Pepe's Towing in Los Angeles reports asphalt collapses where loaded semitrailers are parked with the landing gear down. On hot days the concentrated load of the landing gear sometimes punches through the asphalt.[1]

This is why truck dock areas are usually paved with concrete.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBrULmCGJfc

> But of course, this was done in response to past serious crashes that occurred because the asphalt melted. So, it's sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario for the organizers.

Well, not entirely. You always have the option of repaving the roads with cobblestone or something.

This isn't a new thing in the Tour and it is normally not a problem, but since someone crashed on it then it must be the "white shit" that caused it. Not one of the hundreds of other variables - like the rider.

...I know absolutely nothing about competitive cycling, but it occurs to me:

1. Would the Tour de France have been rescheduled if it was raining that day?

2. If the answer to #1 is no, is the paint any more slippery than water would have been?

3. If the answer to #1 is yes, then they should also reschedule for extreme heat.

We have like 220,000 miles of railroad. We do have nice things: a working freight railroad system that helps reduce transit costs.

Why couldn't this also help with continuous-welded rail?

Your own video points out that it's still prone to trade-offs: rail breaks in the cold are better than buckling in the heat, but what if you could reduce the high point with white paint so you could expand the practical temperature range?

> American [rail] was built on the cheap, and is not maintained correctly

edit: I'm not sure anymore; I know most of the network is well maintained, but there could be large sections that are not, I'm not up to date on it.

...that will be done for a few years, dwindling quality and measurement, lack of continuous data collection, or sparse, which loses 'track' of performance and effect. Then, lots of subcontractors will use the wrong paint (maybe a black market appears), incorrect application, too thick too thin on top instead of the sides... more derailments start occuring because the whole program gets used to boost stock price and try to get fed contracts instead of actually engineering a solution and maintaining it as protocol.

Lots of major industrial specialty paint manufacturers and white labelers are publicly traded, owned by BR & VG.

Maintenance is expensive, profits are now!

It's funny you mention that, since I mentally associate Union Pacific with the worst of US rail disinvestment. They're the ones that were patient zero for the "precision scheduled railroading" brainworm that led all our railroads to downgrade track and lengthen trains to insane lengths[1]. Or at the very least, they were at the top of Amtrak's delay-shaming list until a few years ago[0] when they somehow improved???

...anyway, I'm now genuinely wondering how the hell rail in such an awful state can still maintain the correct gauge for trains to run on!?

[0] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

[1] Salt Lake City is trisected by Union Pacific freight rail. We have some of the largest city blocks in North America, but they're still not long enough to avoid a single stopped Union Pacific train blocking multiple crossings for hours on end. If you want to really, REALLY hate trains, move to the west side of SLC.

Also, talk to your politician about the Rio Grande Plan.

You are misreading. Basically the white paint is "fighting the sun's heat".

I think the safety officer meant that white paint prevents the rail from heating up. The heating of rails contributes to problems with derailment. If the heat isn't a contributor, that heat is one less thing you have to fight (as in account for).

But the photo caption paraphrases him and says that the white paint fights (as in prevents) the heat, which uses similar words but a different logic to it (but the same overall meaning).

If I've got that right, then I think the blame lies on whoever wrote this article for making it confusing.

Fighting like a verb I think

Reflecting the sun means the rail no longer has to fight the sun's heat.

Without the paint, the sun heats the rail and heat expansion fights against the elements holding the rail in place until the rail cools down or something moves. If the something moves, trains can derail.

> Why paint the sides of the rails? Well you can paint the tops, but it tends to gum up the wheels and get worn off.

Tops of rails are already pretty shiny for any mainline track seeing a couple dozen trains a day. I'd bet they are more reflective than white paint could be. And the paint would be gone after the first train passes through anyways.

They rust pretty quick, but with regular use it doesn't build up much since it's constantly being worn off from the wheel friction.

The top of the rail is already white!!!

It's just polished, so that it is reflective.

If you sanded it with your 180 grit paper, you would get the scattering which appears white.

I recall a test initiative was done some time ago for painting (or mixing in, I forget) roads teal. It improved the heat island where it was placed, and wasn't too bright for motorists. I wonder why that never went anywhere...

Yes, they're called "high-rail" or "road-rail" vehicles. They have rail wheels that can be lowered down to drive on tracks or raised up for road use.

OK, but a heatwave isn't going to buy a derailer

   Do NOT use where speeds exceed 5 m.p.h.

Not sure what you're thinking of, but these widgets you linked won't solve the problem of long rail sections heating up in the sun, buckling, and derailing freight trains travelling at normal speeds.

this is tackling regular natural derailment incidents not terrorism

Derailers are common and are placed where people are working on tracks so a runaway car will go off the tracks instead of hitting the workers.

Why worry about memory safety? Users can literally "kill -9" anyway.

Why would electrification prevent track from warping due to heat from the sun?

The question applies more broadly than Union Pacific. Why hasn't this been an industry standard for 100 years?

Indeed. Didn't they used to have expansion gaps?

Reflecting and radiating heat are mutually exclusive, and if some material is good at radiating heat, it is also good at absorbing heat, otherwise it would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

It is a bit more complicated than that because light come in different wavelength, but it is the general idea.

Railroad rails tend to be dark except for the polished top surface, so they absorb/radiate the heat more than they reflect it. Painting them white changes that, it makes them less effective at radiating their own heat, but because they don't produce much heat by themselves, it is not a big effect, but it also makes them less effective at absorbing the heat from the sun, a much greater effect, so, the rails get cooler overall.

Or they have a heavy rust converter (phosphoric acid?) built into it. Similar to a self-etching primer.

Sorry, but both Switserland and definitly the Netherlands are further North vs a significant percentage of the USA.

Bern, Switzerland is very close to the same latitude as Quebec City, CA or Fargo, ND, USA.

The Netherlands is even further North. Due to the lower angle of the sun hitting them they might get completely different results vs here in the South-Western USA.

Also weird in the article:

> Het aanbrengen is behoorlijk arbeidsintensief.

Really? How is driving a machine over the rail labor-intensive?