The nearer bits of mainland Europe have a climate broadly similar to ours, and the regions distant from the sea tend to be colder in the winter and hotter in the summer. Yet continental railways seem able to cope with normal summer weather without the frequent and widespread disruption that occurs in the UK▸ .
Hot weather DOES sometimes cause disruption in mainland Europe, but only in extreme or exceptional conditions. whereas here we get significant disruption virtually every summer.
It seems a bit like the annual "leaves on the line" fiasco. I am not being flippant and I do have at least a basic understanding of the problem, but it does seem to be largely a UK problem.
In say France or Germany, leaf fall has caused delays but only rarely and in exceptional conditions, here we seem to have significant problems every autumn.
And that difference is what the majority don't understand, and hasn't, as far as I can see, bern explained yet in this thread?
Anyone care to elucidate?
Not sure I can answer the question but I can certainly offer some opinions.
Firstly,
is continental Europe not so prone to such delays caused by hot/cold weather and leaf-fall? I certainly wouldn't say I travel frequently by train in Europe, but I have been on the rail networks of twenty or so European countries over the years. I've certainly experienced my fair share of delays and the odd cancellation on them.
We are much more exposed to stories about British rail delays as we are in Britain, but you don't have to delve too deeply on the internet to find some horrendous stories of individual delays in Europe, and those that hold the railways of Germany in high regard might like to reconsider that opinion when they find out that only 77% of long distance trains hit their punctuality target in the January just gone. The following recent story makes interesting reading in that regard:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/11/why-german-trains-dont-run-on-time-any-moreA lot is often made about it being quicker to travel in steam days between Liverpool and Manchester than it does today - you could easily say that sums up the state of Britain's railways with high speed services whizzing around Europe, but there are similar comparisons there too where Berlin to Dresden takes longer today than it did in 1939.
It should be no surprise that colder countries such as Norway deal with cold weather better than we do, and warmer countries such as Spain and Greece deal with hotter conditions better. The Swiss network in undeniably very reliable indeed - but to say its trains always run on time is quite wrong and its average speeds are comparably slow (partly due to the terrain).
Turning to the infrastructure - we still only have the one short section of dedicated high speed line compared with the many thousands of kilometres in Spain, Germany, France, and Italy and others. Those railways are purpose built and have equipment such as cab signalling which is far less prone to failure. Our railways are receiving a huge amount of investment currently, but that in itself raises challenges when incredible growth in usage clashes with upgrading of existing lines, and no extra capacity as the new trains to run on them are still being built.
Regarding the internet, I remember Graham (I think) making a very valid point regarding delays when you compare the pre-internet days. Then you would not necessarily realise that signalling problems at Southall were delaying trains by 20 minutes one lunchtime as you weren't travelling then so wouldn't have known. Now with the websites keeping people informed of delays it's very easy to form the impression that there are constant delays, when in actual fact there aren't.
Don't get me wrong, I find it very frustrating when the service often collapses at the first sign of hot weather, and the national punctuality levels are on a slow downward trend which is disappointing and worrying, but perhaps it's not correct to cite the rest of Europe as running a much better system, because things are not always as they seem.
