

[AndrewE]

Not always, low lying lines are vulnerable to flooding and only massive pumps and LA-style concrete drainage channels would make a difference. And most of the water that floods railways comes from the surrounding land anyway!

which is why I said "Unless the surrounding area is actually under water trains should be able to keep running on that."
If we want a resilient railway maybe the next step (after sorting out the track base as it is) should be to raise it a couple of feet to make a shallow embankment - above common flood levels anyway.

 

[swt_passenger]

[…]
Not always, low lying lines are vulnerable to flooding and only massive pumps and LA-style concrete drainage channels would make a difference. And most of the water that floods railways comes from the surrounding land anyway!

You only have to look at the HS2 and EWR route work in progress to see the huge amount of work needed concerning surface water channel diversion, track drainage attenuation ponds, fairly massively engineered culverts, crest drains at the top of cutting slopes, channels at the feet of embankments, etc etc, and it does ask the question - were the Victorian builders just as thorough?

 

[Bantamzen]

A massive deveg programme, and when NIMBYs complain show them the photo of that HST cab.
Need a mode agnostic national infrastructure fund that hardens critical transport links against flooding and wind, maybe with special planning powers - a lot of the flooding isn’t fixable within the railway boundary.
A recognition that the Victorians weren’t quite the brilliant engineers we assume, and that they may have left us a good few substandard earthworks, particularly in the face of wilder weather.

If you are going to de-veg large sections of land either side of alignments, you'd better have a another of fixing the soil. Otherwise instead of trees, you'll have hundreds of tons of earth to move, embankments and cuttings to constantly repair. The less vegetation you have the more water can destabilise the top soil.

I'm really not sure what this thread is hoping to achieve, weather happens and sometimes extreme events happen. Short of putting all infrastructure into deep tunnels with expensive pumping systems to move water, there will be times when the weather overruns the railways.

 

[Silenos]

I'm really not sure what this thread is hoping to achieve, weather happens and sometimes extreme events happen.

‘Sometimes’ is doing rather a lot of work in that sentence.

I have not gone and checked on the exact number, but there have been rather a lot of threads in the last months relating to weather-induced disruption on the network. The science tells us that extreme and severe weather is going to become more common in the next decades, even if, improbably, we manage to reduce our contribution to climate change. If we are to face a conveyor belt of disruptive storms throughout every autumn and winter, then the present situation, where the railways cannot be used for any time-critical journey (by which I mean a journey that needs to complete on the intended day, a pretty low bar) will become the norm.

Since there are many people on these forums with a great deal of knowledge and experience of the railways, I wanted to know if any of them could foresee (additional) ways to reduce this risk, should the budgets be available. That is why I started the thread.

 

[Bantamzen]

‘Sometimes’ is doing rather a lot of work in that sentence.

I have not gone and checked on the exact number, but there have been rather a lot of threads in the last months relating to weather-induced disruption on the network. The science tells us that extreme and severe weather is going to become more common in the next decades, even if, improbably, we manage to reduce our contribution to climate change. If we are to face a conveyor belt of disruptive storms throughout every autumn and winter, then the present situation, where the railways cannot be used for any time-critical journey (by which I mean a journey that needs to complete on the intended day, a pretty low bar) will become the norm.

Since there are many people on these forums with a great deal of knowledge and experience of the railways, I wanted to know if any of them could foresee ways to reduce this risk, should the budgets be available. That is why I started the thread.

I've said this in other threads, but storms are nothing new to to these Isles. We literally live in a storm zone, at the end of an oceanic current bringing warm, moist air from warmer climates, and often under a fast moving body of air separating two air masses of very different temperatures. A perfect storm making system. And we've been having storms for as long as anyone can remember.

What has changed is our (as a nation) perception of storms. Once when one was forecast we were told it's going to be blowy on a certain day, these days every system is tracked by experts on media alike, and at the first sign of anything a bit unpleasant the systems are given names, warnings and alerts issued, and the army of keyboard experts in the media whip up fear and terror. But few, if any of these storms are unprecedented. They are just a fact of life in this country, just as blistering heat is in the Southern Mediterranean, or tornados in Kansas.

