While you guys shiver

Commuters will face train cancellations over the next few days because of the forecast sizzling weather expected to hit Melbourne.

Metro has announced that it will be forced to cancel some services on Thursday and Friday to allow for the anticipated skyrocketing temperatures set to hit the city this week.

The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast temperatures of up to 31 degrees on Wednesday and 40 degrees on Thursday.

‘‘We have planned this in advance as a safety precaution due to the impact of high temperatures on our steel railway tracks,’’ a Metro spokesperson said on Tuesday.

‘‘The tracks can expand in high heat and we need to run trains at slower speeds to ensure your safety.’’

‘‘By cancelling trains in advance we are able to manage this and continue to run the smoothest possible service despite the limitations,’’ the spokesperson said.

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Commuters will face train cancellations over the next few days because of the forecast sizzling weather expected to hit Melbourne.

Metro has announced that it will be forced to cancel some services on Thursday and Friday to allow for the anticipated skyrocketing temperatures set to hit the city this week.

The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast temperatures of up to 31 degrees on Wednesday and 40 degrees on Thursday.

‘‘We have planned this in advance as a safety precaution due to the impact of high temperatures on our steel railway tracks,’’ a Metro spokesperson said on Tuesday.

‘‘The tracks can expand in high heat and we need to run trains at slower speeds to ensure your safety.’’

‘‘By cancelling trains in advance we are able to manage this and continue to run the smoothest possible service despite the limitations,’’ the spokesperson said.

Full article
Metro announcement

The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast temperatures of up to 31 degrees on Wednesday

‘‘The tracks can expand in high heat and we need to run trains at slower speeds to ensure your safety.’’

Until pretty recently, the outer half of one of the Boston commuter rail lines was owned and run by one of the major US railroads (CSX; their network roughly covers everything east of the Mississippi River). CSX's policy was that there were speed restrictions system-wide if it was sufficiently hot (I think above 90 °F) anywhere on their network. So MBTA Worcester trains, and only Worcester trains, would be heavily delayed because it was hot in Georgia.

What's Norfolk Southern...Chopped Liver? 8-D Don't they have the "other half of everything" east of the Mississippi?

The heat-related cancellations in Melbourne contrast with Perth's recent experience, in which not a single train was cancelled due to the heat, despite a string of days above 40 degrees.

Transperth spokesman David Hynes said no trains were cancelled.

"Perth is less affected than other states because the bottom line is we have a better rail network, although it's smaller," Mr Hynes said. "We have concrete sleepers throughout our entire network, whereas Sydney and Melbourne are still mostly wooden sleepers which are more prey to heat."

Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in Western Australia, said extremely hot days would become more frequent in Melbourne due to climate change, and the city needed to modernise its rail network to cope. Doing so was not complex, it just required investment, said Professor Newman, who is also on the advisory board of Infrastructure Australia.

"Perth had no cancellations because the rail has been built to cope with these extremes," he said. "It's just a simple engineering task."

Metro said it had a large program in place to make the network more resilient to heat. This included "restressing" the tracks to prevent them buckling, ensuring track ballast was at the correct depth and compactness, and cleaning out train air-conditioners. It had also replaced more than 50,000 wooden sleepers this year.

Yet its decision to cancel 48 services could trigger compensation claims from some passengers at the end of the month, should Metro miss its monthly reliability target. Public Transport Victoria said it would treat them as ordinary cancellations. Metro must run 98 per cent of trains under its contract with the government.

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A transport engineer with good technical knowledge of Melbourne's system said ageing and inadequate traction power, which powers trains along the lines, was also to blame for chronic delays on hot days. Metro had this week deliberately "thinned out" its timetable in response, he said.

"The equipment that is used in the substations is very old," he said. "There is a progressive upgrade but the equipment gets hot and becomes less reliable and you find that there is less ability for a particular line section to accommodate a certain number of trains."

Beacon Park yard in Allston got sold off,

Update:

The heat-related cancellations in Melbourne contrast with Perth's recent experience, in which not a single train was cancelled due to the heat, despite a string of days above 40 degrees.

Transperth spokesman David Hynes said no trains were cancelled.

"Perth is less affected than other states because the bottom line is we have a better rail network, although it's smaller," Mr Hynes said. "We have concrete sleepers throughout our entire network, whereas Sydney and Melbourne are still mostly wooden sleepers which are more prey to heat."

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Beacon Park yard in Allston got sold off,

When? to who?