Train track that disappears in hours 

Nothing sparks joy as much as Tom going on a different tangent about some obscure railway thing every minute of this video.

The question writers had to know this was going to eat at Tom. It's like they specifically wrote this to make him kick himself on camera. Well done!

With the GameChanger mention, I´m reminded how much I´d love Sam Reich on this show. And Brennan Lee Mulligan for totally different reasons.

Loved being on the show thank you so much for having me:))))

The discussions quickly went off the rails. Glad everybody got back on track towards the end.

I just decided that Tom does Lateral to get new show ideas for his main channel, and the fact that the game show is such a success is a pleasant side-effect that's become its own purpose.

expansion areas in the tracks would probably take on most of that extra length. There are many key parts of the railroad that are fixed in place while the rest floats on ballast.

Oh man hearing Tom reference GameChanger! Would be awesome to see him on something from Dropout like Um Actually!

I love game changer so much! I didn't know Tom was a fan 😂

'this isnt game changer'

Rail has expansion joints and expansion gaps. So the individual rail sections get bigger but the trans travel distance doesn't change.

I love every time he says “I hate that question so much. Well done!” LOL

After about 4 minutes my first actual idea was a large model railway. Didn't James May do a show where they built a really long piece of model railway between two small towns? Found it - James May's Toy Stories. Episode "The Great Train Race": > James May reattempts his challenge to create the longest model railway line between Barnstaple and Bideford, but this time with a race between British model railway enthusiasts against a German team from Miniatur Wunderland. With sturdier track and a new power system, along with Oz Clarke helping out, the teams compete with three different model trains - a steam locomotive, an electric train, and a modified model train with a unique power source - racing from opposite ends.[29] The renewed attempt proves a success, completing what was started in 2009, with the British beating the Germans by being the first to their destination with two trains.

In title: Train track that disappears in *hours* The actual statement: A few *weeks* later, it was gone. There's a pretty big difference between 'weeks' and 'hours'.

0:47 Tom "Totally not a train guy" Scott

I've been hoping to see Alec in Lateral at some point. Even better that the topic was trains! One minor correction: a lot of trains do have odometers that could tell that you'd gone 30 feet farther. The engineer can start the odometer when the engine passes a particular point (say, the end of a slow zone), and knowing the length of his train, he knows when the rear of the train has passed it.

I don't think the word "added" in this question is a correct representation of what happened. It could be phrased as 9 km of track 'magically' appeared or the track got 9 km longer, but there was no physical entity adding track. When the track expanded, it filled the cracks between rail sections, but the question makes it sound like it was added to the end somewhere

Okay, with that name drop, I would love to see Tom Scott on Game Changer (or any Dropout show! Um, Actually? Dare I suggest Dimension 20?)

Newer Trains Odometry built in. With ETCS (European Train Control System) it is even nescessary to have 3 redundand odometers inside a Locomotive. One accelerometer one speedometer (counting the revolution of the axels) and one ground radar system detecting how fast the vehicle moves ober the ground. It is also interesting to know, that for safety reason the system trusts the system which gives out the highest value which can cause to losses of the vehicles moving authority when one system is not working properly. As an example the ground radar system had problems with snowy tracks in the begining because of the reflections of ice crystals. Hope this reaches you guys. Greetings from a professional train driver.

Alec's idea of using the middle of two tracks was in a Where's Waldo book I did with my kid last week.

I've been watching a lot of the show lately, and this is by far the most "lateral" question I've heard in a long time.

The stations would still be the same distance apart.

I loved this one! Although I have quip with the worded added, if they would have said it was "lengthened by 9km" I don't think that would have given it away anymore then the word added and been a more accurate word to describe what happed. The metal was deformed and stretched by the heat, but nothing was actually physically added.

Whilst there are expansion joints (mainly on jointed track) as the majority of the network are continuously welded rails almost all of the 'expansion' due to heat does not occur and instead the becomes increased stress in the rails. Think of a steel rail as a steel beam in a building. The more load you put on the beam then it will deflect, but not a lot. However, eventually the steel beam will break, which is one of the causes of broken rails. The other problem with high-stressed rails is that if there are any weak fixings to the sleepers (ties in America) or the sleepers/ties are not properly ballasted then the rails will overcome that resistance and cause the rails to deflect side-to-side. If trains encounter those deflections at speed then they will derail, so in high temperatures temporary speed restrictions at put in place to stop trains derailing.

These days, you can actually get out of Lympstone Commando station without having to visit the adjacent Royal Marines base.

My first idea was about the movies, but the other - that the tracks were put out from Balmoral to nearest train station to help with transporting Queen's coffin. If I recall correctly the HAI video, in case of Queen dying in Scotland, her coffin would travel to London by train.

