Effect of fog on railways?

[Welshman]

If it was fog and high winds I'd be looking for trees and branches on our greener routes.

If it were high winds and fog, I'd be writing my thesis on rare and exceptional meteorological conditions.
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Think you will find that you might as well not bother with windows these days as most spend there time looking at television catch up on computers, tablets and phones or playing games on there phones etc. Very few seem to ever look out of the windows these days.

You seem to share your opinions with the designers of the seating arrangements in modern stock, especially pendolinos.

 

[33EJB]

Some drivers don't need fog to do that

I was driving on the M20 yesterday and it looked odd seeing Eurostars on HS1 going at full pelt through thick fog, I know that they have incab signalling and I'm sure it's all perfectly safe but some passengers might be a bit nervous

That's the crux of it, you can just follow the TVM, the only time fog plays a part is if you have to stop at a marker, but you'll have plenty of warning via TVM combined with an idea of where you are and if it's an expected slowing sequence and you just bring it down to a crawl for the last canton where you have to drive by sight and gingerly look out for the marker. I doubt passengers would even notice.

You know it's bad when you suddenly find yourself going under an over bridge.

And yes as someone pointed out, smoke is a different animal, it just gets sucked into the HVAC and at best smells bad, at worst poisons everyone on board.

 

[Wolf]

Some trains were reportedly delayed last night by fog between Hull and Goole / Selby, but some sources attributed this to 'poor rail conditions'. I wouldn't know if fog comes under this or not but suspect not, and it might actually have been a mix of leaves and light rain? Dunno.

More likely to be due to poor railhead conditions. Can't speak for the line through Google but Leeds to selby can be very dodgy round Gascogine wood and south Milford in autumn. Sometime loose 3/4 minutes just trying to stop at South Milford. One of those places where you can even slide in summer.

 

[Radedamer]

I quote a relevant historical snippet from Britain from the Rails, by Benedict le Vay.

... George Jackson Chrchward, born in 1857, [...] designed and built at Swindon many of the GWR's greatest locomotives including the record-breaking City of Truro. He was killed by one too, crossing the line on foot in fog in his retirement in 1933. This former Mayor of Swindon was buried in nearby Christ Church where a black marble memorial tells the story. It turns out the 76-year old was checking a defective rail joint he'd spotted as he crossed, which was promptly fixed: even in death he served the GWR.

 

[Romilly]

Can't speak for the line through Google ....

I like the concept!!

 

[Antman]

More likely to be due to poor railhead conditions. Can't speak for the line through Google but Leeds to selby can be very dodgy round Gascogine wood and south Milford in autumn. Sometime loose 3/4 minutes just trying to stop at South Milford. One of those places where you can even slide in summer.

Southeastern train I was waiting for this morning overshot the stopping point by about a carriage length, it was a 4 car on an 8 car platform so probably didn't matter too much, I won't go into details as I'm not looking to drop anybody in it

 

[plod]

Fog may be a minor issue now, but it was not always so. The second worst accident of the British Rail era was the direct result of thick fog - at Lewisham in December 1957 - with 90 fatalities. Services were already badly disrupted due to the conditions when a steam hauled Cannon Street - Ramsgate train, running 76 minutes late, passed a signal at danger and collided with the rear of a Charing Cross - Hayes EMU, running 37 minutes late, which had been stopped at Parks Bridge Junction. Catastrophically, the derailment dislodged a support which caused a heavy girder bridge to collapse on to the Ramsgate train.The Ministry of Transport report is worth reading, not least because of the detail it gives about the difficulty of running trains in fog in those days.

 

[Dieseldriver]

Generally no issues with that, as long as the train is fully accommodated on the platform then no harm done

 

[Groningen]

Fog was a reason for the greatest disaster in the Netherlands with 93 deaths. You need to know where the signals are! Youtube (dutch language) > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGR11m7pKyQ

 

[edwin_m]

There were some scary accidents in fog in the UK too, in past eras when coal smoke contributed to "smog", most railways had semaphore signalling without AWS and the aspects were often invisible even from the bottom of the post. Fog men would be posted at all distants and some stop signals (except when they weren't, which was often contributory to those accidents), and were often provided with miniature repeaters of the arms.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

There were some scary accidents in fog in the UK too, in past eras when coal smoke contributed to "smog", most railways had semaphore signalling without AWS and the aspects were often invisible even from the bottom of the post. Fog men would be posted at all distants and some stop signals (except when they weren't, which was often contributory to those accidents), and were often provided with miniature repeaters of the arms.

Beggers belief that anything ran in fog in those long ago days - imagine a steam era driver - 40 feet back from the front end of a loco , straining for oil lit signals - they must have had nerves of steel and incredible route awareness.

And any train in front only had one oil lamp in rear.

Fog signalling must have been an awful job - in antisocial hours ...

 

[HowardGWR]

I don't know whether this has already been contributed, but my great uncle Len told me he could keep going in the Thames valley pea soup-ers, 1930s era on his 29xx or 40xx (those are engines), at 70 mph with no concerns. Although signals had to be sighted, he had total confidence in the ATC and of course experienced drivers knew where they were through decades of use. The GWR was a pioneer in such safety devices, but human error still caused collisions, as it does today.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

By all accounts - the main line companies used to put flares at platform ends to help drivers "find" the stopping marks - and of course LT had fog repeaters on open air sections to assist motormen. One of the worst LT crashes was at Northwood Hills in the mid 1940's when during a signal failure and fog an electric loco hauled train ran into the back of a Watford EMU , worsened by arcing and a fire breaking out.