Comments on District Drivers Logbook: Metronet Disgrace

I work at Metronet. The Director at 'Asset Perform...

2006-05-16T20:27:00.000Z

I work at Metronet. The Director at 'Asset Perform' Dave Crawley has been sacked, or as our big boss said ' a change of leadership' was needed. Mind you he's ex LUL with a fat pension so he won't starve

Basically what heating does is cause the rails to ...

2006-05-07T21:39:00.000Z

Basically what heating does is cause the rails to expand, and then they weld them, and the rails now have some tension built in, which steel is very good at dealing with. Also, in many places with long welded rail sections, they have expansion joints, where one rail comes to a point, and the other comes in diagonally, so it can slide back and forth a bit. Also, at insulated joints there's a bit of room for expansion, and I bet the London lines have plenty of those.
Speaking of temperature-related delays, around New York, some of the train lines have very old overhead electrification, without an auto-tensioning system, and any time it gets too hot or cold, there are always speed restrictions. And there's even a light rail line that recently had its overhead reconstructed, but for some reason with no tensioning system. I saw it once on a hot day. The trains were running at 25 mph, and the wires were noticeably saggy.

After the question that you raised about warm-weat...

2006-05-05T06:47:00.000Z

After the question that you raised about warm-weather countries in the previous post, I asked some fellow enthusiasts how this was handled in Israel, where the outdoor temperature can reach 40 or higher some days of the year.

The answers that I got pretty much fit with what both LUL and Metronet are saying. The practice (at least in many countries) with welded rails and concrete sleepers is to heat the entire length of rail up to the highest forseen temperature and then weld it to the sleepers. I'm assured (much to my disbelief) that this ensures that even when the rails expand and contract, they do so in line with the gauge. There are still expansion gaps between the welded rails every 100 metres or so, but these do not cause "clicketty-clack" as they have a diagonal profile.

Additionally, they claim that there is importance to the weight of the sleepers used and the amount of ballast, as well as the frequency with which the ballast is respread (if that's the correct term?).

For a change I can understand Metronet's point-of-view vis-a-vis having enough time to treat the rails adequately when they were welded, as the heating process described above sounds pretty time-consuming.

I did see the late new with the head man from Metr...

2006-05-05T05:07:00.000Z

I did see the late new with the head man from Metronet and he blamed LU for not giving them enough time to access the track, sorry what do P Way do?

Then they interviewed Howard Collins - and suprise suprise he blamed Metronet.