Heat and rails
seedling · planted 2023-07 · tended 2023-07
The rails on the Chu plain at four in the afternoon, July.In July the steel of the rail grows by many millimetres a day. On a bad afternoon the track can lift and curve, a "sun kink", and a train can run over it only slowly. We give the drivers a "heat order" for hot days: on the Chu plain they must not exceed 40 km/h between two and six in the afternoon.
The plain is flat and white, and from the control-room window the rails look like two hot wires drawn on paper.