Before the completion of the Transcontinental RR (~1863), the first transcontinental telegraph was completed in the early 1850's... it's because of the length of conductivity that the morse keys were literally sparking during the Carrington Solar Disturbances (all the collected solar energy caused the relays to self-tap/arc).
More recently, Quebec has had several 201X localized brownouts, largely along their longer-distance, high-voltage lines (which ironically enough gather renewable/hydro energy). During more active times of the solar cycle (a cycle longer than a dozen years), there are still issues / risks of similar events occurring in real time.
Lloyds has a specific insurance that is for solar storm coverage (which could be a potentially trillions-of-dollars global interruption.
Is there any weather or earth phenomena that doesn't cause trains to delay? Heat, cold, wind, rain, fog, leaves on tracks, COVID, internet attacks ... If it is worthy of talking about it is likely to make the trains late. For all thier size, speed and power, they remain the most delicate of Earth's creatures.
The tracks are a complex system that makes it possible to ride at high speed where the driver can’t see ahead if his braking zone is clear, but it is still safe. It’s full of failsafes to make that possible but these also cause the delays. For instance if a signal bulb burns out, that part of the track is automatically blocked until it is repaired.
There are a lot of delays but not a lot of accidents, basically the only accidents are those the system can’t catch, so people on the tracks and cars ignoring the signals.
Closing tracks for blown bulbs? Every basic exit sign above every door in every public building contains a redundant bulb specifically to prevent closure in the event of a dead bulb.
I’m sure most of HackerNews has some handwavy easy ideas for how to improve it. But as you can imagine there is a good reason the system is built on hard guarantees, not obvious shortcuts.
If your simple exit sign fails, it isn’t going to cause two trains carrying potentially thousands of passengers to collide head-on. If that happens it’s a major disaster that’ll be world news and there’s going to be questions to be answered, like why the safety wasn’t guaranteed.
Keep in mind that this is UK-centric where the railway landscape is a shit-show on many levels. It's possible to make trains more reliable but that would require investment - if there's any country that's going to do this it's definitely not going to be the UK.
On the one ride, it was hot so it expected to arrive about 45 minutes late. You can't go full speed on hot tracks.
On the same ride, there was construction, so we sat and waited for about 45 minutes in the middle of no where, in the dark. It was long enough they told us to just let our kids run around and brought the snack cart around for free.
That's a lot of delay for a 3.5h ride.
Ontario, Canada.
My in-laws use trains to travel between cities a fair amount. More delayed trips than not.
Yet somehow Swiss trains are on time (less than 3 minutes late) over 93% of the time and over 98% of connections are made. [1]
Nothing is 100% reliable but you work around this just like you install multiple network switches in a DC because one might just fail.
BTW, did you know that the SBB estimates around 10% of riders have an invalid, incorrect or just no ticket? This is however a percentage at which trying to crack down more the costs would outway the recovery in lost tickets. They realized that you can never have 100%, therefore turn styles and one way doors aren't a thing at Swiss train track. They randomly check tickets but there isn't a check at the door. You are responsible to make sure you have the right ticket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event