I'm afraid there is no "weatherproofing" the rail network, there will always be times where disruption happens. However panic buying solutions like ripping out vegetation could actually make things a lot worse. I'm afraid to say that that sometimes there are times when you simply have to accept that things will go wrong, and ride them out. Just like life in general.

 

[edwin_m]

Interview in January's Modern Railways with Network Rail's Industry Weather Response Director.

 

[AndrewE]

All the science tells us that extreme weather events are going to become much more frequent,

and anyone with common sense or environmental awareness, or any gardener, can see that it is happening now.

I've said this in other threads, but storms are nothing new to to these Isles. We literally live in a storm zone, at the end of an oceanic current bringing warm, moist air from warmer climates, and often under a fast moving body of air separating two air masses of very different temperatures. A perfect storm making system. And we've been having storms for as long as anyone can remember.

What has changed is our (as a nation) perception of storms. Once when one was forecast we were told it's going to be blowy on a certain day, these days every system is tracked by experts on media alike, and at the first sign of anything a bit unpleasant the systems are given names, warnings and alerts issued, and the army of keyboard experts in the media whip up fear and terror. But few, if any of these storms are unprecedented. They are just a fact of life in this country, just as blistering heat is in the Southern Mediterranean, or tornados in Kansas.

You really have got your head in the sand, haven't you? If you can't see how much more extreme our weather events have become you need to take out your earplugs and remove the blindfold. It's (just) possible that annual averages aren't moving much - although most data says that they are - but extremes of heat and cold, drought and rainfall are undeniable.

The consequences of maintainance holidays (or go-slows) are already showing now, and the best we can hope for is a safe - if disrupted - railway. NR acknowledges that in their public statements. Expect unreliable travel, it's what you get with a fail-safe railway when things start falling apart.

I think that the thread title and premise is quite reasonable and (if there was any government commitment to maintaining and developing our public transport infrastructure, or to decarbonising, or even to underpinning society for the obvious near-term future) my answer would be "Prepare now for what is coming, and try to catch up with neglected maintainance, plus do the upgrades which should have been done before now."
It won't be cheap (catching up never is) and it will mean employing people but at least that would mean money going into the economy...

 

[Thirteen]

No railway in the world is weather proof. If it was then surely someone would have come up with an idea.

 

[AndrewE]

No railway in the world is weather proof. If it was then surely someone would have come up with an idea.

Don't you see more extremes of rainfall and heat or cold?
And can you see that cutting corners on drain maintainance or ballast cleaning or renewals will bring worse consequences - or do you really think that we just have to "put up with what happens?" You can't just hide under your comfort blanket you know.

"An idea" might be to maintain things properly, and reinforce the things which the people who look after them think don't look as though they can cope!

 

[JamesT]

If you are going to de-veg large sections of land either side of alignments, you'd better have a another of fixing the soil. Otherwise instead of trees, you'll have hundreds of tons of earth to move, embankments and cuttings to constantly repair. The less vegetation you have the more water can destabilise the top soil.

I'm really not sure what this thread is hoping to achieve, weather happens and sometimes extreme events happen. Short of putting all infrastructure into deep tunnels with expensive pumping systems to move water, there will be times when the weather overruns the railways.

Previous threads around this topic have suggested that tree root systems may end up weakening embankments rather than strengthening them.

 

[DerekC]

There are answers and some of them have been mentioned already, but none of them are quick or easy. It's a question of knowing your route, looking at the vulnerabilities and doing some careful prediction of what is likely to happen in specific circumstances - we are gaining experience all the time - then designing and implementing mitigation work. It's also about having a system that degrades more gracefully. And being ready with a plan for operating a sensible service at lower speeds when winds get too high, for example. There is no doubt that cutting down high risk trees helps too, and any risk of soil movement can be mitigated by planting something low growing that has good root binding properties. More radically, getting rid of track circuits would be good - axle counters ought to be better - and ERTMS Level 3 would be better still. There are limits, though. the railway has neighbours - and some of them have things fly about. There is lots of learning for the general public to do. Don't leave roof sheeting lying about. Get that wobbly fence fixed before the winter! Tie down that trampoline!!

