Leaves on the line - a familiar phrase heralding misery and disruption - is not just an industry excuse for delays, as Laura Richardson discovers
It's four o'clock on a cold, dark autumn morning and while most commuters are still tucked up in bed, teams of workers are blasting leaves from the tracks before the first train service of the day begins. Day in, day out during the peak leaf-fall season, Andrew Humpage and his six teams of hand sanders get up at the crack of dawn to clear the tracks at sites along the South West Trains network to ensure that passengers get to their intended destinations with minimum disruption. Their task is to remove the hard, Teflon-like coating on the railhead (the top of the rail) that is caused when a mulch of slippery leaves fall and are literally baked on to the track by the pressure of passing trains, which means the wheels are unable to grip the track. A helpful analogy is to think of it as the equivalent of black ice on roads. The train's ability to stop and start is impaired, leading to an increased risk of overshooting platforms and extra time at each station stop, so services that stop frequently are the worst affected. To counter the effects of this, South West Trains adds up to five minutes to journeys on lines most prone to leaf-fall disruption - all suburban services on the Guildford to Effingham Junction and Staines to Windsor routes, and the first two trains of the day on the mainline into London from Portsmouth, Weymouth and Salisbury.
In the woods
Britain's railway tracks are lined primarily with deciduous, broad-leaved species. Incredibly, just one mature tree can drop up to 50,000 leaves each autumn. According to official figures from the Forestry Commission, Surrey has the highest percentage of woodland cover of all the counties in England, which makes the scale of the problem for South West Trains all too apparent. Particular leaf-fall trouble spots on the South West Trains network also include the West of England line around Bagshot, Camberley, Virginia Water, Witley, Haslemere, Shawford, Chandler's Ford, Netley, Botley, the New Forest, Hinton Admiral and Sway. These areas are often heavily wooded and, in some cases, such as at Witley, have steep banks, which traps even more leaves. Network Rail, the body responsible for maintaining tracks, operates a year-round lineside vegetation management programme that is a great help in tackling the cause of the problem. Liaising with forestry contractors, local authorities, English Nature and wildlife organisations, Network Rail plans its work around the nesting season and removes only the minimum amount of vegetation, maintaining ground cover and low-growing habitats for birds, insects and small animals. "Thousands of miles of railway run through densely vegetated areas and our role of managing this vegetation is a challenging and expensive one," says Jenny Sacre, Media Relations Manager, Network Rail. "But it is also a crucial safety role which helps us to deliver a better performing railway to South West Trains' passengers."
Falling leaves
Of course, no one can prevent leaves from falling, but Network Rail works closely with the Met Office to try to forecast how heavy - and therefore problematic - leaf fall is likely to be. The leaf fall period is defined in advance by Network Rail - this year it runs from 3 October to 4 December, with the middle five weeks (17 October to 21 November) classed as the peak period. When leaf fall is underway, the Met Office provides daily wind speed forecasts and takes leaf counts from 13 locations across the UK. These two measurements indicate the potential leaf-fall hazard, so that both Network Rail and the train operating companies, including South West Trains, can take appropriate action.
page 1 of 2 