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Monday, July 27, 2015

Be prepared for delays this week my friends, because of safety

Steel doesn't like heat, especially extreme heat.

Because you know me, and I know other people, I am here to tell you that GO Transit will be extra diligent this week with track safety. This means you may experience slower speeds so not to derail.

Excessive heat can cause tracks to buckle, but only in spots where rail stressing has the potential to occur.

I know we all find delays annoying but derailment isn't something we want.

5 comments:

Squiggles said...

Is that the reason for the consistent emails today? It is constant and has me glad I am working from home today and Thursday!

Guess I better drive the other days this week. Because connections are going to suffer.

deepfish said...

I worked rail out west. I've seen hot days (30-35 degrees and above) where track that we sledded through (removed ballast) would suddenly kink out in the heat. Thirty or forty meters of track would start coiling left and right like a snake, moving up to five meters, often a whole section would "ditch" heading off the rail bed and sliding towards the cuttings on either side.
This would be disheartening, particularly after a long day of sledding when you wanted to just slide the ballast cars over and dump gravel and call it a day. We'd have to take out the quick cuts and saw a few gaps and then gandy dance and/or wait for a liner to come out and put the track together. That made our day.
But imagine a kink happening with a train running over track. At 6-80 kph it wouldn't take much of a kink to kill a few dozen people.

George said...

I like to take a peek down the rails from the station when I get home. Sometimes it looks like cooked spaghetti laid down.

Looking quite alarming too.

Bicky said...

I'm okay with that. Safety first!

C.J. Smith said...

I got 1 email about a mandatory track inspection. I assume it's heat related.