Love a tricky question like this!

Alec, the trains wouldn't have covered more distance, the distance would stay the same. just the gaps between sections of the tracks would decrease in size. Otherwise really weird things would start to happen.

@4:30 I like that Tom mentioned Game Change because every time I watch Lateral I think "you know, this show would be a really nice fit on the Dropout TV streaming service..."

Tech Connections! Awesome :)

I just assumed it was the bit of HS2 that actually got built

Wow. This is one of the most Lateral question that I've seen. Well done.

It was hidden in expansion joints.

“You’re so smart ❤️… but no.” - all of Jacklyn’s responses

when i first heard the question i was totally going down the route of "oh they claimed a small bit of territory that already had rails built but the deal fell through within a few weeks and they lost it"

I think Tom is searching for the word "cabotage" where if the carrier is foreign they cannot transport passengers or goods between two ports of the same country in competition with domestic carriers.

Holy moly.. i did not expect Alec to pop up at all. NICE !! Gotta find the whole episode now....🔎

omg it's that snarky guy from the midwest that talks way too long about analogue media and cheap fridges!! I love him :D

LOL "Another thing to think about..." equals "Um, no."

The trains aren't traveling any further. The tracks have expansion gaps (at least I think they do, to prevent buckling) Although the gaps are small they all add up to 9km

7:30 One could measure either the gap between the rails, that is built in for that thermal reason- or the time between every "dudum" sound, which makes trains so soothing :)

Wowser!! That is an amazing answer!

Y'all overlooked the obvious solution: Hedley Lamarr had made a corrupt deal to build a track through Rock Ridge. The track that was laid sank into quicksand, and the project was never completed because Lamarr was fatally shot outside Mann's Chinese Theater.

I never expected to see a food RU-vidr I follow in a Tom Scott video.

my first impression: FINALLY a british reboot of petticoat junction

Damn, I thought it was a reference to when James may did the model train thing where it was many miles of model train tracks.

Jacklyn is awesome when she shuts down wrong answers!

As soon as she said "science" I went "OOH thermal expansion"

I literally guessed this immediately and the whole time was wondering if I was right and why they weren't guessing the obvious as it had been so obvious to me

That question was really misleading. All of that expansion would be taken up in expansion joints and not be reflected in the odometer distance a train traveled. If it wasn't absorbed into expansion joints, that would cause a huge sun kink problem all over the place.

I haven’t watched the whole video yet, but I’m thinking of a railroad used to transport materials - say coal or lumber - from a job site to an unloading area, for distributed transportation by truck, or by sea. That track would likely go away, or be moved/re-routed, when an area is fully harvested.

In the 1980's the conducted a test for a nuclear flask where they rammed the flask with a high speed train. It was an impressive sight, but it was also 40 years ago.

First guess is something like the Derby test track or a Heritage railway got recognised within Network Rail for the summer? But then services reverted to normal afterwards so it was no longer needed on the system.

the train station Tom is referencing for anyone wondering is called Commando and Geoff Marshall did a video about it but you can get out of the station now because of a cycle path that runs through there

My thinking was that British Railway made a purpose built track for testing reasons, to find out how quickly the tracks would disappear. So they build 9 km on a beach, to see in the event of flooding or sea levels rise how long the rails would subsist, how much damage they would receive, and how much it would cost to repair them, to see if they needed to already move some lines away from the shore, because it was cheaper to do it now than repair later. That's a very long sentence, like 9km of train tracks, but I hope at least it makes sense.

i was thinking along the lines of Britain colonising a place in the middle of nowhere with 9 kms of train track on it, forming a little enclave (hence it being unconnected) and then a few weeks later saying 'oh yeah i forgot we stopped doing imperialism, my bad' and returning it to the country it belonged to

7:30 - No, you silly person, stations didn't get _further apart_ from each other. The tracks expanded into *_expansion gaps_* already built into them to avoid deformation.

Hang on, where did they fit? Everything is anchored to the ground, right? Did they buckle upwards slightly?

That was tricky!

Ok, but where does this extra length go!? Is there a compensation system?

There probably wasn't enough distance added to odometer even if there was one because railway tracks have expansion joints that do take in to factor thermal expansion so there probably wasn't much added to the odometer because those distances are already laid along a track length

I would like to present Alec with the, "Worst Acoustics on RU-vid" award.

Hooo, first thought was, did they expand? First time I've gotten this while the text was still in view. :D

Wait, Except maybe for bends and corners, the trains don’t ride any further! The station is still in the same place? I though you just don’t have as much bumps when you go over them because the spacing gets filled up? Or is it actually so that the train travels further? Interesting…

At 3:20 I wondered if this was to check the suitability to transporting stuff like nuclear material or similar stuft.