 

[Pigeon]

It's not the weather we have to worry about. It's people who think it's perfectly acceptable to dismiss the idea of fixing dodgy earthworks properly with statements like "The costing model found that preventative engineering would be less cost-effective than maintenance and delay costs over both 20 year and 50 year lifespans", and things like that. That is no way to run a railway, or any other public service come to that.

 

[Bantamzen]

and anyone with common sense or environmental awareness, or any gardener, can see that it is happening now.

You really have got your head in the sand, haven't you? If you can't see how much more extreme our weather events have become you need to take out your earplugs and remove the blindfold. It's (just) possible that annual averages aren't moving much - although most data says that they are - but extremes of heat and cold, drought and rainfall are undeniable.

The consequences of maintainance holidays (or go-slows) are already showing now, and the best we can hope for is a safe - if disrupted - railway. NR acknowledges that in their public statements. Expect unreliable travel, it's what you get with a fail-safe railway when things start falling apart.

I think that the thread title and premise is quite reasonable and (if there was any government commitment to maintaining and developing our public transport infrastructure, or to decarbonising, or even to underpinning society for the obvious near-term future) my answer would be "Prepare now for what is coming, and try to catch up with neglected maintainance, plus do the upgrades which should have been done before now."
It won't be cheap (catching up never is) and it will mean employing people but at least that would mean money going into the economy...

You see this is quite a typical response to an environmental issue when the "oh god oh god we are all going to die" narrative is challenged. If they don't onboard with the panic, they must be deniers and somehow blind to anything that's happening. Sadly this binary approach to debate has become all too common.

So to make it quite clear, again, I am not a climate change denier. But nor am I someone who thinks if we don't panic buy solutions terrible things lie just around the corner. As I have said, this country has suffered all manner of weather events from droughts, violent storms and deep freezes. That is not going to change. And sometimes the reality is that disruption will happen no matter we do. There is no magic bullet for solving the issue of weather. Ripping down trees & vegetation (which is ironically one of the drivers of man made climate change over the centuries) will simply expose the underlying soil to the weather. So when its warm it will dry and erode, and when it pouring with rain it will wash away. I would suggest that neither is an ideal scenario where the soil is either key to the infrastructure, or could cause damage by being moved.

Of course we could engineer solutions, but there's an awful lot of land that will have to be secured and prevented from erosion, and will like cost well into ten or eleven figures and would take decades to complete. There might be one or two decision makers that could foresee some problems with that amount of spend.

Previous threads around this topic have suggested that tree root systems may end up weakening embankments rather than strengthening them.

Isn't this more to do with structures such as bridges? By their very nature, roots do bind soil and help reduce erosion. If they didn't plant life wouldn't be viable.

 

[Falcon1200]

If we want a resilient railway maybe the next step (after sorting out the track base as it is) should be to raise it a couple of feet to make a shallow embankment - above common flood levels anyway.

That was actually done, a few years ago, just south of Oxford in an area prone to flooding, but such a process is both expensive, and disruptive in itself. And there are places where it is impossible anyway, two I regularly dealt with in Scotland are Dalmuir Twin Tunnels (under a canal!) and Dalmarnock (below sea level).

 

[Class 317]

In my opinion it is possible to make the railway more resilient to extreme weather.

One thing that needs quite a bit of work is in rebuilding earthworks to be more stable designs replacing poorly constructed ones. Lots of them are prone to landslips.

OHLE can be improved via replacing head spans or splitting them into 2 on 4 track routes to make them less vulnerable to high winds. Also additional ability to remotely isolate smaller routes sections during problems to limit secondary effects.

Raising key installations above flood plains eg signalling equipment cabinets, power sub stations etc.

Improvements to diversionary routes to improve their capabilities along with additional route knowledge etc.

Better vegetation management both removing problem trees and planting new trees, brushes etc as appropriate to manage earthworks and flooding.

