Train track that disappears in hours
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- Jacklyn Dallas ('Nothing But Tech'), Beryl Shereshewsky and Alec Watson ('Technology Connections') face a question about some transient transport.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcas...
GUESTS:
Jacklyn Dallas: @NBTJacklyn, / nbtjacklyn
Beryl Shereshewsky: @BerylShereshewsky
Alec Watson: @TechnologyConnections
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023.
Nothing sparks joy as much as Tom going on a different tangent about some obscure railway thing every minute of this video.
also when he outed himself as a Dropout subscriber / Gamechanger fan!
The question writers had to know this was going to eat at Tom. It's like they specifically wrote this to make him kick himself on camera. Well done!
Credit goes to Felicia Barker, the listener who sent in this idea.
My first guess was Tom's video on the bus replacement rail service - but that was 7 years ago, not last year.
@@aveekbh if that would be the case. It would be odd that Tom would not reconnect that at all. plus that had a start and ending point.
@@aveekbh My assumption is that it was due to engineering work. I was thinking about the damaged track in Devon from a few years ago - did they build some detour? But of course not. We wouldn't spend money on such fripperies. They probably put a rail replacement bus on for a couple of years!
Loved being on the show thank you so much for having me:))))
Any time!
With the GameChanger mention, I´m reminded how much I´d love Sam Reich on this show. And Brennan Lee Mulligan for totally different reasons.
so true I really hope some Dropout cast members show up in Lateral some day
They had Brian David Gilbert, and he's in a similar sphere I feel
@@columbus8myhw I think Tom did ask Brian about being on Dropout recently so maybe he's interested??
@@elmomertens If we're talking about people going on Dropout, my vote is for Gary Brennan.
Sam Reich, where did he grow up again?
The discussions quickly went off the rails. Glad everybody got back on track towards the end.
Ha, rails.
This was a really hot questions.
Always like when they follow a train of through for a good while and it turns out to be wrong
They definitely got tunnel vision at certain points.
after struggling with some dead ends, the answer suddenly hit tom like a locomotive
Oh man hearing Tom reference GameChanger! Would be awesome to see him on something from Dropout like Um Actually!
My thoughts exactly!
I just decided that Tom does Lateral to get new show ideas for his main channel, and the fact that the game show is such a success is a pleasant side-effect that's become its own purpose.
So lateral disappears in less than a year when Tom stops his regular main channel videos?
Except this. On June 30, 2023, Scott uploaded a video titled, “Six months from now, this channel stops.”
@@bigduginc Did he rule out restarting it later?
I love game changer so much! I didn't know Tom was a fan 😂
expansion areas in the tracks would probably take on most of that extra length. There are many key parts of the railroad that are fixed in place while the rest floats on ballast.
Yes, there is a lot more interesting engineering behind this.
exactly... this "9 extra km" thing is just kinda hogwash innit
more precisely, the tracks expanded by 9km x (cross section area) worth of volume, not 9 extra km of _distance_
@@alveolate I don't think so. They said "30cm for ever kilometre" which makes me believe we're talking length. In fact, that's what the comments you're responding to are saying too, so you're disagreeing with them. Expansion joints are gaps between rails that allow them to expand and contract lengthwise as temperatures fluctuate.
@@alveolate Distance travelled along the tracks increased, distance between the stations did not.
@@Timoohz the lenght of track between the stations increased. Distance between stations and distance traveled (Sorry, American here!) won't have increased either. Lengthe of track the wheels came into contact with may have.
I say this all in jest, of course. I'm really not trying to pick nits.
I love every time he says “I hate that question so much. Well done!” LOL
'this isnt game changer'
Rail has expansion joints and expansion gaps. So the individual rail sections get bigger but the trans travel distance doesn't change.
Exactly. I'm surprised nobody mentioned that in the video.
Yes, I dought there was 9 kilomiters worth of buckling beacuse a good potion of briattans rails wouold be distroyed, also I think the rails can expand a little bit more then the expantion joints and not buckle (instead just compress).
At least in the US, modern rail is sometimes continuous ie welded together - and to account for thermal expansion and avoid buckling, it’s installed so that it’s normally in tension.
@@AtomicBuffalo Yes, you can weld them for up to 400 meters or so but then you need a joint.
Main line tracks are mostly continuous welded rails.
