There are now several companies developing things for us.”Indeed Mr Lingard and Mr Sadler, who usually get about five miles of track done from 1am until 4.30am when the trains start again, are lighter of spirits this season as they have a new piece of kit. The Rotormag, which looks and sounds like a budget lawnmower, is a petrol-driven rotating wire brush that straddles the track and is pushed with both hands.”It’s certainly made a big difference to us,” Mr Sadler says “It’s saved us hours this year But there are one or two foibles that we will feed back. “In the early days they had gas bottles and burners and they wouldn’t bring it off,” Mr Sadler says. Network Rail spends £50m a year on the autumn offensive – £10m on vegetation management, £25m on maintaining and running the 60 leaf-busting vehicles, £5m on the leaf gangs and £10m on repairing damage.Back at Stoke Newington, it’s time to get scrubbing. They are based on leaf-fall predictions provided by the Met Office and an environmental consultancy which sends spotters to 15 areas to monitor how many have fallen and how many have not.

But not only would environmentalists have a fit, some trees have preservation orders. Others do not belong to Network Rail.In a office downstairs, Steve Scott, national weather strategy co-ordinator, has just held his daily conference, during which he hands out colour-coded maps to regional weather co-ordinators, which indicate the level of risk of a safety incident or trains being delayed because of poor adhesion. There were also far fewer leaves – embankments were cut back because of the fire risk from sparks. They grew back with the introduction of electric and diesel engines and now a significant part of the 21,000 miles of railway is tree lined Each tree has an average of 50,000 leaves. One solution would be for Network Rail to cut down more trees. They are Norway maple, part of the Big Six that can bring the rail network to its knees.

The others are sycamore, poplar, horse and sweet chestnut, ash and lime Their crime is that they are too big. “You can get sycamore leaves that are the size of an A4 piece of paper,” Dr Strong says.Leaves on the line have a long history. Steam trains were affected, too, though to a lesser extent because their block brakes cleaned the wheels as they gripped. The solution bubbles as it hits the line and needs 15 minutes to take effect.Two days earlier, outside the Euston headquarters of Network Rail, which owns and operates Britain’s railway infrastructure, crisp brown leaves blow across the forecourt. Inside, Dr Neil Strong, the company arboriculturalist, spreads blown-up photographs on the table like a detective handling scenes of crime pictures.He passes me one It’s a shot of lines with a pile of leaves between them But they are not just any leaves.

I make my way up the rails hoping not to step in anything nasty. Gangs are used when the vehicles break down or are unable to get to areas because of engineering work, when the location is too remote or the area is particularly small. On occasions, such as this one, gangs are sent in because the vehicles have been unable to remove the leaves Curiously, there are only half a dozen trees in sight. “Once the leaves get in the station they can’t get out,” Mr Sadler says.During the safety briefing, he stresses the importance of watching where we are treading: “Remember that trains still flush onto the track.” He also indicates a telephone to use “if there is an emergency and neither me or Albert are available because we have been incapacitated”.We put on a backpack containing a large vat of “orange cleanse railhead cleaner” – a liquid containing orange extract and various chemicals – which helps to lift the blackened residue.I start pumping the lever in my right hand and aim the jet’s nozzle at the track with my left. The trouble-spot is cleaned twice a day by one of Network Rail’s 60 vehicles which blast rails in problem areas with water at such a pressure it would take your hand off, and lay a coating of sandite, a water-based gel containing sand which helps traction. Dutch, German, French and North American rail companies all bury their heads in their hands in despair at the first twitch of a brown leaf.Dressed in a luminous orange jacket and steel-capped boots after volunteering my services to the nation, I am ready to start scrubbing.We look down at the task below us. A train can slide on them for up to the length of a station.This season they have caused more than 60 trains to overshoot stations.

At least seven red warning signals have been passed (the mistake that caused the Paddington rail crash). Some train operators bring in an autumn timetable to add a few minutes to journey lengths to give drivers more time to brake. During the rest of the year he liaises between engineers and train companies.While leaves on the line may be a national joke (Mr Sadler’s friends think his autumnal duties are hilarious), the effects can be catastrophic. On 27 October 2002 – a black day in the history of leaf fall – gale force winds forced 20 per cent of leaves to drop in a period of 48 hours, resulting in a 12-hour suspension of service for a number of networks.This season, the problem has caused more than 320,000 minutes of delays And it is not just a national vexation. Earlier this month, the Health and Safety Executive said that Virgin’s new tilting trains needed to improve braking in conditions of low adhesion, which includes leaves on the line.Another problem is that leaf build-up can break the circuit between the rail and the wheels, which means signallers momentarily lose sight of them on the system Then, of course, there are the delays. When a train passes over leaves it virtually bakes them onto the line, leaving a black Teflon-type skid pad. Not only that, but it seems that we are also suffering from the wrong type of leaf this year.”It’s been quite a wet summer so there’s plenty of sap which means when the leaves fall on the railway they are rather a bigger problem than they were in previous years because they’re big and juicy,” says Mr Sadler, a former signalman, whose title is now the more exotic West Anglia route modernisation operations interface manager.