Broken track on S-Bahn S1 line, Wed. 13.Feb.2008

According to Bayern 3 traffic services the tracks used by the S1 leading to the airport have cracked due to the cold. Serious delays have to be expected direction Freising/Airport. Please plan accordingly and take alternative transportation (S8, airport bus, taxi, car-jacking).

According to the S-Bahn site, by the way, everything is dandy.

The cold?

What cold? have they got their own climate out there?

Well, actually they do on the Erdinger Moos, but according to wetter.com it was only -3.5 °C at the airport last night. It's not much warmer now though, because it's in the clouds.

It was snowing earlier. That was a bit disconcerting I was planning on wearing my summer shorts today.

Metallurgy. The tracks have been getting pretty warm with the sunshine of the last few days. Last night it not only froze but the air was very damp as well, I suppose the extremes were just that bit too much. I was seriously freezing on the platform this morning at Lohhof in spite of a woolly coat, a thick scarf and gloves along with my normal garb.

Maybe Scogs can provide some information on the behavior of metals if he hasn't forgotten all he learned 25 years ago.

Come on.. give the lad a break.. I bet he cant even remember how many he had to drink last night!

What's this? Posting in morse code or something? Surely the second post should have been '---' then the third '...' again?

when you post three periods, the BB software deletes the post automatically. It is useful when you write something dumb and then go back in edit mode to take it away. In my case it was a question answered by looking at the OP in more detail (the section of track affected is between Neufarhn and the Airport)

Where'dya get that from? I only said the direction, not the stretch. Seems to be north of Feldmoching, though.

My post belonged on another thread.

Perhaps I read into it too much...

This to me means the part of the S1 between Neufarhn and the Airport. Otherwise it would just be "the tracks used by the S1". I thought that was the point of excluding Freising.

Freising is not excluded. I would not dream of excluding our northern neighbors, not after the hospitality I enjoyed last year at the Freising Volksfest.

If it's train disruption you're talking about, feel free to exclude us...

By the way, we're not necessarily your neighbours... I this week saw Freising described in the local paper as the "Mutterstadt" of Munich! Which is of course entirely true. Only 850 years old? How quaint!

The nice S-Bahn info lady with the weird name has confirmed that the S1 is again running accoring to schedule.

Regardless of how damp the air was, rails typically don't often break due to temperatures such as these. Doesn't matter if the temperature is swinging across the freezing point--rails don't absorb moisture to any great extent and 0 degrees C is a temperature of no particular significance to steel (drop down to 0 kelvin and we'll talk ). Most likely the rail had some sort of small defect that was exacerbated by the loading/unloading cycles of passing trains.

Temperature can of course play a role; steel is smaller at lower temperatures than at higher ones. But for that to be a leading contributor to a rail break it would have to be a much bigger temperature change than we've seen. Usually rail breaks brought about by temperature are do to the temperature being too high on a sunny day: the ambient temperature combined with direct solar radiation heats the rail enough to expand it, and since modern rail systems use welded rails that can go on for hundreds of meters without a joint (where traditionally small gaps to allow for expansion where provided for), there is nowhere for the rail to expand but sideways, resulting in a so-called "sun kink". But cold temperatures don't have this problem: if a rail contracts due to cold, there's little preventing it from contracting.

No, but I heard there was a nasty draft last night. Somebody must have left the window open.

I've just been checking the MVV website to see what times the S1 S-Bahn leaves Rosenheimerplatz to get me to Freising (after the Friday night beergarden bash) and it would appear that the S1 is only running from Laim this evening. It's not a big deal, just means I have to use 2 S-Bahns, one to Laim and then the Freising one, but I was just wondering why. Any idea whats going on folks?

Mr A, it might the new points being installed at Lustheim which means there will be some off peak services only every 40 minutes south of Moosach, running to the low level platform at Laim.
You might like to consider the U2 or regional trains innit.

As I said, it's no big deal, I just need to change at Laim, I was just curious. I do use the Regional trains sometimes, but I'm always a bit worried that I fall asleep and end up in the Bayerische wald!

Oh! Just planning my getaway and it looks like ALL trains heading up the S1 route to Niederbauern, Oberpfalz and Czech Rep are shagged over Easter.
Bahn.de has the replacement table load though so check that BEFORE you travel!
ie The through train to Prague is leaving 44 minutes earlier tomorrow.