this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Tell that to the danish public transit system shitting itself because we're getting a bit of snow tonight. In reality, there's a better chance of you being able to drive your car to work, than the train being able to go. Because your car isn't bound by minimum speeds, but if the train can only go 10 mph because of snow and ice on the track, it's just not feasible to run it.
That sounds like an infrastructure specific problem. Many countries have trains that work reliably in snowy conditions or have train cars designed to clear tracks for other trains.
If no one plowed or maintained the roads, your car would struggle too.
The problem is brake length. If you get ice between the steel rails and the steel wheels, you're going to have a very very long brake length, that is already pretty long for a train. It doesn't have to snow a lot for ice buildup to occur, and having a plow to clear everything everywhere becomes less feasible, the better your rail coverage is. If for example you take the railline where I live. It's about 2 hours long at train speeds. If you were to put 1 train on that line, that just continuously cleared the rail, you could clear it once every 2 hours. If it continually snows, that's likely not going to be enough for the trains to safely opperate. Now my line is really not that long compared to the rest of the country. It's roughly 120kms long. Compared to the 2615 km of train tracks we have, you're going to need A LOT of trains that can get rid of the ice buildup. You're also going to need A LOT of people to work those trains, people who wouldn't be needed 98% of the year.
So sure, you could just throw billions and billions at the problem, but it's just not going to happen, and it probably shouldn't either.
You seem to know a lot about trains and snow. Tell me, how is it then that Sweden and Finland continue to have trains in the winter? Or Switzerland or upper Austria for that matter?
I don't know a lot about trains and snow. All I know is what I've been told every time trains are cancelled here in Denmark because there's snow on the tracks, or because a few leafs have landed on them.
But it doesn't take all that much to realize that a very small contact area, with low friction materials, with a slippery surface inbetween makes trains a lot worse at both speeding up, and slowing down.
If train is late its not because of "few leafs". Wet, smushed leafs pack on the rails like film that slows down both acceleration and braking, because there is not friction, but there needs to be shit ton of them.
Ice effects supricingly little to acceleration/braking. Trains are so heavy that the pressure on the tracks melts the ice allmost instantly. Bigger problem is the snow, that starts to pack on parts of the train.
Id imagine big part why trains in Sweden and Finland stay on time is because train companies know trains move slower in certain times so they adjust the schedule accordingly.
That's rough. I thought operating rail systems in inclement weather was a mostly solved problem.
Trains on rails have basically no traction, since the contact surfaces are steel on steel. Anything that makes them slippery becomes a no-go as soon as hills are involved, and stopping is also significantly impacted.
Having them not require tires is a solved problem, but as you can see that comes with some compromises.
They have grit dispensers for the wheels for this exact problem in snowy areas.