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Every autumn, the SNCF prepares its tracks by running around fifty “scrubber trains”, responsible for cleaning the rails. Essential work.
Small leaves, but big problems. Autumn puts the rails to the test. Leaves accumulate on the tracks, delaying trains and creating braking problems. How to get rid of it? At Toulouse-Matabiau station (Haute-Garonne), a team from France Télévisions boarded a washer train. There are four copies in the city and fifty throughout France. Their mission is to clean the rails. Under the convoy, water is sprayed on the tracks to loosen the leaves.
On the line between Toulouse and Hoche (Gers), the washer train runs once a week, from October to December. Watering is quasi-automatic, at 60 km/h. “We pass between two trains. We must not make them late, because our job is precisely that they can circulate correctly”, explains Vincent Boutot, operator on a washer train. For the past ten years, the SNCF has been pulling out all the stops. The danger is indeed real. Crushed by the trains, the leaves decompose and form a greasy paste, which causes adhesion problems. Without a washing car, the train could travel several hundred additional meters before stopping.
However, the washing train consumes 35,000 liters of water every week. “If we want to preserve both the regularity and the safety of traffic, it is a treatment that is necessary”, assumes Marin Huillery, technical manager of SNCF – Réseau Occitanie.