thats not always the case. anyway the point im trying to make is. if the victorians wanted to build a railroad they went and did it. they didnt think of the idea 10 years before they were gonna build it. they didn't think 'oh what about peoples houses, what about the countryside, what about the environment, what about the cost, what about this what about that' no they went and did it because it had to be done. and quite frankly you might say thats harsh or unfair but if they hadnt have had that attitude then we wouldnt have our current railroads ,canals,roads,cities,pylons.

if people would just get over the fact that a few miles of countryside out of the thousands we have into this country or some houses might have to get knocked down or buildings or it might distrupt some services for a short time.

at the end of the day thats the attitude that got britain to the top of the world financially and economically, so we need to stop being such a pathetic nanny state and do whats needed to be done whether that means building part of the line in the peak district or demolishing houses and offices for new corridors and stations in cities.

in my eyes this country is pathetic compared to the rest of europe.

The Victorians didn't have those concerns I agree, but they didn't have health and safety regulations, employee rights or an educated voting population.

The railways were built for the benefit of the investors and opposition was bought off. Generally, the only relevant opposition came from the land owners who were compensated hansomly.

I don't think you understand either the history of Britain's development or what it is that we've gained that stands in the way of a few prestige projects.

I don't think you understand what made Britain great either, or what was so great about it, or even who it was great for. Exploitation of the powerless is nothing to be proud of.

I don't think you understand what made Britain great either, or what was so great about it, or even who it was great for. Exploitation of the powerless is nothing to be proud of.

Very much seconded.

Best regards,
Slip

thats not always the case. anyway the point im trying to make is. if the victorians wanted to build a railroad they went and did it. they didnt think of the idea 10 years before they were gonna build it. they didn't think 'oh what about peoples houses, what about the countryside, what about the environment, what about the cost, what about this what about that' no they went and did it because it had to be done. and quite frankly you might say thats harsh or unfair but if they hadnt have had that attitude then we wouldnt have our current railroads ,canals,roads,cities,pylons.

While true as a generalisation, there was resistance in the early days of railway building that could be seen as NIMBYism. A few examples from the early chapters of Christian Wolmar's book 'Fire & Steam':


Landed gentry demanding exorbitant prices for small slivers of their land required for railway contruction. The only way that many of the great mainlines were built was to pay up.
Canal owners also resisting the spread of the railways, realising that their own livelihoods were at stake. They mounted significant and, at times, highly threatening opposition to the building of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, for example.
Entire towns making the wrong call. The residents of Northampton were so against the London and Birmingham Railway passing through their town that the railway was routed to the west, bypassing the town. They soon realised the error of their ways and agreed to the building of branch lines to connect to the network. The die was cast, however - and to this day Northampton is poorly connected to the rail network when compared with other towns of similar size and location.

The Victorians didn't have those concerns I agree, but they didn't have health and safety regulations, employee rights or an educated voting population.

The railways were built for the benefit of the investors and opposition was bought off. Generally, the only relevant opposition came from the land owners who were compensated hansomly.

I don't think you understand either the history of Britain's development or what it is that we've gained that stands in the way of a few prestige projects.

I don't think you understand what made Britain great either, or what was so great about it, or even who it was great for. Exploitation of the powerless is nothing to be proud of.

i understand fully thankyou very much.

if the victorians needed to build something they went and built it. when they first introduced electricity. most of the country was against it but they still went a put up their pylons on everyones land.

not just the victorians think back to when the french were building thier first high speed lines

paris-lyon was the buisest air route in france, of course the airlines were completely against it but they still went and did it

in europe everything runs alot more smoothly than here, its ridiculous how we brits act as if were still ontop of the world and we need to be different than everyone else. unfortunatly because we've become such a nanny-state we've lost that.

yes getting to the top by force is nothing be proud of. but britains ruthlessness back in the days is what got us there.
they didnt take crap from anyone. if they needed something they'd do it.

now it's all about cutting corners and doing it the cheapest way. well unfortunately that failed when they tried the APT project, it completely failed.

our victorian ancestors must be looking down on us in shame at what utter pussy's we've become, and there's no other way to describe it, so excuse my french


obviously if enough people were opposed to it they couldnt build it.

i understand fully thankyou very much.

if the victorians needed to build something they went and built it. when they first introduced electricity. most of the country was against it but they still went a put up their pylons on everyones land.

not just the victorians think back to when the french were building thier first high speed lines

paris-lyon was the buisest air route in france, of course the airlines were completely against it but they still went and did it

in europe everything runs alot more smoothly than here, its ridiculous how we brits act as if were still ontop of the world and we need to be different than everyone else. unfortunatly because we've become such a nanny-state we've lost that.

yes getting to the top by force is nothing be proud of. but britains ruthlessness back in the days is what got us there.
they didnt take crap from anyone. if they needed something they'd do it.

now it's all about cutting corners and doing it the cheapest way. well unfortunately that failed when they tried the APT project, it completely failed.

our victorian ancestors must be looking down on us in shame at what utter pussy's we've become, and there's no other way to describe it, so excuse my french


obviously if enough people were opposed to it they couldnt build it.

I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about Victorian Britain, not Victorian Mars. My mistake really, I should have noticed that nothing you were saying applied to this world.

Seriously. If you can find a link or reference to anything that justifies your interpretation of the world I will sincerely demonstrate a healthy level of surprise. Until then, you're off the quiz team.

I don't want to appear patronising but you're not grasping the complexities of what fails and what can be achieved, and why.

i understand fully thankyou very much.

if the victorians needed to build something they went and built it. when they first introduced electricity. most of the country was against it but they still went a put up their pylons on everyones land.

not just the victorians think back to when the french were building thier first high speed lines

paris-lyon was the buisest air route in france, of course the airlines were completely against it but they still went and did it

in europe everything runs alot more smoothly than here, its ridiculous how we brits act as if were still ontop of the world and we need to be different than everyone else. unfortunatly because we've become such a nanny-state we've lost that.

yes getting to the top by force is nothing be proud of. but britains ruthlessness back in the days is what got us there.
they didnt take crap from anyone. if they needed something they'd do it.

now it's all about cutting corners and doing it the cheapest way. well unfortunately that failed when they tried the APT project, it completely failed.

our victorian ancestors must be looking down on us in shame at what utter pussy's we've become, and there's no other way to describe it, so excuse my french


obviously if enough people were opposed to it they couldnt build it.

There's one reason the Victorians built the railways and why the France to Lyon LGV was built...PROFIT. If HS2 can't make a profit it shouldn't be built. I don't necessarily agree that THE most cost effectice route should be constructed, it should take account of other factors (regeneration, conservation) but it does have to be profitable. This will have to take account of the cost of tunneling and compulsory purchase.

If the majority of people were opposed to a HSR line, it shouldn't get built. I think although there will be opposition through the planning process it is different to other infrastructure projects in that it will also be supported by large numbers.

You are also mis-using the term nanny state.

The Victorians got things done. Fact.

