Autumn leaves and wheelslip
 

Its that time of the year again autumn . And the leaves and wheelslip problem is cropping up again.

On the 19:30 pearse maynooth train tonight and it is a bit of a problem.

At ashtown it was a bit of a problem two or three minutes and we were off again. At castleknock it was a bigger problem.

It literally took us four minutes to depart from the platform a further two minutes going at a snails pace and we were moving again.

Problem departing from coolmine as well but not as bad as castleknock.

Needs to be sorted or it could be causing problems. Wonder are the sligo trains the same problem?

Edit: same problem at clonsilla you could see the train struggling. In fact two or three minutes after the clonsilla platform cleared you could see the train in the distance.

There was an announcement on the DART I was on today apologizing for the delay.

Come to think of it, the inbound train i was on this afternoon was fifteen minutes late. No announcements though at the station or on the train.

Enough of the excuses, its not an unknown problem, not some act of god.

Irish Rail simply have failed to equip themselves with the equipment to deal with this problem. Castleknock is a notorious trouble spot yet Irish Rail have yet to buy a high pressure water cannon to clean the rails. Even sending someone out with a scrubbing brush would work.

The DMU fleet suffer badly as the powered wheels share a common drive shaft if one of the 4 wheels loses grip the other 3 get 25% more power and slip as well.

Actually it was like you could feel something happen with the wheels.the train stopped twice on the platform at castleknock and the train was stopped and started twice.

I wonder how much of a problem it could be in the coming weeks. What delays could be outbound and knockons inbound.

Yesterday was horrible

Its much worse in the south of the country I'm told with trains sliding past platforms. Irish Rail of course seem to think the leaves fall only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday so do nothing on the other days to combat the problem

were they the reasons for the delays to services last night? [nothing mentioned on ie website]

A few of the evening services to Maynooth last night were delayed leaving pearse and connolly by upto ten minutes.

Driver of my train reported wheelslip as the excuse for being 27 minutes late.

27 minutes late is just unjustifiable! is it laziness or what? I am a regular commuter on Midleton - Cork line, max I have been delayed has been 5 minutes, mostly 5 mins late leaving Cork. 27 minutes is unreal though. Just goes to show when you are not answerable to anyone you can do what you want!

Well Midelton has had a train slide past the platform and end up well past the old signal cabin, that would have resulted in some serious delays

I can't figure out how a train could lose 27 minutes in a 40 minute journey, but this is Irish Rail, they truely make the impossible possible

Yep that does sound strange but given the experience of being on that train sunday night, it wouldn't suprise me! passengers got so agitated the train was that slow! Can I ask mark what route that delay occured? and were there trains ahead of it?

Soutbound Howth - Bray with a massive 32 minutes clear ahead of it. Between Pearse and DL not once did it slide under braking infact I didn't hear the anti lock mechanism activate at all and at one point the driver gave it the full 12%g braking rate without any problems. The train only lost 3 minutes while I was onboard mainly due to the fact the train was fully loaded resulting in longer station stops.

The train ahead of it was within a minute of correct time

The weather condititions over the weekend tonight included might not help things.

[26-10-2010] 21:55 pearse maynooth
 

On this train tonight, some experience! Very slow, quiet and bumpy! The driver appologised for the problems citing extreme wheelslip conditions. We had this problem from ashtown to coolmine then it struggled after Clonsilla when I got off

Tonight was worst case, bit of wind and rain caused chaos across the network. Its only when the leaves are wet do you get the worst of the wheelslip and by the evening there is none of the gunge applied to the rail left to help the train grip the rails

Just had a though. Can IÉ not use one of the old locos and have some kind of brush/sweeping system attached to the front and in the early morning, and throughout the day, go up down down the lines? :o

Mark I have noticed some sort of whiteish material in and around the rails the last few weeks. I thought I was just imagining it, but is that the gunge that you were referring to?

Quite a few of the 22000 fleet has some equipment to help deal with leaves.


In the UK they are experimenting with industrial lasers to burn off the leaves.

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/...ew&news_id=947

The 1805 Connolly to Longford has been almost half an hour late yesterday and today. Got quite badly stuck leaving mullingar which has always been a bad spot. You would think there should be some way of sorting out places where you have an incline after leaving a station or signal.

