NR Scotland have a helicopter which they use to survey lines after a storm. Yesterday they found nearly 30, many in isolated locations. They were correct to shut down the network until they could prove it clear.
Meanwhile, across the rest of the UK, where we had numerous trees down on Saturday, we manage to maintain a service until such a point as this becomes impossible.
A tree down doesn't mean the trains have to stop across a large geographical area. This can be localised as appropriate. Further, a tree being down doesn't mean its a tree sufficiently large or in a location which would cause it to prevent the passage of trains. You'd be surprised what we can pass without any drama.
Should we shut down the national network every time winds exceed a certain speed, or rainfall exceeds a certain volume and provide helicopter surveys - because its right to "shut down the network until they could prove it clear", or do we behave a little more pragmatically and accept the procedures not requiring a helicopter that are already in place?
No, it's been happening for some years and in several countries.
Amber warnings, as for Scotland tonight, are for potentially nasty stuff - I drove from Oxenhope to Hebden Bridge across the moor during the Yellow yesterday morning and that was bad enough.
Has it? Over a decade of working on the railway and we've never shut down in any of the areas I've worked in that time period. Services are curtailed where needed, but I've never seen a precautionary network wide shut down. In fact, we're usually very resilient and do all we can to keep going.
I was driving a train yesterday as it happened. We had a perfectly sensible blanket speed restriction (which necessitates some service reduction), but thats part of the procedure that keeps us moving.
However, there are such high expectations placed on the railway industry and such negativity levelled against it when passengers get stuck on trains its hardly surprising its come to this.
It's a shame really that the industry has lowered itself to the "s*d it let's not even bother if there's a chance we could look bad" approach, but I suspect theres some truth in this!
The local weather station at Edinburgh Airport shows winds are lower than yesterday also Forth Bridge has remained opened except to high sided vehicles with a speed restriction. So I would say the situation could perhaps have been managed with disruptions warnings but then you end up in a space that if you have to suspend services your then liable to still transport people so again I can see how we end up with this sort of reaction. Anyhow given ScotRail managed to fail to run a Sunday service service for most of 2021 along with Covid suspect number of people inconvenienced isn't as many as we may think.
In other words, some service seems quite achievable. In a time when we're supposed to be going the extra mile to bring people back to rail, I find it really upsetting that TOCs are prepared to just throw in the towel, when the evidence suggests it was really quite unnecessary.