While true as a generalisation, there was resistance in the early days of railway building that could be seen as NIMBYism. A few examples from the early chapters of Christian Wolmar's book 'Fire & Steam':


Landed gentry demanding exorbitant prices for small slivers of their land required for railway contruction. The only way that many of the great mainlines were built was to pay up.
Canal owners also resisting the spread of the railways, realising that their own livelihoods were at stake. They mounted significant and, at times, highly threatening opposition to the building of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, for example.
Entire towns making the wrong call. The residents of Northampton were so against the London and Birmingham Railway passing through their town that the railway was routed to the west, bypassing the town. They soon realised the error of their ways and agreed to the building of branch lines to connect to the network. The die was cast, however - and to this day Northampton is poorly connected to the rail network when compared with other towns of similar size and location.


Another couple of examples:

a) Watford. The Earl of Cassiobury didn't want nasty railways running through his land, so the London and Birmingham was forced to detour around the town, resulting in the main station (now Watford Junction) being on the (then) outskirts. It also necessitated the building of tunnels which cost lives to build. A contemporary commenter is said to have pointed out that the railway, forced onto viaducts and embankments, would forever limit the growth of the town. And he was quite right.

b) The Watford and Edgware railway. This was never built for many reasons, one of which was the artist Hubert von Herkomer, who mansion in Bushey village would have had the route running along the periphery. He blocked the line from being built until they were able to alter it sufficiently that he wouldn't have to see or hear it. The delays however cost the company momentum, and as backing for it fell away, funding dried up, and it was never built.

If the majority of people were opposed to a HSR line, it shouldn't get built.

I don't think the viability of a scheme should be judged on the basis of how it is perceived by the public. Those living in the area of major works will naturally be against the scheme. There were massive protests in Kent against the CTRL, and many others who said it was a waste of money.

It's difficult to draw any sort of useful comparison with the Victorians because of the vastly different social and legal context. Labour was cheap, there was plenty of cash and no planning laws, it was just a question of keeping the local big landowner happy. Nowadays whenever major works are proposed, as the country is so much more populated there are always lots of objectors and NIMBYs. Take the sensible Central Railway scheme to rebuild the Great Central as a north-south freight route, it didn't even get off the ground due to complaints by those who lived near the proposed line which less than 40 years ago was a major trunk route.

I don't think the viability of a scheme should be judged on the basis of how it is perceived by the public.

Decisions should not be SOLELY based on public perception, but public opinion shouldn't be completely ignored, since afterall public opinion is what governs democracy.

If you control for NIMBYism by filtering out the protests from the immediate locals, then opinions are usually constructive IMHO.

The Victorians got things done. Fact.

And theres just no arguing with a fact like that is there.

Yes, if you disregard everything that the Victorians failed to get done then yes, it would appear that they did indeed get things done. Calling some flawed observation a fact on the grounds that a negative cannot be proven does not a strong argument make.

The Victorians got things done. Fact.

So have we.

Or was the construction of the Channel Tunnel, its new rail link to London, the reconstruction of vast swathes of the UK—including almost all of Coventry—post WW2, the building of brand new motorways, road widening schemes and bridges—including the 200-mile one around London—the complete electrification of both the ECML and WCML routes, the electrification of almost every railway south of London in an arc from Basingstoke, sweeping via Brighton right up to Gravesend and north Kent...

Oh, and most of today's Tube network is post Victorian. Large sections of the Piccadilly, Northern, Central and Bakerloo were added during the 1930s. The Victoria Line was built, from scratch, in the 1960s; Jubilee Line was added in the 1970s and extended during the '90s.

The DLR didn't exist at all prior to the 1980s, yet it's now one of the most successful fully automated public transit systems on Earth.

Oh, and we seem to have managed to build rather more airports than the Victorians did too.

All this without killing hundreds of workers—something the Victorians managed to do on a truly industrial scale. (Far, far more labourers were killed during the construction of our Victorian infrastructure than soldiers have been killed in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Life, and labour, was dirt cheap back then. I'd like to think we're a little more forward-thinking now.)

The Victorian infrastructure the UK is now saddled with is old, creaking and woefully outdated. The deep-level tubes were built so small that it's simply not possible to fit air-con to these trains. The overground rail network south of London is a sorry mess of lines which fail utterly to serve today's needs. (And most of it was built as cheaply as possible. Not all our Victorian ancestors were as forward-thinking as our increasingly selective history curricula like to imply.)

The Victorians lacked any kind of health and safety regime, hence the construction of Brunel's Box Tunnel on the GWR cost nearly one hundred lives. (Civil engineering is an inherently risky job and even HS1 cost a couple of lives, but nothing on the scale the Victorians were used to.)

There are many, many more things we've got done since the Victorians. Like computers, the internet, telephony, television, radio, movies, radar and social "safety net" services like the NHS.

The Victorians were no better or worse than any other generation or era. Their Georgian ancestors were no less industrious—all the UK's major canals were built before Victoria's coronation, as were most of her major roads. (Thomas "Colossus of Roads" Telford died three years before her reign even began!) And don't get me started on the Romans!

The Victorians are extremely overrated.

So have we.

Have we? Really? No of course not.

Yes there was a lot of post war redevelopment but that era has long gone now. Apart from that, all the examples you give were in the South East and London. The only electrified mainlines are mainlines in and out of London.

Leave the South East and major infrastructure projects are few and far between.

Have we? Really? No of course not.

Yes there was a lot of post war redevelopment but that era has long gone now. Apart from that, all the examples you give were in the South East and London. The only electrified mainlines are mainlines in and out of London.

Leave the South East and major infrastructure projects are few and far between.

Not true. Unless the motorway network, the national grid, deep sea ports and terminals, airports, pipelines and the telecommunications network et al just don't count.

Do you actually see the victorian social economic model as preferable to today's?

Hi

As a HSR-Fan from Switzerland who has travelled on the the japanese Shinkansen (aka Bullet-Train) in the 1980's and on the first french TGVs (Opening year Paris-Lyon), but also on the latest french TGVs and german ICEs, I'd like to forward a few thoughts.

I was highly impressed by the japanese ability in the 80's to stop a 16 coach train that precisely on a platform, that people in wheelchairs could wait on the designated paths (There were marks on the platforms indicating where the coach doors would be...), and when the train stopped, could effectively roll on. The margin of error was roughly 5 inches! (In those days, the Shinkansen did over 200 km/h!)

Coming from Switzerland, I'm accustomed to precise service and exactness, but we can't even achieve this in 2009 for our present modern trains!!!


Safety

According to my knowledge, the Shinkansen has a fairly impeccable track record: since 1964 (Its birth year) till now, only this incident:

The first derailment of a Shinkansen train in passenger service occurred during the Chuetsu Earthquake on October 23, 2004. Eight of ten cars of the Toki No. 325 train on the Joetsu Shinkansen derailed near Nagaoka Station in Nagaoka, Niigata. However, there were no injuries nor deaths among the 154 passengers.

Quote from http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Shinkansen_-_History/id/2123453

That earthquake was a real disaster - except for people on a Shinkansen train!!!

The french also have a top safety record, at least for the TGV. The terrorist Carlos bombed a big hole into a TGV. The US were looking for Carlos for nearly twenty years. The french just saw him damaging one of their national jewels (toys) - one year later he was in a Paris jail! He is still in jail in France at the time of writing.

