A lot of communications and marketing activity is down to timing – when is the best time to run a campaign, host an event, launch that research or share a new product update. For most industries there are hotspots throughout the year when everything seems to be happening all at once, but there are also other seasonal interests that make a difference; calendar events, including school holidays, cultural and awareness moments, such as mental health awareness week and environmental factors, among others.
Strategic communications activity uses this seasonality and the knowledge that certain times of the year affect how people feel to plan relevant communication activities, weaving in the seasonality as a hook.
This is particularly true for rail. Both the calendar and the weather play such a vital role in the delivery of rail services across the country. So much so that it is a prime example to use, showing how the needs of the industry and the cycle of communications can combine and work together.
According to data compiled by Network Rail and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), weather-related disruption, including delays caused by leaves, heavy rain, and wind, accounted for approximately 1.548 million delay minutes across the network in the 2023/24 year. That’s equivalent to an eye-watering 1,075 days of delays.
A major challenge causing delay minutes is adhesion – simply put, how well the train wheels grip and glide along the rail track.
Several things cause changes to adhesion – for example, how wet the rails are, whether there’s something on the rail, wear and tear of both rail and wheel and heat, to name just a few. The most pertinent challenge at the moment is the infamous ‘leaves on the line’ issue, that we hear about year after year. The one certainty? These situations most frequently occur in autumn and winter.
Rivelin Rail aim to help combat the problems caused by adhesion by using innovative monitoring technology.
Ben White, Founder at Rivelin, a CP Catapult TRIG 24 cohort member, explains more about this age-old issue:
The steel wheel and rail contact is small, about the size of a thumbnail. This makes it a very efficient mode of transport but susceptible to contamination.
One of the things that can cause contamination is organic matter due to leaves that fall on the rail or are pulled in from the surrounding area by the airflow of passing trains. In the UK, “leaves on the line” can cause serious adhesion issues. Leaves react with the iron in the rail steel. One of these reaction products is iron tannate, which forms a black layer on the rail surface.
The high pressure of the wheel rail contact compresses this layer, and it becomes well adhered to the rail. In the high-pressure situations as when the train wheel moves over the rail and contacts the layer of iron tannate this causes friction coefficients (the ration of friction force to normal force of the two surfaces pressing together) to change. When wet the friction coefficients can be lower than grease or oil.
Ideally, we’d have an intermediate friction coefficient. Most of the time during normal train operation the friction is within this range, but if it is too high or too low it can cause problems. Think goldilocks and the three bears, the sweet spot is “just right”!
If friction is too low, we get the low friction issues that cause delays, damage and safety issues every autumn. Trains can’t accelerate or brake effectively. Timetabled braking on the GB network requires a friction coefficient of above 0.1.
Alternatively, if friction is too high it can cause damage and high-pitched squeal when braking. We’ve measured very high friction during recent summer testing across Europe under very hot, dry and high traffic conditions.
If friction is too low, trains cannot brake effectively and are unable to stop at stations (station overruns) or signals passed at danger (SPADs). In rare worst cases scenarios, there can be collisions or derailments. More commonly we see train delays due to slower speeds and autumn timetabling which has a huge impact on performance and customer satisfaction.
Friction management products can help keep us in that sweet spot for optimised operation. Lubricants are applied either from a wayside applicator or sprayed from a train to decrease friction.
Methods used to remove leaf contamination or increase friction include abrasives such as sand or traction gels, high pressure water jetting, wire brushing and chemical cleaners.
The very dry summer that we experienced this year caused trees to shed some of their leaves early, so we began measuring low friction due to leaf contamination in September. The friction enhancing treatments are not usually used until October, therefore it caught some areas off-guard.
More frequent storms also cause a large percentage of leaves to be dropped at once; this can overwhelm the treatments available and cause significant challenges for train operators.
As our network gets busier and the number of trains increases, any delays have an increasingly severe outcome.
We’ve developed a portable friction measurement device (tribometer) which magnetically clamps to the rail and uses a small steel measurement wheel to measure friction in less than a minute.
Trial and error are too often used for friction management and because of this, current methods have not been optimised. There are many variables during each treatment including contamination, rail surface and environmental conditions, as well as application intervals or cleaning speed and power.
Trials of novel friction enhancement methods such as laser, cryogenics, water application and chemical treatments are being trialled but the effectiveness of these is difficult to determine without friction measurements. These same issues apply to lubrication systems.
We believe that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
Using the measurements, we understand that we can move forward from the current visual inspections and “one size fits all” approach to these treatments into better optimised approaches, site specific or start accounting for different environmental and contamination conditions at different sites for huge performance benefits.
Our measurements can be used to determine baseline friction conditions and then any increase or decrease in friction when these rail treatments are used. They can also be used during an inspection.
One of our projects this autumn is working with the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB). I’m also going out on track with Network Rail staff to take before and after measurements of a range of friction enhancement and rail cleaning techniques to help understand their usage.
Alongside friction and environmental conditions, our tribometer logs GPS coordinates and we’re using this to map out friction throughout the season at a site which has experienced a lot of wheel flats (damage) due to low friction. Using this information, we can determine the “hotspot” locations of low adhesion and focus treatments on these areas
Our friction measurements have already been used to inform application methods and locations for more effective railhead treatments this autumn season; it’s great to see immediate impact.
Our measurements will continue to optimise friction management strategies to prevent damage, reduce delays and improve safety. If a low adhesion related incident does occur, our measurements provide investigations into the extent and causes of this along with recommended treatments.
We’re working towards a more data driven approach. We’ll be able to understand what baseline friction conditions are for each time of year and environmental conditions
The railway is moving towards a smarter, more data-driven approaches towards maintenance. We’re also working on some remote measurement methods for continuous friction monitoring, so stay tuned and watch this space!
Thank you for your contribution, Ben. If you would like to find out more about Rivelin Rail, please visit Rivelin Rail.
