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Comment by gizajob | Hacker News Reader

In the UK, the railway in summer breaks because it gets too warm. In winter it breaks because leaves get on the line or it is too cold. If its snowing, forget it. For a country whose national pastime is the weather, we don't deal with it very well the second it shifts out of its bland average. We spend the whole year wishing it would get hot and sunny, and then freak out the second it does.

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> In winter it breaks because leaves get on the line

This is something that media talking heads harp on about, leaves don't break the line they cause wheels to slip. It's like criticising road traffic for not handling oil spills

Except leaves falling in Autumn is a known event that one would presume thinking human beings would factor in. If oil fell from the sky onto the road for several weeks each year, I think people would cry very loudly for a solution.

There's a pretty simple solution to this as well (which actually is used for the most part) - cut down the trees which are right next to the railway.

you could argue that that's because we have such mild weather. in other countries typical changes in the weather are a bigger deal, so it's less appropriate for small talk. this would go some way to explaining why trains stop running when it's very rainy/hot/cold/leafy/snowy. we don't expect the weather to be drastic, and it rarely is, so we're not prepared for it when it happens.

I have no idea whether any of that is true (I doubt it), but it was interesting to write out.

British weather is indeed often milder than that of other countries, but it’s also often much less predictable. In some countries it’s pretty reliably hot and sunny all summer and snowy all winter.

In Britain, reliably, once per day it'll rain. Only the rest of the weather is unpredictable.

Not in the past few weeks!

this may go even further as to explaining it's popularity as a conversation topic

And for a country that invented the railway too! (Although also meaning we have the world's oldest system, and a very expansive system at that - even after the Beeching cuts)

Sounds like Seattle!

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