Also I am getting a but sick of looking at the same poster for the last six years. Apparantly they have been working to improve track adhesion for all that time. Perhaps it is time they tried a different approach.

yep have this problem quiet often when leaving Coolmine

Colm said earlier in the thread

Ive noticed the odd 22k on the 18:05, have you been on one on the 18:05 and is there less trouble leaving Mullingar on the 22k

A fairly serious incident on the UK railways as a result of wheelslip.
From daily mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...aves-line.html

Thats pretty crazy, definitely something amiss technically

Has anyone experienced any wheelslip related problems yet?

There's a lot of fallen leaves around my area, and with the strong winds and heavy rain we've been having the last couple of days I thought it might cause problems.

[11-9-2011] 20:45 pearse maynooth
 

Had that wheelslip experience on this train this evening

the train struggled after leaving stations between ashtown and clonsilla

Train journey certainly fealt more turbulent this evening and with the forecast for the coming days could cause problems

[25-9-2011] bad night wheelslip wise
 

heading inbound tonight it was really bad slow and quiet bumpy in spots, the rain not helping things

Irish Rail is having trouble with the local authority in Castleknock about the trees, Irish Rail want to fell them, the council are stalling

Plenty of trouble on the 22:12 Pearse Maynooth last night. We were following another train to Glasnevin so crawled along there, then we had significant trouble leaving Ashtown. There were massive problems between Castleknock and Coolmine, we never once managed to get going properly , any time we built up some revs the wheels slipped and we lost it. To top it all off, there was an emergency brake application between Coolmine and Porterstown, due to what sounded like a problem with the vigilance device(some frantic pedal stomping was heard). The train was about 10 minutes late into Clonsilla and seemed to have trouble leaving there too.

Interestingly enough, the particular train involved, 29010, for some reason has had the integral retarder (engine-assisted brake) reactivated after it was disabled a few years back on the 29s. It's been this way for a couple of weeks.

Article in Daily Mail
 

Rail bosses tackle 'leaves on the line' by running trains early to allow for slower journeys


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1ZuLgUoPt

The retarder was disabled as it only worked on one pair of axles so the brake disks did not get worn equally.

I'm guessing someone has done the math and realized that brake disks cost money

NIR has the retarder enabled on all C3K stock which is basically the same under the floor as the 29k

In fairness, their headline of "Rail bosses tackle 'leaves on the line' by running trains early to allow for slower journeys" is misleading. It conveys the impression that trains are leaving before the scheduled time, when in reality they have changed the schedule.

And

http://www.fingalcoco.ie/minutes/mee...s.aspx?id=1201

if there was something amiss with the brakes it would have been takin out of service and hauled to a depot, just goes to prove its not something made up by rail companies to cover over delays to services.. leaves fall+ rain= slip and slide,

heavy rain actaully cleans the rail head.. worse time for wheelslip, is loads of leaves falling in a calm days just geting getting mashed into the rail head or into a damp rail head, then followed by ( dry spell or without a dry spell) light hazy rain.. then you will hear the wheel slip protection systems kick in.. drivers are told to break earlyer to help avoid slip slide and take power in a lower notch to avoid just spining the wheels but both these can add time on to the journey. problem areas laytown skerries rush and lusk donabate portmarknock, raheny to killiester... lansdowne to sydney, glenageary and shankill.. just cut down the trees!!!!:eek:

For the UK case the investigation report found the train to be unsafe due to a failure to fill the sand boxes despite the train reporting that it had a low sand condition the night before

Can we take it that the sand boxes are kept topped up on Irish Rail rolling stock ?

the sand machine boxes not full is a issue, but hav u ever seen how much sand actaully comes out of them things. not a lot per wheel. .more of a aid to the wsp, wsp that does the real work like abs on ur car, id say the driver broke to late, but more of a case of to hard and the train just took off 65 mph and would say it easly gained speed as it lost traction with the slippy rail head so i can see how it traveled 2.25 miles past the station , LRA is like ice on the road,
Look at the rail heads at the moment there black. unless a heavy rain shower comes or after the sandite machine with the high powered water jet cleans it(if its not broke) then it get the shine back on it,when its black like tha from the leaves been mashed into a paste on them, little bit of light ran and its lethal.

The formal investigation showed it was the lack of sand that was the cause and that the driver drove exactly per the training. Not the driver, machine was at fault.