Snow stops play.

[SwissFan91]

It is videos such as these that really show how inadequate the UK is when even a few inches of snow falls, compared to our neighbours from the continent. This video is from the Gotthard route in Switzerland, and it amazes me how these trains can still maintain their normal speed in these conditions, but many of our trains in the UK just don't run.

[Dave]

But the majority of our system (and to a point the trains too, I suppose) was built without thought to the heavy snowfalls that might affect the railways.

The frequencies at which British trains run are surely far in excess of any Swiss service. And further to the point, there is photographic evidence all over the internet of trains running in this sort of weather.

You forget, naturally, that the news neglects to report that the higher ground sees snow like this every year, and trains run through it and on time every year.

Check out the Manchester-Huddersfield line and how frequent trains run across it, then check out these photos.

Deeper snow than what you saw on that video, and just five minutes walk from where these photos were taken, trains were consistently running at 80 and 90 miles per hour.

As usual, people are making uninformed comments about "how the European system is so much better". The grass is always greener on the other side.

[Kevo00]

Plus its not really worth putting all that money in for just one day a year (or even one day every 3-4 years).

[SwissFan91]

Well, I've been told.

[Dave]

Yeah, basically.

I'm not saying the Swiss network isn't better (it clearly is) but how can one compare the snow running ability of a mountainous country and a country the majority of which sees under one day of total snowfall every year?

[SwissFan91]

I'm not saying that we should employ thousands of snow plows or whatever, and i appreciate how incredibly little snowfall this country gets (much to my regret ), but it seems the mentality is just completely different in this country. Maybe it is just because of how little snow we get, but the minute we have a small ground covering, hundreds of thousands of people (not just children here) decide to just leave whatever commitments they have that day (work, education etc), which over a long period would destroy the economy. We get the weather forecasters saying that we should all stay indoors unless it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, when there is only a few inches of snow outside.

[Vimpster]

Its actually quite reasonable to see this sort of thing that you describe jake. I'm from Canada and I grew up on the east coast where we use to get a lot of snow every year. But then my family moved to the west coast where they didn't get much snow.

Natrually when a place dosen't get snow as often then people are less experienced in traveling in it and therefor it becomes much more dangerous to be out in places like this when it does snow. Additionally its not practical for the local authorities to have much of any systems in place for something that dosen't occur as often as it does elsewhere. So in my case when I lived out east there were plenty of snowplows because it was just a must for the amount of snow we had out there. But out here on the west coast its not practical for them to have so many snow plows for such rare occasions and so the roads take longer to be plowed here when we do get a snow.

[The Irish]

...
The frequencies at which British trains run are surely far in excess of any Swiss service....

The Gotthard route is one of the busiest string of track in Europe with a train density of 1 train each direction every 3 minutes at peak times. It is a mixed route for passenger and freight and is one of only two routes connecting Switzerland with Italy and the only one which is double track all the way. The crosses the Alps and has a max climb of something around 28 %o.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthardbahn

[Dave]

...
The frequencies at which British trains run are surely far in excess of any Swiss service....

The Gotthard route is one of the busiest string of track in Europe with a train density of 1 train each direction every 3 minutes at peak times. It is a mixed route for passenger and freight and is one of only two routes connecting Switzerland with Italy and the only one which is double track all the way. The crosses the Alps and has a max climb of something around 28 %o.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthardbahn

As previously mentioned... That's told me.

Cheers for the link, Irish