Additional turn back capabilities to allow trains to turn back short easier on routes with limited capability.

 

[HSTEd]

We could always replace railways with fully enclosed viaducts like those being constructed for the Chuo Shinkansen.

Not sure that would go down well with the anti development lobby though!

Fully tunneled would also be an option but rather more expensive.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2023 ==

In my opinion it is possible to make the railway more resilient to extreme weather.

One thing that needs quite a bit of work is in rebuilding earthworks to be more stable designs replacing poorly constructed ones. Lots of them are prone to landslips.

OHLE can be improved via replacing head spans or splitting them into 2 on 4 track routes to make them less vulnerable to high winds. Also additional ability to remotely isolate smaller routes sections during problems to limit secondary effects.

Raising key installations above flood plains eg signalling equipment cabinets, power sub stations etc.

Improvements to diversionary routes to improve their capabilities along with additional route knowledge etc.

Better vegetation management both removing problem trees and planting new trees, brushes etc as appropriate to manage earthworks and flooding.

Additional turn back capabilities to allow trains to turn back short easier on routes with limited capability.

Doing all that is going to cost so much and disrupt so much that you might as well just build a new line and abandon the old one......
The new line would also be rather cheaper to operate than one based around massive use of diversions and maintenance of the associated route knowledge.

 

[Halish Railway]

I suppose auto tensioning on electrification is a form of weatherproofing, in that the tension of the wires can be increased during spells of hot weather to prevent sagging.

 

[edwin_m]

I suppose auto tensioning on electrification is a form of weatherproofing, in that the tension of the wires can be increased during spells of hot weather to prevent sagging.

The tensioning doesn't increase - it stays constant. The sagging is prevented because as the wire expands, the tensioning arrangement pulls the extra length away from the contact section.

 

[greyman42]

You really have got your head in the sand, haven't you? If you can't see how much more extreme our weather events have become you need to take out your earplugs and remove the blindfold. It's (just) possible that annual averages aren't moving much - although most data says that they are - but extremes of heat and cold, drought and rainfall are undeniable.

We have had a bad run of stormy weather in the last month, but i have not seen any extremes of heat and cold recently in the UK.

 

[AndrewE]

We have had a bad run of stormy weather in the last month, but i have not seen any extremes of heat and cold recently in the UK.

We are protected from the worst of climatic extremes by the fact that we are surrounded by sea, but you have a short memory. See

One year on from record-breaking 40 degrees heat in the UK and we’re still not prepared - Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment

Candice Howarth explains why the UK is not prepared for the increased incidence of extreme heat caused by climate change and what needs to change.

www.lse.ac.uk

One year on from record-breaking 40 degrees heat in the UK and we’re still not prepared​

A year ago today, on 19 July 2022, the UK experienced record-breaking temperatures that reached over 40°C and the Government declared a national emergency following the Met Office’s first ever issuance of a red ‘extreme heat’ warning. What needs to change so we are better prepared for these conditions, asks Candice Howarth?
In total, the UK experienced five heat periods last summer, leading to 2,839 excess deaths among those aged 65 years and over and 2,985 excess deaths among all, excluding Covid deaths
. In Europe there were over 60,000 heat-related deaths
. Heatwaves are silent killers, and older people, people with underlying health conditions, the young, and people directly exposed to heat are most at risk.
The 2022 heatwaves would not have been possible without climate change. We know that the July heatwave was extremely rare, a 1-in-1,000 year event, and was made 10 times more likely due to anthropogenic climate change.

I'm sure @Bantamzen will just dismiss this as yet more media-exacerbated climate hysteria, or scientists hyping things up to get more funding, but I can see it or its consequences every year in my gardening and beekeeping.
Also the frequency of these extreme events is completely unlike anything we have seen in the past. The odd extreme might be what you would expect, but the succession we are getting every year seems to be relentless, both in summer and winter nowadays.

 

[Class 317]

We could always replace railways with fully enclosed viaducts like those being constructed for the Chuo Shinkansen.

