Errol Braithwaite, Technical Executive of Bombela said to local press that there were two trains operating on Friday morning following some warning signals that went off after another freezing night. Instead of reaching its usual speeds of 160km/h, the trains were restricted to travelling at only 60km/h because of the icy conditions. This meant that, instead of taking 12 minutes between the airport and Sandton, it took 30 minutes.

The Gautrain picked up “caution” messages on their systems precipitated by the cold weather on Thursday 17th June night. As a precautionary measure Bombela have implemented a speed restriction between Sandton and the Airport.

According to Errol Braithwaite, it is normal to slow the train down in freezing cold and icy conditions.

"This happens all over the world. During snow, frost and ice, trains are slowed down as a safety precaution because signalling and other electronic equipment could be affected," he said to local press.

According to airrail NEWS sources, in the UK the trains are stopped if snow is higher than 200mm above the rail level and the only speed restrictions are for the disk-brake trains in snow. There are no reductions for ice.

The temperatures in Johannesburg on Thursday 17th June night and Friday 18th June morning were around -1 Celsius.

airrail NEWS asked Bombela why exactly these restrictions were placed. What hazard was controlled by the speed restriction and what element of the system was protected – the train, the signalling? Is this a design issue or an installation one?

The only answer we’ve received was that Bombela is preparing for another busy week, as on its first weekend of operations after opening the system, the Gautrain was overwhelmed by a tsunami of about 40,000 passengers (several times the predicted volumes).

Along with airport travellers and the added demand of World Cup passengers, this inevitably resulted in long queues at stations and long waits for trains.
Bombela announced that to ease the congestion they deployed additional security and operational staff and also started running trains at 8 minute intervals rather than the 30 minute intervals initially planned for.

As these additional services were introduced, the signalling system automatically slowed all trains to a 30km/h speed until the headways between trains had evened out. According to the concession company, this process took about 30 minutes and immediately thereafter all trains again ran at 160km/h at the new 8 minute intervals.

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