The germans are a somewhat different story. They are current world record holders for slamming into bridges at high speeds and they are also the fastest sheep slaughterers. Not every butcher can afford a state of the art ICE with sensors in every bell and whistle that things got. Unfortunately, unlike the japanese or french, the germans weren't as thorough in putting sensors along the high speed track.

In France, every blinking bridge over the HSR has got mutiple sensors, even if the only user of that bridge is the local farmer! And the electric fences around the track, even in rural areas, aren't there to keep out burglars. But at 350 km/h, you don't even want a rabbit on the tracks, let alone sheep!

At 350 km/h, an emergency brake takes about 3 km to stop the train, so a driver has no chance when he "sees" an obstacle. That's why there are no signals along the track - they're displayed in the drivers cabin! And sensors all along the track.

However, in Germany, even in a highly sensitive area like Frankfurt / Main Airport, the fence along the new HSR (Köln - Frankfurt) leaving the airport towards Cologne carries on only for two kilometers? After that, no fence?!
I would feel more secure, even as a plane passenger, if a bit more emphasis on small details about security was around. I mean, it's NOT like germany's terrorists like the RAF died off when the Iron Curtain fell, there's new crouds (read: idiots) around to pick up from there...

Also, in France and in Japan, the HSR are High Speed Only. You can't say passenger only, as the french built two Postal TGVs to carry High Speed Mail (!). Soon, if the deal between the french and some international Carriers like FedEx work out, there may be pan european Carrier Services using HSR, and not only plane and trucks.

In Germany, the intention was to run HSR during day, and freight at night. Freight moving at 100 km/h needs different curving angles than a train moving at 350 km/h, besides the signalling and other issues.


The french way:

The french do have one BIG advantage. Anything accepted by the majority as a "Grand Project" - the term given for anything of a national (not just regional) interest, then things really gets moving. For example: A farmer on the way will get amply compensated for moving away, period. He can't bitch about things in court. Much less for NIMBYs!


European Standards

"Standard" platform length seems to be 420m (or 450m), as defined by a standard sixteen coach train. European standard for coaches is the RIC norm, with coaches LoA of 26.4m (16 * 26.4 = 422.4m).

A lot of european Inter-City or International trains are 16 coaches long. In Italy, 18 coaches used to be commen on heavily used lines, like Milano - Rome. Nowadays, locos have more or less been replaced by EMUs, but the length remains about the same.

New standards mandate overhead electrification at 25Kv AC, like France. Italys older System (Milano - Rome) was electrified at the italian standard of 3Kv DC, but the newer one (Milano - Bologna) is electrified with 25Kv AC.

The germans still have their 15 Kv AC, but will also be adopting the newer standard.


Long Term Thinking

The victorians did have the foresight to build most train lines double tracked. During and after the "bitching" years (Beeching Act) lines were shut down or singled. Years later, some had to be redoubled at a much higher cost. Even now, a lot of "redundancy" in railroad tracks served a purpose, especially if an accident happened somewhere or for maintenance work it was MUCH easier to reroute a train than today. We now have the communications infrastructure in place to facilitate such rerouting, but there's often no routes left!

My swiss ancestors were smart too. They built the long alpine tunnels (Gotthard, Simplon, Loetschberg) double track from the outset, even if the tracks leading to them were still single for years to come. But now? They built the new Loetschberg base tunnel with only 6 km double tracked, the rest of over 20 km is single... Doubling the whole tunnel will cost later at least four times the price of the whole tunnel so far!

A look at google earth will confirm that the french have over ten huge hump marschalling yards in operation, just like the germans. Since the shutdown of S****horpe in 1984, Britain has no hump yards left. O.K., the europeans followed Britains Thatcher folly of privatisation and shutting down almost all goods terminals, mail services also don't use rail anymore. When you shut down the majority of goods terminals, you don't need marschalling yards.

Most freight on the railroads leftover is bulk. The whole train is composed of traffic for one customer from A to B. A train of cars from Spain to France. Or a train of oil to the airport depot. Coal from Poland to Germany.

The vast majority of other freight is moved by trucks, clogging up roads even more. Same goes for Mail services. Mail delivery in Switzerland used to be twice a day, now vans from three companies AND the national carrier ply the roads. But mail only gets delivered once a day (albeit each company...).


Center of Town

HSV should go to the center of town or cities. The french used to have it this way, in recent years however, they have built bypasses for most major towns and cities. Even Paris has a bypass. It's true though, that not many TGV bypass Paris.

However, if going to Lyon or Valences, you're likely to end your voyage at an obscure station at the edge of some industrial area far from the town center.
Shuttling to town center is almost like arriving at an airport outside town, and then taking the shuttle. You lose the advantage of no changing center to center travel. besides which, changing always involves time.

So much for my 2cents or long rant.

Regards from Switzerland
Andy

Have we? Really? No of course not.

Yes there was a lot of post war redevelopment but that era has long gone now. Apart from that, all the examples you give were in the South East and London. The only electrified mainlines are mainlines in and out of London.

Oh please! The ECML serves York and Newcastle (electrified) and Edinburgh too. The WCML serves almost every other major town and city north-west of London, including Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, Rugby, Coventry and more. The WCML upgrades have done little for London's own commuters as that market in the north-west of London and the home counties is far better served by London Underground, not inter-city rail. (And don't get the citizens of Kent started on their infrastructure; I could rant for England!)


Leave the South East and major infrastructure projects are few and far between.

25% of the entire population of the United Kingdom *lives* in the south east! What were you expecting? Brand new HS railways linking Cambois with Ashington, Blyth and Devizes? The two coastal Main Lines are NOT primarily London commuter routes! They serve commuters into the other major UK cities too, including Newcastle, Birmingham and Manchester. Each end of these lines has to be *somewhere*. Would you rather they terminated in Guildford? Truro? Ashton-under-Lyme?

And what about the Tyne Metro? Manchester Metrolink? Nottingham's light rail? Glasgow's "Clockwork Orange"? Blackpool's recent tram rebirth? The Docklands Light Railway—an entire, mostly derelict, stretch of east London Essex completely regenerated *from scratch*, with its own automated mass transit system, in just 30 years?

Yes, I know that last one's in the Greater London area. So what? The Victorians were no less London-centric. What do you think the "L" in "LNER", "LNWR", "LSWR", "L&BR", "LB&SCR" and "LC&DR" stood for? "Leeds"?

And that's just *rail*. The entire automotive infrastructure we see today is entirely post-Victorian. Modern Health & Safety law, for all its current flaws, is also a post-Victorian invention. (I *like* knowing my employer doesn't have the right to put me in harm's way just to save himself a few groats.) Politically, we are leaps and bounds ahead of our Victorian ancestors. We have a far, far higher level of literacy and education than they did too. We have better communications. Better mobility. The Victorians invented modern holidays and leisure, but the working classes back then would never have dreamed of travelling to Majorca or Ibiza for a weekend!

Right now, I can communicate with complete strangers living anywhere on the planet effectively for *free*, from the comfort of my own home. I'm doing it right now.

The Victorians were no better or worse than the people of any other period. Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive before Queen Victoria was even born.