After about 4 minutes my first actual idea was a large model railway. Didn't James May do a show where they built a really long piece of model railway between two small towns?
Found it - James May's Toy Stories. Episode "The Great Train Race":
> James May reattempts his challenge to create the longest model railway line between Barnstaple and Bideford, but this time with a race between British model railway enthusiasts against a German team from Miniatur Wunderland. With sturdier track and a new power system, along with Oz Clarke helping out, the teams compete with three different model trains - a steam locomotive, an electric train, and a modified model train with a unique power source - racing from opposite ends.[29] The renewed attempt proves a success, completing what was started in 2009, with the British beating the Germans by being the first to their destination with two trains.
Of course the Miniatur Wunderland people would be there. If there's a model railways record going on, they're never far away. They once pulled an actual locomotive using 100 model locomotives
That would not count as a part of the railway network though
@4:30 I like that Tom mentioned Game Change because every time I watch Lateral I think "you know, this show would be a really nice fit on the Dropout TV streaming service..."
I've been hoping to see Alec in Lateral at some point. Even better that the topic was trains!
One minor correction: a lot of trains do have odometers that could tell that you'd gone 30 feet farther. The engineer can start the odometer when the engine passes a particular point (say, the end of a slow zone), and knowing the length of his train, he knows when the rear of the train has passed it.
Newer Trains Odometry built in. With ETCS (European Train Control System) it is even nescessary to have 3 redundand odometers inside a Locomotive. One accelerometer one speedometer (counting the revolution of the axels) and one ground radar system detecting how fast the vehicle moves ober the ground.
It is also interesting to know, that for safety reason the system trusts the system which gives out the highest value which can cause to losses of the vehicles moving authority when one system is not working properly. As an example the ground radar system had problems with snowy tracks in the begining because of the reflections of ice crystals.
Hope this reaches you guys. Greetings from a professional train driver.
I've been watching a lot of the show lately, and this is by far the most "lateral" question I've heard in a long time.
0:47 Tom "Totally not a train guy" Scott
Alec's idea of using the middle of two tracks was in a Where's Waldo book I did with my kid last week.
Holy moly.. i did not expect Alec to pop up at all. NICE !! Gotta find the whole episode now....🔎
Okay, with that name drop, I would love to see Tom Scott on Game Changer (or any Dropout show! Um, Actually? Dare I suggest Dimension 20?)
honestly who do we need to bribe to get this to happen cause it NEEDS to happen, and to get some of the folks from dropout on lateral
I don't think the word "added" in this question is a correct representation of what happened. It could be phrased as 9 km of track 'magically' appeared or the track got 9 km longer, but there was no physical entity adding track. When the track expanded, it filled the cracks between rail sections, but the question makes it sound like it was added to the end somewhere
The question says X _length of track_ was added. It doesn't say "to the end somewhere" anywhere. Are you saying the exact answer should have been part of the question? Do you understand the format?
I loved this one!
Although I have quip with the worded added, if they would have said it was "lengthened by 9km" I don't think that would have given it away anymore then the word added and been a more accurate word to describe what happed.
The metal was deformed and stretched by the heat, but nothing was actually physically added.
1:28 there are a couple of stations like that - Exton Commando and Sellafield - where you can get off but can't go anywhere.
However there are also stations like Dovey Junction and Berney Arms which very much are stations in the middle of nowhere.
Wow. This is one of the most Lateral question that I've seen. Well done.
Whilst there are expansion joints (mainly on jointed track) as the majority of the network are continuously welded rails almost all of the 'expansion' due to heat does not occur and instead the becomes increased stress in the rails. Think of a steel rail as a steel beam in a building. The more load you put on the beam then it will deflect, but not a lot. However, eventually the steel beam will break, which is one of the causes of broken rails. The other problem with high-stressed rails is that if there are any weak fixings to the sleepers (ties in America) or the sleepers/ties are not properly ballasted then the rails will overcome that resistance and cause the rails to deflect side-to-side. If trains encounter those deflections at speed then they will derail, so in high temperatures temporary speed restrictions at put in place to stop trains derailing.
We're just going by what Network Rail said itself: "We have about 30,000km of rail on a normal day but the network is 9km longer today!" twitter.com/networkrail/status/1549409910693285888?lang=en-GB
You're likely both right. The expansion coefficient of steel is larger than the value of rail expansion discussed in the video (30cm of expansion per kilometer). While most of it may be internalized as stress, there's certainly a chance that another portion of the stress profile causes the rail to deflect slightly upwards, leading to a 0.03% increase in size per rail.
