Rail bosses have revealed a 'gamechanger' solution to the age-old frustration of leaves on the line stopping passenger trains.
The seasonal problem of wet leaves lying on rail tracks has long been a source of ire with commuters who have traditionally questioned the impact they can have. But Network Rail call the danger 'the equivalent of black ice on the roads' - and train company Northern has now announced an answer may at last have been found.
Northern said Autumn disruption could now be a thing of the past following the trial of new technology made small enough to be fitted onto all passenger trains to clear leaves from the line.
Leaves stick to damp rails and passing trains compress them into a smooth, slippery layer, reducing grip. It can cause delays to services and disruption for passengers as braking is compromised.
Currently lines are cleaned using railhead treatment trains, also known as RHTTs, but only a limited number are readily available, meaning whole networks can't be treated at the same time. RHTTs are also expensive to run, but Northern said the breakthrough 'offers the potential to provide improved treatment at much lower cost'.
Northern has revealed it has partnered with engineers and experts at The University of Sheffield to trial new rail head treatment technology that can be attached to trains, potentially saving the rail industry millions of pounds every year.
The cleaning system, developed by researchers from the university's Department of Mechanical Engineering, works by firing dry ice pellets in a stream of air at high speed onto the tracks - freezing any leaves on the line. Frozen leaves are then blasted away as the dry ice pellets turn back into a gas.
The dry ice pellets are made from waste carbon dioxide from other industries.
Trials on the Northern network are now being run thanks to funding from Network Rail's Performance Innovation Fund.
Researchers have bought two of Northern's now-retired Pacer trains, based at Wensleydale Railway in North Yorkshire, to test the new design and develop a plan for the system to be fitted throughout Northern's fleet from next year.
Rob Cummings, seasonal improvement manager at Northern, said: "This is a gamechanger for the industry – the next step in finding a solution to tricky autumn conditions.
"One of the biggest risks to our performance during October and November is leaves on the line, but by helping to develop new innovative technology we aim to deliver the very best service for our passengers.
"Train drivers have to break lighter and earlier and that imports delay in more extreme circumstances. Trains can slip and slide through a station.
"Dry ice gives us the potential to clean a rail several times a day, seven days a week, and that stops the contamination building up. I think the drivers will really appreciate it."
Professor Roger Lewis, who has led the team at the university in developing the technology, said: "The nozzle is designed as such that the dry ice pellets come out in a stream of air going at supersonic speed.
"They have high kinetic energy when they hit the surface of the rail. They are also very cold - they are about -70C.
"The particles sublime, so they turn back into gas in a tiny fraction of a second and you get an 800 per cent increase in volume, so you have got lots of little air blasts occurring across the surface of the rail head, which acts to break up and remove the contamination."
""This is a great example of a University testing and proving an idea in a lab based experiment and then scaling it up to be trialled and implemented in the field to make impact. This can only be done though good teamwork and having champions in the railway industry such as Rob and his team at Northern."
Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across Manchester and the North of England.
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