I won't deny they had their moments, but your implication that everything was sunshine and roses during the mid-1800s simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I was highly impressed by the japanese ability in the 80's to stop a 16 coach train that precisely on a platform, that people in wheelchairs could wait on the designated paths (There were marks on the platforms indicating where the coach doors would be...), and when the train stopped, could effectively roll on. The margin of error was roughly 5 inches! (In those days, the Shinkansen did over 200 km/h!)

You're talking about basic physics. Computers have been able to do this for decades. (Check out the DLR and Victoria Line sometime: there's no driver at all on the former, while the latter trains have had Automatic Train Operation since the line opened in the late '60s. The driver just checks the doors, pushes two buttons and the train does the rest.) The Jubilee Line has platform-edge doors, as do many other metro networks around the world.


Coming from Switzerland, I'm accustomed to precise service and exactness, but we can't even achieve this in 2009 for our present modern trains!!!


Switzerland doesn't have the population to justify the necessary infrastructure. That level of driving precision is used to keep dwell times at stations to the absolute minimum—a train earns no revenue when it's standing still—and get people on and off the train as quickly as possible. Most stations in Switzerland simply do not have the level of patronage necessary for dwell time to be an issue.

According to my knowledge, the Shinkansen has a fairly impeccable track record: since 1964 (Its birth year) till now, only this incident...

The french also have a top safety record, at least for the TGV. The terrorist Carlos bombed a big hole into a TGV. The US were looking for Carlos for nearly twenty years. The french just saw him damaging one of their national jewels (toys) - one year later he was in a Paris jail! He is still in jail in France at the time of writing.

The germans are a somewhat different story.


In fairness, both France and Japan have dedicated HSR networks almost entirely separate from their classic lines. The Germans have the same problem as the UK: very high population densities, with a number of massive clusters of urbanisation. This makes building entirely new lines staggeringly expensive, so they have instead upgraded a number of classic lines to HSR standard. This means a lot of traffic-sharing, with traditional signalling still in use for large sections. Their trains also don't get to run at TGV-like speeds except on the newest of lines.

The UK have tried something similar with their West Coast Route Modernisation upgrade. And failed utterly. If the WCRM had been more successful and less expensive, it's doubtful any politician would be seriously considering HS2 today.

The "Pendolino" tiliting trains were an attempt at solving this problem of running fast trains over old infrastructure. Sadly, while the Italians have managed to make a success of them, the UK's smaller loading gauge makes this technology rather less attractive as the train interiors have to be quite cramped to fit into the necessary kinetic envelope.

The German rail network is somewhat younger than the UK's, so hasn't suffered from the earliest mistakes. It was also bombed rather more during WW1 and WW2, so much of the infrastructure was replaced and rebuilt less than a century ago, whereas most of the UK's network has been pretty much the same since the mid-1800s.

This is why the UK's new love of High Speed Rail isn't a big surprise. Our kit is old, grotty and crumbling. It looks very photogenic, granted, but it's not great for running fast trains on.


The french do have one BIG advantage. Anything accepted by the majority as a "Grand Project" - the term given for anything of a national (not just regional) interest, then things really gets moving. For example: A farmer on the way will get amply compensated for moving away, period. He can't bitch about things in court. Much less for NIMBYs!


This is something the current government have tried to address. Whether it actually works is something we won't know for a couple of years—some sections of the law won't kick in fully until next year—but planning reform for major projects has been sorely needed for decades. The heritage and preservation lobbies have become far too strong; there's no rational argument for preserving the entire UK as-is for all eternity.


(much snipping for length)
"Standard" platform length... sixteen coach train... A lot of european Inter-City or International trains are 16 coaches long... In Italy, 18 coaches used to be commen on heavily used lines, like Milano - Rome... etc.


Much of this is due to the nature of the existing infrastructure and the demographic spread.

Italy, for example, has never had the necessary natural resources and finances to build anything other than a cheap, sharply graded network through its mountain ranges. (Most of the country's electricity supply is imported, for example. This is why Mussolini had almost the entire network electrified: running steam locos was prohibitively expensive as Italy has no coal to speak of.) The upshot is that the routes are low-capacity, so long trains are used at lower frequencies, similar to the US model. This saves on power consumption too: a single, very long, train will use less energy than lots of shorter trains over the same period. Italians also tend not to live very far from their work, so commuting distances are quite short. (Almost everyone in Italy's cities lives in an apartment. Contrast with the UK, where most housing is Victorian terraces and semi-detached homes.)

France has her own demographic and geographic issues to deal with. TGV services aren't run at high frequencies as they tend to take the place of internal air services. Again, the French are also more comfortable with apartment living, so their cities are much more densely populated; TGV trains aren't pulling double duty as metro routes in the way they'll have to in the UK.

The victorians did have the foresight to build most train lines double tracked.
Not strictly true. It was just cheaper to widen a route when demand required it. None of the major lines in and out of London were 4 or 6 tracks wide when originally built, while a number of what are now popular commuter lines radiating out of London were originally single track. Labour and land was cheap. Planning laws were almost non-existent.

If the Victorians had *truly* demonstrated foresight, they wouldn't have built *14* major mainline railway terminii in a ring around London. (One of the fourteen stations, "Broad Street", was demolished in the 1980s, but 13 still remain.) The Victorians are overrated. They were incredibly lucky to be in the right place, at the right time, but were generally no more visionary or long-termist than we are today. Most were just greedy. The "Railway Boom" bankrupted many in much the same way as the "Dot Com Bubble" of a few years ago.

I suggest reading up on George Hudson and Sir Edward Watkin's exploits to get a better idea of what the Victorian period was really like. Neither of them should have been allowed to run a *bath*, let alone a business. It was sheer, blind, greed which let them get away with what they did.

[Redundancy in infrastructure is a good thing!]

You'll get no argument from me there.

In fairness, Dr. Beeching is unfairly maligned. Hindsight has perfect 20:20 vision; we know *now* that congestion is a major problem, but back then, rail usage was dropping fast, while road congestion was not a major issue. The ecological impact of car ownership was also unknown.

The research of the day pointed at a *drop* in population, thanks to the availability of new birth control drugs. Nobody predicted the "baby boom" of the 1970s. Had that not happened, it's quite possible that railways in the UK would indeed have faded away, as scientists predicted.

Given the knowledge available at the time, most of Beeching's report actually made a lot of sense. (It's also easy to forget that Beeching was a rail user himself.)

My swiss ancestors were smart too. They built the long alpine tunnels (Gotthard, Simplon, Loetschberg) double track from the outset, even if the tracks leading to them were still single for years to come. But now? They built the new Loetschberg base tunnel with only 6 km double tracked, the rest of over 20 km is single... Doubling the whole tunnel will cost later at least four times the price of the whole tunnel so far!


Given how few passenger services use this route, the base tunnel doesn't really need to be doubled yet. (And remember, the original classic route is still there, so you have *three* tracks.) These Base Tunnel projects are primarily for capacity improvement. The reduced journey time is part of that aim, but not the primary goal.

The St. Gotthard Base Tunnel is likely to see far more traffic and is being built twin-track from the outset, but it's only one of three planned tunnels on this new HSR route. One of these tunnels hasn't even been started yet.


A look at google earth will confirm that the french have over ten huge hump marschalling yards in operation, just like the germans.

