Slip 'n' Slide

Fall is one of the best times for rail travel in New York State. All across the state, you get beautiful views with spectacular fall foilage. As we now slowly begin to enter the height of Autumn, the many leaves on the trees will start to change colors. And while the fall foilage is beautiful, it's also causes a lot of problems for the railroads.

The phenomenon we must talk about is called "Slip-side" and its where leaves fall onto the tracks, get crushed by the trains wheels, creating a oily residue, formally known as pectin. Pectin is an enemy as it gums up the rails and therefore causes trains to slide forwards when trying to brake.

Flat spot on an M7 wheel (Photo: MTA)

As you can probably tell, these flatspots on the wheels are a MAJOR headache for everyone involved. They cause maintenance headaches as the wheels often need to be trued (which means reshaped) and they also cause a very loud banging noise for customers that is extremely annoying. 

During leaf season, the LIRR keep a very sharp lookout for these slip-side conditions, and whenever they are reported, engineers are instructed to enter stations at a restricted speed to minimize the risk of overshooting stations. While this helps to minimize the risk, it also lowers trains punctuality therefore causing additional headaches once those trains leave the leafy suburbs and enter the busy Main Line.

To provide defense against Slip-slide, many railroads have adopted their own trains known as "laser trains" to patrol and destroy leaves on the tracks. NJTransit, for example, has their own laser train known as "AquaTrack" which patrols the system for leaves. 

Metro-North's "laser train"

Both the LIRR and MNR employ the use of "laser trains" which use very powerful lasers to vaporize the leafy residue on the tracks. While I haven't been lucky enough to catch it myself, I've seen it on the radar mainly during school hours, or during the late night when they can sneak it out to the various branches so it can do it's job. 

The LIRR actually made a very quick 45 second video recently which they posted all over their socials showing the technology, and I'll actually include it if your interested, click here.

In conclusion, while the changing of colors produce excellent fall foilage across New York state, they also have their implications, and in the case of commuter rail, can be a huge headache to deal with. This is a problem that as long as we have trees in New York State (which I have my doubts will ever change), we'll have to deal with but as technology evolves and we have better technology like lasers, it'll only get easier to deal with.