Continuously welded track still has an expansion joint. It runs along the track, not across it.
@@hairyaireyAgreed but most of the 'expansion' is contained within the rails as stress. The rails are also prevented from moving by the clips which hold the rails to the sleepers.
@@PStaveley at 30cm per km that 600ft section (roughly 200m) is going to expand in length by nearly 6cm. 3cm at each end. Which is well within the range of the expansion joint. There are cases though of localised heating where track does buckle (on gradients it can expand, shrink and slide which causes it to buckle when it expands again). The only precaution Network Rail had against this was to institute a 50mph limit nationally, giving drivers a chance to stop before derailing.
The stations would still be the same distance apart.
My first idea was about the movies, but the other - that the tracks were put out from Balmoral to nearest train station to help with transporting Queen's coffin. If I recall correctly the HAI video, in case of Queen dying in Scotland, her coffin would travel to London by train.
that was the long-established plan, however decisions taken at the time resulted in the royal coffin not being moved by rail, instead being transported by a RAF transport aircraft
Love a tricky question like this!
Don't you mean a tracky question?
...
I'll get my coat
@@PixelatedPenfold Nah, keep it on!
Tech Connections! Awesome :)
I never expected to see a food TH-camr I follow in a Tom Scott video.
Wowser!! That is an amazing answer!
These days, you can actually get out of Lympstone Commando station without having to visit the adjacent Royal Marines base.
however between the closure of the surrounding steelworks and the mothballing of the attached station, that situation did apply at Redcar British Steel
I had assumed that Beryl was talking about Smallbrook Junction, and then Tom misguided her.
7:30 One could measure either the gap between the rails, that is built in for that thermal reason- or the time between every "dudum" sound, which makes trains so soothing :)
Alec, the trains wouldn't have covered more distance, the distance would stay the same. just the gaps between sections of the tracks would decrease in size. Otherwise really weird things would start to happen.
“You’re so smart ❤️… but no.”
- all of Jacklyn’s responses
hahahahaha was impressed with the attempts 😋
when i first heard the question i was totally going down the route of "oh they claimed a small bit of territory that already had rails built but the deal fell through within a few weeks and they lost it"
It was hidden in expansion joints.
The trains aren't traveling any further. The tracks have expansion gaps (at least I think they do, to prevent buckling) Although the gaps are small they all add up to 9km
I haven’t watched the whole video yet, but I’m thinking of a railroad used to transport materials - say coal or lumber - from a job site to an unloading area, for distributed transportation by truck, or by sea. That track would likely go away, or be moved/re-routed, when an area is fully harvested.
I literally guessed this immediately and the whole time was wondering if I was right and why they weren't guessing the obvious as it had been so obvious to me
Well done. I didn't guess it because the heatwave was July, not June.
@@10thdoctor15 honestly most of the time I think "it's obviously 'x' " it's normally the complete opposite of 'x'
I just assumed it was the bit of HS2 that actually got built
Y'all overlooked the obvious solution: Hedley Lamarr had made a corrupt deal to build a track through Rock Ridge. The track that was laid sank into quicksand, and the project was never completed because Lamarr was fatally shot outside Mann's Chinese Theater.
the train station Tom is referencing for anyone wondering is called Commando and Geoff Marshall did a video about it but you can get out of the station now because of a cycle path that runs through there
My thinking was that British Railway made a purpose built track for testing reasons, to find out how quickly the tracks would disappear. So they build 9 km on a beach, to see in the event of flooding or sea levels rise how long the rails would subsist, how much damage they would receive, and how much it would cost to repair them, to see if they needed to already move some lines away from the shore, because it was cheaper to do it now than repair later. That's a very long sentence, like 9km of train tracks, but I hope at least it makes sense.