The UK has very little heavy industry left. Aside from a couple of car factories and the odd mine, there's not much else. Newcastle no longer builds ships. Manchester and Liverpool no longer export wool and cloth. Sheffield's steel-making days are long gone. The UK's freight requirements are therefore limited to bulk import / export—e.g. aggregates, coal, oil, train-load container flows—and the odd mail train.

(The Royal Mail famously dropped EWS a few years ago, tried sticking with roads, but then changed its mind and put some mail back on rail again. DB Schenker provides the trains now.)

Retailers and the few secondary and tertiary industries that remain use modern "just-in-time" supply chains, so they don't have to maintain lots of vast, expensive warehouses full of stuff they haven't sold yet. Road transport is better suited to this kind of last-minute flow. UK rail freight isn't geared for speed and timeliness. It's designed around bulk trainload flows. The lack of dedicated freight infrastructure doesn't help, granted, but building anew won't solve the problem of how you then get it from the train to its final destination. We'd still need convoys of trucks to carry it all into our cities, but cities are where most congestion is found.


HSV should go to the center of town or cities. The french used to have it this way, in recent years however, they have built bypasses for most major towns and cities. Even Paris has a bypass. It's true though, that not many TGV bypass Paris.


The French have realised their station-siting mistakes and are working to rectify them where possible. This is a classic illustration of why it doesn't always pay to be a "pioneer" for a technology. The French got to make the mistakes first, so we don't have to.

HS2 itself is likely to bypass the major conurbations, but will link with the classic routes into the town and city centres, so trains can use the old terminii. (Exactly how these terminii will be upgraded to cope with trains built to the EU TGV standards is another question.) The problem is that city-centre terminii like Manchester Victoria and Birmingham New Street have their own limitations due to their age and location. For instance, parking is generally poor to non-existent at Victorian-era terminus stations.

I suspect the result is likely to be a network where services which call at, say, Birmingham on the way to Glasgow might call at an out-of-town "Birmingham HS2 Park and Ride" station (similar to Ebbsfleet International and built close to major motorways), but those which terminate *at* Birmingham will run right into the existing city-centre station instead, using the classic route to access it.

And now I'm off to get a life.

You're talking about basic physics. Computers have been able to do this for decades. (Check out the DLR and Victoria Line sometime: there's no driver at all on the former, while the latter trains have had Automatic Train Operation since the line opened in the late '60s. The driver just checks the doors, pushes two buttons and the train does the rest.) The Jubilee Line has platform-edge doors, as do many other metro networks around the world.


Computers alone can not do this without an array of laser alignment sensors and load sensors since inertia will differ according to amount of passenger on board.
The simple answer why most trains around the world are still manually driven is because man is a more cheaper and reliable solution then computers.

Computers alone can not do this without an array of laser alignment sensors and load sensors since inertia will differ according to amount of passenger on board.

Load sensors are fitted to most modern rolling stock as a matter of course—they provide feedback to the TOCs so they can gauge how popular a service is at particular times of day. Laser alignment sensors are overkill when all you really need to know is:
1. "Where am I?" (GPS and trackside beacons are more than adequate for this.)
2. "How fast am I going?"
3. "How much do I weigh?" and,
4. "What condition is the track in?" (Rain, leaves and snow will affect stopping distances.)

With those figures, you can determine exactly how much braking energy you need to apply. Again, the Jubilee Line has platform-edge doors: the trains *have* to align with them or passengers cannot get on. Other countries have similar technologies. If we can stop lifts precisely at a desired floor, there's absolutely no reason we can't do the same thing with trains. The exact same laws of physics apply and computers are proven tools for this.


The simple answer why most trains around the world are still manually driven is because man is a more cheaper and reliable solution then computers.

Your assertion flies in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. 3000 people are killed on the UK's roads every single year. And the UK is the fourth safest in the whole of Europe according to the UNECE 2007 report. (Of the remaining three safer countries, two are Malta and Iceland—neither of which have anywhere near the same population as the UK. The other country is the Netherlands.)

The DLR has only ever had three accidents, all of which took place when manual driving was involved. In all cases, the cause was human error.

Multiple computers are used in any potentially risky situation such as a rail network, so even if one computer were damaged, the redundant ones would take over. Computers do NOT make mistakes. Ever. They do exactly what they're told, no more and no less. If the computer has been programmed badly, it's the programmers—the humans who gave them incorrect instructions in the first place—who should be blamed, not the computer itself.

"Computer error" is a myth invented by Hollywood and lazy journalists.

Load sensors are fitted to most modern rolling stock as a matter of course—they provide feedback to the TOCs so they can gauge how popular a service is at particular times of day. Laser alignment sensors are overkill when all you really need to know is:
1. "Where am I?" (GPS and trackside beacons are more than adequate for this.)
2. "How fast am I going?"
3. "How much do I weigh?" and,
4. "What condition is the track in?" (Rain, leaves and snow will affect stopping distances.)

With those figures, you can determine exactly how much braking energy you need to apply. Again, the Jubilee Line has platform-edge doors: the trains *have* to align with them or passengers cannot get on. Other countries have similar technologies. If we can stop lifts precisely at a desired floor, there's absolutely no reason we can't do the same thing with trains. The exact same laws of physics apply and computers are proven tools for this.


Sorry but GPS only position you within a meter of an exact position making it unreliable if you want to align a trainset to platform doors and most automatic trains will not be able to obtain the last telemetry of GPS if it goes into building structure.
Beacons can help out but again not really reliable to position a train unless it can give precise position such as laser.
Load sensors alone are not precise enough to make accurate adjustments for a 10+ cart train set.

Your assertion flies in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. 3000 people are killed on the UK's roads every single year. And the UK is the fourth safest in the whole of Europe according to the UNECE 2007 report. (Of the remaining three safer countries, two are Malta and Iceland—neither of which have anywhere near the same population as the UK. The other country is the Netherlands.)

The DLR has only ever had three accidents, all of which took place when manual driving was involved. In all cases, the cause was human error.

Multiple computers are used in any potentially risky situation such as a rail network, so even if one computer were damaged, the redundant ones would take over. Computers do NOT make mistakes. Ever. They do exactly what they're told, no more and no less. If the computer has been programmed badly, it's the programmers—the humans who gave them incorrect instructions in the first place—who should be blamed, not the computer itself.

"Computer error" is a myth invented by Hollywood and lazy journalists.
Still the matter of the fact is, most trains around the world are manually operated because it is cheaper then to fit all stations with equipments necessary with also the consideration of downtime for maintenance to do it automatically.
Road statistic have nothing relevant for comparison for mass-transit.

Computers are not all mighty as you said with programing failures and input errors that could stop the system all together.

Hello

Computers

Quote: "Computers have been able to do this for decades."
As a self employed computer consultant for the last fifteen years, I do happen to know exactly what computers of the beginning of the 1980s were capable of.
The Shinkansen was computer controlled more or less from the beginning, 1964, that's 4 Decades!!!

The first Mac came out in 1984 - and that was "high tech" for any common household, but also beyond the means of most. Windows 95 came out more than ten years later. Windows 3.1 or even Windows 3.0 or the old Excel runtime Windows 2.x came after the Mac.

