4K Cab Ride NL Zwolle – Harderwijk - Amersfoort / Stormy weather! / SPR 5628 / 18-01-2018

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• published: 26 Jan 2018
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Train Driver’s View on the sprinter service from Zwolle to Amersfoort on a stormy winter day in Holland. The 18th of January was a rough day in Holland. The ride we make is one of the last possible for the morning. About an hour after our arrival in Amersfoort all train were cancelled because of the storm. In this ride we get to run two SLT sprinters with a total of 10 carriages. It’s 9.55 and after waiting for a few minutes we finally get the green signal from the signal man. The intercity that should’ve ahead of us already is behind on schedule because of a suicidal person in the north of the country. Because the intercity’s delay is +13 minutes we may depart as first. After Zwolle we speed up the train to its maximum speed ASAP. We are two minutes behind on schedule but there is time enough to get back on schedule before we make our first stop. And this works! As soon as we arrive in Wezep we’re back ‘on track’. Btw: as we leave Zwolle you can see the famous bridge over the IJssel. Stunning view, don’t you think? Because of the storm we have to keep our eyes open for obstacles on the tracks. With winds up to 150km/h at the coast, and even 110km/h inside the country trees and lots of other stuff can be blown over the tracks. On our departure in ‘t Harde we get a call from the signal man telling us it’s time to let the intercity pass by as soon as we arrive in Nunspeet. There’s an extra tracks specially made for situations like this over there. So, we make sure we keep the train to the maximum allowed speed to make sure we don’t lose too much time. After the IC has been passed we have a delay of 3 minutes when we arrive at the platform in Nunspeet. Time to buckle up again! On full speed we are back on schedule on our arrival in Putten. From there we can take it easy again. Meaning, taking the train to the maximum speed and then let the weight of the train do the rest of work until the next stop. After we’ve departed from Nijkerk we stumble upon a big piece of plastic hanging over our track. You can’t see it on the video, but the plastic could mean trouble for other trains. At first I hit the normal brakes to the full (one step further and the train makes an emergency stop). A few seconds later I see the plastic is blown away from our track to our side of the railroad and I decide to stop our train just a little further than the plastic is located to make sure it can’t be blown to the other track. Then I make a call to the signal man to update him and we tell him I’ll go outside and try to take the plastic away from the tracks and with us in the cabin. In the meantime the train manager arrives at the cabin as well. I tell him to give an update to our passengers while I go outside to take away the plastic. When I get there I see it’s a very huge piece of plastic (about 7x3 meters). Glad I could take it away without problems. With a 5 minute delay we depart again. The signal man tells me there are no railway crossing malfunctions so we can start running the train on normal speed. As a driver you do some extra checks before running the train on full speed again, but in this case it was no problem. So we accelerate to the maximum speed and arrive at our next stop with +5, then +4 and also at our final stop with +4 minutes. And at that point the bad news came. Our train got cancelled. At that moment I didn’t know why, but a few minutes later I heard we got cancelled because of disruptions on the route ahead. I hope you’ll enjoy the ride. Stay tuned for more and enjoy your weekend! Cheers! ATB Track Speed: Max ATB speed given to the train from the track. Vmax: Max speed for that particular part of the track. Vlimit: Max speed given by light signals or temporary speed limits on the tracks. Twitter: @machinistASD Instagram: @machinist_asd --- Voor Nederlands: Youtube moet je instellen in de Nederlandse taal - Open Youtube in je browser - Klik indien WEL ingelogd rechts bovenin op je account-icoontje - Klik indien NIET ingelogd rechts bovenin op instellingen (drie puntjes) - Kies taal: Nederlands ---