Heavy Weathering or what.....

[Hound Dog]

During a rare business trip to Great Yarmouth yesterday, I spotted a pair of very filthy Class 66's idling away in one of the platforms...…..at least we now know where the dirt from track cleaning goes !...….

[Steve M]

I’d need a bucket of mud to replicate that.

[LC&DR]

I live close to the Holgate works where the RHTT come every winter for refurbishment. I see the wagons arrive absolutely filthy like those in the pictures above, but by September they are all bright shiny in the Network Rail blue livery. A marvellous transformation.

[Mountain Goat]

What you may find surprizing, is that the huge amount of dust that comes from recently ballasted track means trains passing through can end up looking that bad in just a single trip down the line and back. I have worked trains which started out clean and by the time we reached the handover to the next traincrew they were like that! And passengers who saw it assumed our company never cleans their trains!
From the back cab of the train on newly balasted track, one can't see much! Is just a continual swirls of dust cloud seemingly following the train. The swirls seem to come from both sides and meet in the middle behind the train. The same happens when going through snow or mist or rain etc. Snow and ballast dust are the most noticeable though.

Another noticeable reason why trains can get that dirty is when the lines have had engineering works so they are cut off from their depots... So there is no access for a while for them to be cleaned in the washplants.

[Paul-H]

My car looks as bad as that after a day driving around the M25

[Brian]

My car looks as bad as that after a day driving around the M25

Surely, you mean "Parked" on the M25?