One set of humans build and design the CPU / Chip
Another set gives that CPU it's microcode
Yet another set builds it on a board and provide a BIOS
Another different lot programm an operation system (Windows / Linux / Others)
A different group write applications for the computer,
but it's the User at the end of the chain who think he's the Looser if this all doesn't work. Logical, isn't it?

So a guy who can slam on the brakes is less reliable than the aforementionned chain?

Anyone recall the Pentium bug??? ;-)


Safety

Besides the DLR, the safety of the tube in London has killed more people than the japanese Shinkansen in it's entire existence. True, due to the high population of London (Half the size of Tokyo...) there are a lot of users.

Before Network rail, what was that short lived entity that was supposed to ensure the quality of the rail infrastructure? Not that BR was much better, at least they had the whole picture, if they ever wanted.

France were able to learn from the Japanese, they built the first real HSR in the world. And the first gen. Bullet-train in it's blue-white livery is still a beaut in it's class, albeit the newer ones look sleeker. The Japanese HSR also goes into the cities, at least the largest 4 cities (Tokyo and Osaka, the largest cities, are connected by the first built line.)

On most french, italien and german HSR lines, towns not actually provided with a Park & Ride like station directly on the HSR itself (Usually with two exterior tracks with plattforms outside the through high speed tracks, the station consists of 4 or more tracks...), there are - similiar to a Motorway exit - tracks leaving the HSR before a town and rejoining it afterward. A few trains could stop at such stations, but most simply pass through.


Population density

Sure parts of france are about as densly populated like areas in Wales or Scottland. There are areas like Paris, Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strassbourg where - just like in England - if you don't see the street sign, you wouldn't know where one town ends and the next begins. Like the german Ruhr area - almost a Megalopolis.
The population of france isn't that much less than Germany or England...

Tokyo and Mexico City are considered as the largest "cities" in the world, with a lot of runners up in the third world, leaving behind classic large cities like Paris, London, New York.
Paris and London can almost be considered on par, even though both don't like to hear that!

Switzerland is so small 6.5 mil, about 0.6 mil foreigners, but precision is one of the things which make a swiss tick! The swiss had a good safety track record until about 2000, when policies copied from England (Thatcherism, New Labour) with privatisation and getting rid of employees took their toll.


German Accidents

The german sheep accident happened on a newly built line dedicated to HSR. They just saved on all those physical stuff like sensors... Also the axle wheel problems isn't caused by the ICEs running on old track.

The fastest german line, the new Frankfurt - Cologne line allows the ICE (3rd gen) to travel at 300 km/h. If the ICE wants to go 350, it has to go on the new line Strassbourg to Paris, where it's actually certified for 350 km/h.

The first HSR lines in Germany, Hannover - Wurzburg and Mannheim - Stuttgart were built for 250 km/h. Newer lines are 300 km/h, soon maybe 350 like the french.


Beeching

He may have been a train user (As responsible guy, i'd expect him to do soo...), but was also affiliated with the auto industry.


Redundancy

True, the Gotthard has always been the major North - South route, but every once in a while, mother nature teaches you the lesson why you need more than one line. And if the backup doesn't have the capacity...

The Italians - as you mentionned - import most of their power. Two years ago, a lightning felled tree on the Lukmanier Pass in Switzerland caused major brownouts / blackouts in the whole of Lombardia (Area around Milan) and large parts of northern Italy. That line was one of two lines, when it dropped, the other line got overloaded, causing a shutdown of the only other working line.

The Gotthard (I actually live along the route) has been closed several times the last 20 years, due to floods, collapsing bridges (Not ones built a hundred years ago, but one just 10 years old!!!), and italian strikes.

The new Cisalpino, due since two years to replace the ten years old first Cisalpino trains, aren't allowed to run on the Gotthard, they turned to be too heavy. And the first generation of Cisalpino are relible only when it comes to breaking down. Most trains are lok pulled conventional trains, needing a change of tran in Lugano.

In the last century, railroads actually always ordered a couple of trail stock, before a large series were ordered. Nowadays, since it's pretty much Bombardier, and a few tid-bits made by others, there's not much competition.


British Industry

Ravenscraig, Consett, Teeside, S****horpe, Ebbw Vale did generate huge amounts of traffic of produced steel and iron, and raw material like coal and ore. Of those mentionned, S****horpe seems the only one left.

Same picture here, although as you can imagine, Switzerland was never much of a steelcooker. Von Roll, Von Moos and Monteforno were the names of our steelmakers, merged into Swiss Steel (Copied from British Steel...) and bought over by a german conglomerate.

The docklands in England were known for the hard work done there, and the funny accent spoken by the men doing that hard work. Nowadays? A lot of the Institutions at priviledged adresses at the docklands were doing the funny money game and in the end came begging to the government for taxpayer paid Bailout money, needed to pay for golden parachutes and bonuses for CEOs of failed institutions (We swiss don't have docklands, we have UBS... ).

@Stimarco

"city-centre terminii like Manchester Victoria and Birmingham New Street..."
Manchester Picadilly, I'd agree. Victoria had a few bay tracks, but what's left of Victoria doesn't qualify as a Terminus. And New Street has never been one, and has an unbritish lack of bay platforms... ;-)


More thoughts / and or 2 Cents.
(Maybe I should say 2 pennies, or did inflation make that 2 euros?)

Andy

Sheffield's steel-making days are long gone.

This is not the case at all. There are many such firms still in the city, indeed I have seen it claimed that more steel is now produced there than it was around the Second World War! Of course the country produces far less manufactured goods than it did, but there are other surprising clusters left. Literature concerning the Leeds economy claims it is still the UK's third biggest manufacturing centre, though of course this is all relative to a big decline in overall output but still causes surprise to some. There are other surprisingly large clusters of big industrial plants too, such as around the Tees and Humber estuaries.

Most cities still have some large clusters or plants left, Nottingham's Boots site is one such example and when cycling through there I saw the remains of an old railway. The site is of course located right next to the line from Nottingham to Trent Junction. Many such lines have gone of course. I wonder if those in Trafford Park see any use these days.

Concerning the previous post, Teesside is still very much active (although the Redcar plant seems to be under the threat of mothballing) and so is Margam/Port Talbot, there are also several other plants concerned with steel making that were missed out from the post, though I do not know how relevant these are to the discussion in terms of rail.

The germans still have their 15 Kv AC, but will also be adopting the newer standard.

Do you have any more information on this?

..

Hello

Computers

Quote: "Computers have been able to do this for decades."
As a self employed computer consultant for the last fifteen years, I do happen to know exactly what computers of the beginning of the 1980s were capable of.
The Shinkansen was computer controlled more or less from the beginning, 1964, that's 4 Decades!!!

The first Mac came out in 1984 - and that was "high tech" for any common household, but also beyond the means of most. Windows 95 came out more than ten years later. Windows 3.1 or even Windows 3.0 or the old Excel runtime Windows 2.x came after the Mac.

One set of humans build and design the CPU / Chip
Another set gives that CPU it's microcode
Yet another set builds it on a board and provide a BIOS
Another different lot programm an operation system (Windows / Linux / Others)
A different group write applications for the computer,
but it's the User at the end of the chain who think he's the Looser if this all doesn't work. Logical, isn't it?