My guess [was] temporary track while they do work on the main line.

It's not as if the distance between stations changed, however.

Immidiate guess: it was test track laid to do some speed run or similar.

I got it right away from the question wording with "gone". only makes sense it had to do with thermal expansion of the tracks

First thought: Decauville. Then they said 2022.

My initial thought was for the bus-replacement rail service that someone built, but I think the date's too late for that.

Is this that small private railway to an island in the Netherlands (I think) that gets covered at high tide?

7:39 no, it expends in the gaps between the rails ends.

Thermal expansion was my first guess, but I'm shocked it was correct.

Notice: Due to Network Rail's expansion, Gt. Yarmouth station is now 9km. East of the town : )

Where did the extra distance go to? If you parked outside your house in a heatwave, and there was a cold snap overnight, and in the morning your train was gone, and you're like where is my train? And it's like oh, it's 9 kilometres that way.

My thought was a film set, that the British Rail orgs agreed to include for promotional reasons. Someone like Nolan would definitely used a real train and blow up the line at the end. Doesnt provide any benefit to the rail system, was fully disassembled after filming. Obviously wrong, but I'm surprised no-one suggested it

This is the first time watching one of these lateral questions where i knew the answer instantly before the question was even fully read out for the first time Although i must admit i was a railroad worker for a couple of years so it instantly clicked because of that 😂 Some additional trivia about the expansion of railway tracks in high temperatures: The ideal temperature for railway tracks is between 18 and 21 degrees celsius. Under those conditions the tracks don't expand OR detract and keep their original intended form The way to make sure that tracks don't expand to the point where it starts being dangerous for trains to go over them is by making little gaps every so often in the tracks so that they have room to expand without bending the whole rail system One of the biggest reasons why trains get detached from the track is the poor maintenance of these little gaps, because they have to be inspected very often (ideally atleast once every 3 months at minimum) And a bit of an unrelated fact about railroads in high temperatures...working in the middle of a hot summer day on a railroad track is an absolute pain. Because if it's, let's say 30 degrees, the additional heat that radiates back out from the tracks causes the area around the tracks to be closer to 55 -60 degrees. It is absolutely excruciating 😓 There's a reason why i i'm not a railroad worker anymore

modern tracks are built in tension.... if there is a heatwave they dont' get longer, they just come out of tension.

At 5:15 Training track for staff and emergency services?

It isn’t Game Changer.. Toms right. So get Brennan Lee Mulligan on here!

I don't get it, aren't the rails bolted down into the ground or something like that? Wouldn't such expansion rip them out?

My intial guess was a trains having tracks as cargo.

This was where you had to think laterally

With it being June 2022, I was thinking it had something to with the Jubilee.

this question is... questionable, train tracks are built leaving gaps between the steel beams such that when they expand from heat it doesnt cause problems, so if u have a kilometer of track sure the steel in that track will expand 30cm but almost all of that expansion will be into empty space which is already considered to be part of the track so track is only actually added at the very ends which would be a tiny insignificant change.

game changer mentioned 🥳

Is there any way I can watch full episodes for the podcast? I can only find places to listen to the full version but I'd really rather have the video and it seems like you're recording them already to get these highlights..

I was screaming thermal expansion all the time.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

Didn’t HAI have a video about this??

That's not really expansion though. This expansion is compensated by elastic compression. At least that's how modern rails work. If BR still uses traditional expansion gaps, then, yeah, the rails expanded into those. Not really adding to the network length, though. Yet another situation in curves. If expansion results in lateral displacement, widening of the radius, then there's reall lengthening.

I presume that the "army" base Tom is talking about is the one for Commando Training Centre RM Lympstone which mean that there are now a load of Bootnecks ruffling their dresses in irritation. I have been there. It is grim. I am not surprised that the denizens develop a liking for chintz frocks in response.

I don’t get how they got longer… the distance between stations is fixed no?

0:40 The rails were only there for a specific scene of a movie set? Connected to the "real" network so they could use authentic Bri'ish railway carriages for the filming... ? That's a guess. EDIT: Wow, that's a wild one! I was thinking a nine kilometre long contiguous stretch of rail tracks! Nasty wording, guys! 😁

2:04 Hang on, 2022.. wasn’t that big stunt for the new Tom Cruise mission impossible film about then?

The heatwave was July 2022 not June, the hottest days were 18 and 19 July.

“Bureaucratic mis-management”? Wait no, they tested how quickly the sea reclaims rails?

What do you mean 'they don't ' Tom, Trains do have Odometers.

I thought it would be that it was technically connected to a model railway convention or something haha