Not sure that would go down well with the anti development lobby though!

Fully tunneled would also be an option but rather more expensive.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Dec 2023 ==


Doing all that is going to cost so much and disrupt so much that you might as well just build a new line and abandon the old one......
The new line would also be rather cheaper to operate than one based around massive use of diversions and maintenance of the associated route knowledge.

I'm not proposing all off these for all lines just the appropriate ones for at risk areas. If it was incorporated as part of track renewals, resignalling and other upgrades the extra added cost would be quite small and I'd recon about 5%.

The extra route knowledge would be useful in allowing improved blockades for maintenance access both at evenings, weekend or weekdays given other benefits. Also other benefits in times of disruption as well of course.

 

[Falcon1200]

In my opinion it is possible to make the railway more resilient to extreme weather.

Most if not all would agree that it is possible, whether it is affordable, or the right way to spend the huge sums required, is another thing!

 

[Bantamzen]

We are protected from the worst of climatic extremes by the fact that we are surrounded by sea, but you have a short memory. See

One year on from record-breaking 40 degrees heat in the UK and we’re still not prepared - Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment

Candice Howarth explains why the UK is not prepared for the increased incidence of extreme heat caused by climate change and what needs to change.

www.lse.ac.uk

I'm sure @Bantamzen will just dismiss this as yet more media-exacerbated climate hysteria, or scientists hyping things up to get more funding, but I can see it or its consequences every year in my gardening and beekeeping.
Also the frequency of these extreme events is completely unlike anything we have seen in the past. The odd extreme might be what you would expect, but the succession we are getting every year seems to be relentless, both in summer and winter nowadays.

You know something, attitudes like yours help nothing in the climate debate. I already said to you that I am not a climate change denier, but you simply ignored that because it didn't suit your narrative, which sadly is an attitude displayed by way too many people these days. All too often people engage in binary debating about climate change, citing that either you are terrified of it or you are a denier. But man made climate change is not binary, nor is it a modern phenomena. As a species we have been contributing to climate change for tens of thousands of years, starting with ripping down trees which ironically is what this thread seems to be about. This is exactly why there are more and more people either ignoring the climate change debate, or deciding that it is just an something for some people to get angry about.

But for clarity, and in the vain hope that you will pay attention this time as well as trying to keep this thread somewhat on topic, there is no "weatherproofing" the railway network. By it's very nature it is constantly exposed to it constantly. And as a beekeeper and gardener I'm sure you are by now aware that we have always have extremes of weather systems, from record breaking hot days to record breaking cold ones (keeping in mind the records cover around 150 years of the 3-4 billion years that life has existed on this planet) , along with rain, wind, hail, snow, thunder, lightning etc etc. Short of completely enclosing the network, at some point it will always fall foul of the weather. Perhaps what we should be debating is how we mitigate the issues that arise when this sort of thing happens.

 

[AndrewE]

But for clarity, and in the vain hope that you will pay attention this time as well as trying to keep this thread somewhat on topic, there is no "weatherproofing" the railway network. By it's very nature it is constantly exposed to it constantly. And as a beekeeper and gardener I'm sure you are by now aware that we have always have extremes of weather systems, from record breaking hot days to record breaking cold ones (keeping in mind the records cover around 150 years of the 3-4 billion years that life has existed on this planet) , along with rain, wind, hail, snow, thunder, lightning etc etc. Short of completely enclosing the network, at some point it will always fall foul of the weather. Perhaps what we should be debating is how we mitigate the issues that arise when this sort of thing happens.

I just cannot understand how someone can insist that nothing has changed. You say you are not a denier, but think that this weather is normal. Yes, there have been occasional extremes of weather, but what is happening now is relentless, barely any interval between one thing an another, be it extreme heat, rainfall or whatever.

Of course the railway can't be isolated from it, it's only you putting up the straw man of enclosing the network. I simply said get the track drainage restored and maybe the track raised a bit where it is practicable, others have suggested a few more worthwhile actions, all taken together would probably mitigate 50 to 70% of potential failures. What's wrong with that?