So a guy who can slam on the brakes is less reliable than the aforementionned chain?

Anyone recall the Pentium bug??? ;-)




I'd have thought the actual problems back in those days would have been the softare engineering side. The design of big complicated systems would have been hampered by the lack of good design methodologies, eg SSM, SSADM, which didn't start showing up until the 80s. Reliable, hardened, durable computer hardware has been available for many years, (guidance systems for nuclear missles). They would never have considered consumer kit back in the 80s or even early 90s for an engineering project.

If a computer can fly a Eurofighter, and even land an Airbus, it can certainly run a big trainset. :cheers:

If a computer can fly a Eurofighter, and even land an Airbus, it can certainly run a big trainset. :cheers:

I don't think anyone ever denied the possibility of a computer driving a train but parking it within less than a meter tolerance at every single station, every single time without sophisticated arrays of sensor and maintenance without downtime becomes a real challenge.
As I said in my earlier post I believe it's just cheaper and more reliable for humans drive for the time being.

* Long reply. You have been warned! *

Hello
Quote: "Computers have been able to do this for decades."
As a self employed computer consultant for the last fifteen years, I do happen to know exactly what computers of the beginning of the 1980s were capable of.

Same here. I've been programming the bloody things since I was 11. (Circa. 1981, if memory serves. I have a lousy memory for numbers.)


One set of humans build and design the CPU / Chip

Few companies use general-purpose CPUs for embedded systems. You just don't need that kind of power to run a signal or even a traction system. (The in-cab diagnostics might well run on PCs, but if a display fails, it won't crash the train.) It's not as if trains have to steer: it's just "accelerate", "decelerate" and "stop". Drivers have been technically redundant since the late 1960s and entirely so since the 1980s. There is no technical reason why all trains couldn't be automated like the DLR. It's old technology now. It's only the unions who want to keep human drivers around, hoovering up money from the taxpayer for no adequately explored reason.

The reason the unions want human drivers is because drivers get paid more than train guards (or "PSOs" as the DLR likes to call them). You still need a human to keep an eye on the humans the train has to carry; they have a nasty habit of blocking doors and generally misbehaving.


Microcode... BIOS... OS... applications... etc. ...but it's the User at the end of the chain who think he's the Looser if this all doesn't work.
So a guy who can slam on the brakes is less reliable than the aforementionned chain?


Computers don't drink. They don't get married and have kids that keep them up at night leaving them tired the following day. They don't then have to decide whether to go to work, or call in sick and risk getting a bad reputation for reliability. They don't have to deal with a messy divorce or remember a spouse's birthday. They don't have dreams of being a novelist or mountain climber or sailing round the world. They don't get distrac... wait, was that a red light on SN109? Oh shi-!

>>CRASH!<<

Computers are machines. They are finite devices. Contrary to many programmers' unfounded beliefs, it is possible to design bulletproof, reliable software for them if you use the right tools. (E.g. SPARKAda (http://www.praxis-his.com/sparkada/).) Airlines and the military do it right because people die if they don't. And that tends to get you some rather bad publicity.

Anyone recall the Pentium bug??? ;-)
Yes. It killed absolutely nobody and inconvenienced very, very few people. Almost every complex processor ever made has flaws. The trick is to tell programmers about them, so they don't get caught out by it. This isn't news. Most programmers need never even know about these issues; their programmes are written for the operating system and its APIs, not directly in the CPU's own 'native' language.

I could rant and rant about the deficiencies of the ICT industry and the prevalence of godawful programmers, but this isn't the place for it. Suffice to say that I do know what I'm talking about.


Besides the DLR, the safety of the tube in London has killed more people than the japanese Shinkansen in it's entire existence. True, due to the high population of London (Half the size of Tokyo...) there are a lot of users.


Sections of the London Underground network are more than 150 years old. The majority of the network is still not fitted with ATO or SELTRAC-type computer control systems, with only the Victoria, Jubilee and Central lines currently with ATO (the Central only got it this year). The Northern Line is expected to have it by 2011. All accidents to date have involved trains which were driven manually. In all cases, human error was responsible.


Before Network rail, what was that short lived entity that was supposed to ensure the quality of the rail infrastructure? Not that BR was much better, at least they had the whole picture, if they ever wanted.

Railtrack. Neither organisation has much to be proud of. The governments which created them certainly don't. But that's yet another rant.


France were able to learn from the Japanese, they built the first real HSR in the world.

The first dedicated high-speed line in Europe was the Roma-Firenze "Direttissima". Granted, 125 mph doesn't seem all that "high speed" by modern standards, but this is roughly double the typical line speed for the classic line, which is still in use for local traffic. The first section opened well before the first section of France's TGV.

Sure parts of france are about as densly populated like areas in Wales or Scottland. There are areas like Paris, Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strassbourg where - just like in England - if you don't see the street sign, you wouldn't know where one town ends and the next begins. Like the german Ruhr area - almost a Megalopolis.

I know. I've driven through much of it. (French motorways cost to much, so I nip through Strasbourg to Kehl to reach the A36 in Germany.) I used to drive from London to Rome about 2-3 times a year as most of my relatives are based out there, including my parents. (I hate flying. The user experience is just awful. And I only bothered learning to drive in 2005, so it's still a novelty to me.)

The population of france isn't that much less than Germany or England...

Germany = 82 million; France = 62 million; UK = just under 60 million. (Italy has 57 million.) France is quite a bit bigger than Great Britain, with a squarer shape. Its population is also much more evenly spread out compared to the UK, which has a vast clump of urbanisation in the south east centred on London, a second cluster in the West Midlands and smaller clusters in the north east and the lowlands of Scotland. Vast tracts of the south west, Wales and Scotland are practically empty by comparison.

Tokyo and Mexico City are considered as the largest "cities" in the world, with a lot of runners up in the third world, leaving behind classic large cities like Paris, London, New York.
Paris and London can almost be considered on par, even though both don't like to hear that!

Yes. That's what metro / subway lines are for. Inter-city lines don't serve multiple stations in the same city any more than a plane taking off from Heathrow is expected to make stops at Gatwick and Luton on the way to Copenhagen. What's your point?

Switzerland is so small 6.5 mil, about 0.6 mil foreigners, but precision is one of the things which make a swiss tick! The swiss had a good safety track record until about 2000, when policies copied from England (Thatcherism, New Labour) with privatisation and getting rid of employees took their toll.


I pity any nation which is stupid enough to consider the UK's pathetic excuse for a government system in any way superior to theirs. It's not even technically a democracy.

One of the key tenets of democratic rule is that it is the rule of the majority. Go take a look at the percentage of votes New Labour needed to win their last two elections. It's not even close to 50%. Of all the votes cast. Most of the UK's non-apathetic voters did NOT want New Labour back in power. By most definitions, this is not a democracy.

The german sheep accident happened on a newly built line dedicated to HSR. They just saved on all those physical stuff like sensors... Also the axle wheel problems isn't caused by the ICEs running on old track.

So Germans aren't perfect. Who knew?