This is the first time watching one of these lateral questions where i knew the answer instantly before the question was even fully read out for the first time
Although i must admit i was a railroad worker for a couple of years so it instantly clicked because of that 😂
Some additional trivia about the expansion of railway tracks in high temperatures:
The ideal temperature for railway tracks is between 18 and 21 degrees celsius. Under those conditions the tracks don't expand OR detract and keep their original intended form
The way to make sure that tracks don't expand to the point where it starts being dangerous for trains to go over them is by making little gaps every so often in the tracks so that they have room to expand without bending the whole rail system
One of the biggest reasons why trains get detached from the track is the poor maintenance of these little gaps, because they have to be inspected very often (ideally atleast once every 3 months at minimum)
And a bit of an unrelated fact about railroads in high temperatures...working in the middle of a hot summer day on a railroad track is an absolute pain. Because if it's, let's say 30 degrees, the additional heat that radiates back out from the tracks causes the area around the tracks to be closer to 55 -60 degrees. It is absolutely excruciating 😓
There's a reason why i i'm not a railroad worker anymore
There probably wasn't enough distance added to odometer even if there was one because railway tracks have expansion joints that do take in to factor thermal expansion so there probably wasn't much added to the odometer because those distances are already laid along a track length
That was tricky!
LOL
"Another thing to think about..." equals "Um, no."
At 3:20 I wondered if this was to check the suitability to transporting stuff like nuclear material or similar stuft.
I would like to present Alec with the, "Worst Acoustics on TH-cam" award.
First guess is something like the Derby test track or a Heritage railway got recognised within Network Rail for the summer? But then services reverted to normal afterwards so it was no longer needed on the system.
7:30 - No, you silly person, stations didn't get _further apart_ from each other. The tracks expanded into *_expansion gaps_* already built into them to avoid deformation.
In title: Train track that disappears in *hours*
The actual statement: A few *weeks* later, it was gone.
There's a pretty big difference between 'weeks' and 'hours'.
It's a clickbait title for a clip, doesn't make any difference in the actual video
In the 1980's the conducted a test for a nuclear flask where they rammed the flask with a high speed train.
It was an impressive sight, but it was also 40 years ago.
7:39 no, it expends in the gaps between the rails ends.
omg it's that snarky guy from the midwest that talks way too long about analogue media and cheap fridges!! I love him :D
Damn, I thought it was a reference to when James may did the model train thing where it was many miles of model train tracks.
At 5:15 Training track for staff and emergency services?
Hang on, where did they fit? Everything is anchored to the ground, right? Did they buckle upwards slightly?
It's a tiny expansion. 9km over a total of 16209km is about 55cm for every km on average or about 0.5mm for every metre. The exension would be hidden in expansion joints, which are designed for this very purpose.
There must be some space somewhere, maybe on expansion joints. Kinda like bridge where they would have some space on each end to mitigate exactly that, heat expansion. Otherwise yeah, the track would bent. And heat happened every time not just in a heat wave event. That is just the extreme situation. So they have to mitigate that
Jacklyn is awesome when she shuts down wrong answers!
hahahah hope this is a good thing lol - appreciate u
Hooo, first thought was, did they expand? First time I've gotten this while the text was still in view. :D
As soon as she said "science" I went "OOH thermal expansion"
Is there any way I can watch full episodes for the podcast? I can only find places to listen to the full version but I'd really rather have the video and it seems like you're recording them already to get these highlights..
We're trying to built up the audio podcast first. We know people want full video and, while it's not imminent, we are actively looking into this.
@@lateralcastFair enough, thanks!
I got it right away from the question wording with "gone". only makes sense it had to do with thermal expansion of the tracks
Or it could be aliens. I'm not saying it _was_ aliens, but... yeah, it was aliens.
i was thinking along the lines of Britain colonising a place in the middle of nowhere with 9 kms of train track on it, forming a little enclave (hence it being unconnected) and then a few weeks later saying 'oh yeah i forgot we stopped doing imperialism, my bad' and returning it to the country it belonged to
According to Veritasium's latest video on thermite, the track is kept in mechanical compression during heatwaves and doesn't expand, so I guess this isn't true?
My thought was a film set, that the British Rail orgs agreed to include for promotional reasons. Someone like Nolan would definitely used a real train and blow up the line at the end. Doesnt provide any benefit to the rail system, was fully disassembled after filming. Obviously wrong, but I'm surprised no-one suggested it
my first impression: FINALLY a british reboot of petticoat junction
Immidiate guess: it was test track laid to do some speed run or similar.
Ok, but where does this extra length go!? Is there a compensation system?
My guess [was] temporary track while they do work on the main line.
