(27 Oct 2014, 6:17 pm)Andreos1 wrote Just wanted to try and bring some balance to this.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nort...hr-7910120
This is on top of the £100k spent chopping down and reducing foliage earlier this year.
It isn't the only railway to struggle with leaves on the line, but it is one that doesn't benefit from the money or infrastructure that Network Rail can throw at their parts of the system.
Even then, trains are delayed, cancelled or timetables are extended to take into account slower acceleration times from stations.
As far as I am aware, the metro trains aren't fitted with the sandboxes that their mainline cousins often have.
In this weather and at this time of the year, low rail adhesion is going to happen - no matter how much money is thrown into combating it.
It is an age old problem and isn't going to be solved overnight.
This is exactly what should be happening, but isn't. This was suggested on Tyne & Wear Metro's Facebook page too... A revised timetable, to compensate for the slower acceleration times to pull away from stations, should be made. At least then, the timetable could be relied on.
At the moment, we don't have this. My views are unbalanced due to the fact I regularly use the Metro and I am therefore regularly inconvenienced; however, I do thankfully have alternative means of travel, should there be delays. It's suggest that many people do not have alternative means of travel (most likely due to the fact that the ticket they've paid for does not cover other forms of public transport), and this is why customers have taken to the Metro's Social Media pages in their fury at trains being massively delayed or being cancelled/withdrawn altogether. For the past few mornings, I have seen customers complaining that they have been stood at Metro stations for periods of half an hour on mornings with no Metros coming at all... It's just not acceptable.
The solution to the problem is creating a 'low rail adhesion timetable' which can be relied on - meaning that people can plan in advance and know that they'll stand a chance of getting to their destination on time.