Notice: Due to Network Rail's expansion, Gt. Yarmouth station is now 9km. East of the town : )
Sure trains have an odometer. Their check-up intervals are based on time and also on distance driven, whichever expired first.
It isn’t Game Changer.. Toms right. So get Brennan Lee Mulligan on here!
My initial thought was for the bus-replacement rail service that someone built, but I think the date's too late for that.
That was my initial thought too.Tom done a video on it 7 years ago. th-cam.com/video/3WHmETKW72E/w-d-xo.html
I don't get it, aren't the rails bolted down into the ground or something like that? Wouldn't such expansion rip them out?
game changer mentioned 🥳
this question is... questionable, train tracks are built leaving gaps between the steel beams such that when they expand from heat it doesnt cause problems, so if u have a kilometer of track sure the steel in that track will expand 30cm but almost all of that expansion will be into empty space which is already considered to be part of the track so track is only actually added at the very ends which would be a tiny insignificant change.
Wait, Except maybe for bends and corners, the trains don’t ride any further! The station is still in the same place?
I though you just don’t have as much bumps when you go over them because the spacing gets filled up?
Or is it actually so that the train travels further? Interesting…
No, trains obviously don't travel further, I have no idea what Alec was thinking. The extra track length is mostly taken up by the expansion gaps that exist for that very purpose.
Is this that small private railway to an island in the Netherlands (I think) that gets covered at high tide?
It's not as if the distance between stations changed, however.
0:40 The rails were only there for a specific scene of a movie set? Connected to the "real" network so they could use authentic Bri'ish railway carriages for the filming... ?
That's a guess.
EDIT: Wow, that's a wild one! I was thinking a nine kilometre long contiguous stretch of rail tracks! Nasty wording, guys! 😁
Thermal expansion was my first guess, but I'm shocked it was correct.
modern tracks are built in tension.... if there is a heatwave they dont' get longer, they just come out of tension.
That question was really misleading. All of that expansion would be taken up in expansion joints and not be reflected in the odometer distance a train traveled. If it wasn't absorbed into expansion joints, that would cause a huge sun kink problem all over the place.
Yes, I wouldn't call that adding track, the total mass and amount of matter stayed the same.
The question didn't say anything about "the distance trains travelled". It said extra length of track was added.
Questions are deliberately misleading, though :) That's the idea behind the show.
I feel like this has come across my attention before, and I'm always slightly surprised by it but, Alec's surname is Watson?
My intial guess was a trains having tracks as cargo.
This was where you had to think laterally
Good puzzle, but not strictly true... "Provided no additional benefit" 🤔
The metal rails expand in the heat, and the gaps between track ends allow them to expand lengthways. Without this 'extra' track length, the track would buckle and deform sideways. So that extra distance of track is quite a big benefit, I'd say. 🙂👍🚂
Huh? It's not the extra length that prevents the rails from buckling, it's the gaps. So the added length of track *didn't* provide any benefit. It merely filled the gaps. I guess you could say it prevented a little bit of vibration when the trains ran over those (now smaller) gaps.
@@RFC3514 the tracks heat up so HAVE to expand somewhere, and the extra length allows them to expand without buckling. Therefore the extra length is a great benefit, as are the gaps. Pretty simple, really.
First thought: Decauville. Then they said 2022.
I presume that the "army" base Tom is talking about is the one for Commando Training Centre RM Lympstone which mean that there are now a load of Bootnecks ruffling their dresses in irritation.
I have been there. It is grim. I am not surprised that the denizens develop a liking for chintz frocks in response.
“Bureaucratic mis-management”?
Wait no, they tested how quickly the sea reclaims rails?
I don’t get how they got longer… the distance between stations is fixed no?
Here today, gone tomorrow.
Didn’t HAI have a video about this??
With it being June 2022, I was thinking it had something to with the Jubilee.
One of those famous stations in Japan serves a similar function to the military one Tom was talking about but for the Toshiba plant where only workers are allowed. I watch way too much random TH-cam.
The expansion happened in 3 dimensions not just in the "distance" between places dimension. Indeed the distance between Endiburgh Waverley and King's Cross did not change at all compared to what the metal in the tracks did. This is the cumulative increase in volume per metre of track expressed as a distance.
Luckily, rails are not cubes. This is the figure that Railtrack itself quoted. -- David (producer)
I was screaming thermal expansion all the time.