The fastest german line, the new Frankfurt - Cologne line allows the ICE (3rd gen) to travel at 300 km/h. If the ICE wants to go 350, it has to go on the new line Strassbourg to Paris, where it's actually certified for 350 km/h.


Frankfurt and Cologne are less than 151 Km. apart. An additional 50 km / h would have made a negligible difference to travel times between the two cities, shaving off a couple of minutes at most.

He may have been a train user (As responsible guy, i'd expect him to do soo...), but was also affiliated with the auto industry.

Beeching famously commuted to London from East Grinstead by rail, not by car. His preferred commuting route was the only one of the four serving that town which he didn't recommend for closure. (Part of one of the closed lines became is better known today as the preserved "Bluebell Railway".)

Secondly—and this is my key point, so do pay attention—Dr. Beeching didn't personally close ANY lines. He merely wrote a report recommending some for closure, based on economic arguments which were widely accepted at the time. He even recommended some improvements to existing lines—namely more electrification and the adoption of containerised freight systems—which were also enacted, but for which he gets no credit.

Most of his recommended closures weren't even carried out by the Tory government he worked for, but by the later Labour government.


True, the Gotthard has always been the major North - South route, but every once in a while, mother nature teaches you the lesson why you need more than one line. And if the backup doesn't have the capacity...

Er, yes. Hence the two Base Tunnel projects. The Gotthard is the headline project, so that's getting most of the focus at the moment.

The Lötschberg Base Tunnel's 2nd bore is actually 3/4 complete, although only 1/3rd of the West tube is fitted with track. There are 8 km. left of the Western bore to build. (Completion is estimated at around 1 bn. Swiss francs., which doesn't sound all that expensive compared to the ridiculous prices we have to pay in the UK.)


The Italians - as you mentionned - import most of their power. Two years ago, a lightning felled tree on the Lukmanier Pass in Switzerland caused major brownouts / blackouts in the whole of Lombardia (Area around Milan) and large parts of northern Italy.

I know. I was there at the time.

That line was one of two lines, when it dropped, the other line got overloaded, causing a shutdown of the only other working line.

Believe it or not, the UK and the US have far worse electricity grids. Today's politicians are reactive, not proactive. They're short-termist and not given to visionary planning. Voters also don't like spending money on something which doesn't look broken, so they'll let it limp along until it literally falls apart. Then they'll rush around in a panic, splurging massive quantities of cash, just to get it all working properly again. Despite the clichés, we never seem to learn anything from history.

Good politicians and leaders are rare. Worse still, such people can't do a damned thing if they haven't been elected.



The Gotthard (I actually live along the route) has been closed several times the last 20 years, due to floods, collapsing bridges (Not ones built a hundred years ago, but one just 10 years old!!!), and italian strikes.

The Italians are famous for their strikes. If it were an Olympic sport, they'd be certain to win. (The French would get the silver.)

The collapsing bridge is a surprise, but Switzerland's geography is enough to give most civil engineers a nervous breakdown, so I'll grant them the occasional mistake. Pisa is a perfect illustration that even our ancestors got it wrong occasionally.


The new Cisalpino, due since two years to replace the ten years old first Cisalpino trains, aren't allowed to run on the Gotthard, they turned to be too heavy. And the first generation of Cisalpino are relible only when it comes to breaking down. Most trains are lok pulled conventional trains, needing a change of tran in Lugano.

They're built by FIAT Ferroviaria. (Now part of Alstom.) What did you expect? High quality construction? Thoughtful design? Attention to detail? Polished walnut trim? None of this and less are yours for the asking when you buy from FIAT: the only car manufacturer even the notoriously pro-car Italians point and laugh at.



In the last century, railroads actually always ordered a couple of trail stock, before a large series were ordered. Nowadays, since it's pretty much Bombardier, and a few tid-bits made by others, there's not much competition.

That's not entirely true. Granted, Bombardier and Alstom have done very well in Europe, but the Chinese are trying to break into this field, while Siemens and Hitachi have both done very well in the UK. (Siemens beat Alstom out after the latter's early problems with their "Juniper" trains.)



(We swiss don't have docklands, we have UBS... ).


In fairness, most of the UK's bailout money seemed to go to Scottish bankers. (And I thought the Scots were supposed to be good with money.)



@Stimarco

"city-centre terminii like Manchester Victoria and Birmingham New Street..."
Manchester Picadilly, I'd agree. Victoria had a few bay tracks, but what's left of Victoria doesn't qualify as a Terminus. And New Street has never been one, and has an unbritish lack of bay platforms... ;-)


That New Street has a poor station layout is another matter entirely. Trains do terminate there, however, so my point stands.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/HS4-1.jpg

this would be my high speed route,

thoughts?

I don't think anyone ever denied the possibility of a computer driving a train but parking it within less than a meter tolerance at every single station, every single time without sophisticated arrays of sensor and maintenance without downtime becomes a real challenge.
As I said in my earlier post I believe it's just cheaper and more reliable for humans drive for the time being.

No, its unbelievably simple. The train doesn't need to know where it is at all.

Beacons. Train passes over one that says slow down. Train slows down to 5 mph, glides a few seconds until it reaches the next beacon that says stop. All the train needs to do is know what speed its going. All the engineers need to do is space the beacons with a little bit to spare for every eventuality.

GSM is needed on some in-cab signalling systems, to gather linespeed information etc, but in such systems it is the beacons in the track that dictate to the train to stop or go.

this would be my high speed route,

thoughts?

Thats right on the money now I think. I've decided now to use the woodhead tunnel too, not for north/south, but as a needed regional link nonetheless. btw the Huddersfield route trans-penine is only good for 200km/h with tilt (this is Network Rail's assessment but I've done my own work as you now and confirmed it), you would need to realign it a bit for 225km/h, but its do-able. I have yet to inspect the woodhead route. I like the use of the Burton-upon trent route. You'll need in-cab signalling, but the alignment is good for 250km/h you know, maybe more. Its 200km/h already, why not push it :-)

How about somthing for the >4M folk who live on the GWR west of Swindon all the way to Swansea??? Never seems to get a mention on here.....
M

No, its unbelievably simple. The train doesn't need to know where it is at all.

Beacons. Train passes over one that says slow down. Train slows down to 5 mph, glides a few seconds until it reaches the next beacon that says stop. All the train needs to do is know what speed its going. All the engineers need to do is space the beacons with a little bit to spare for every eventuality.

GSM is needed on some in-cab signalling systems, to gather linespeed information etc, but in such systems it is the beacons in the track that dictate to the train to stop or go.

It's a bit more complicated than you think.
First beacons are fine but the last beacon defining the stop position needs to be a very narrow beam since as I wrote before, the margin of tolerance is less than a meter in width.
Depending on the distance between the transmitting source and antenna, the signal may not fit the window of tolerance depending on wave length.
One more problem is inertia, since passengers are not tied down, the center of gravity will move erratic making it difficult to decelerate within the preset deceleration rate. When deceleration rate is too high people will start tumbling over. Amount of braking will vary depending on passenger location as well as number of passenger to meet preset criteria.
Yes an algorithm can be created to compensate the deceleration rate depending on load but braking will be required to be monitored constantly having another set of sensors liable for breaking down.

How about somthing for the >4M folk who live on the GWR west of Swindon all the way to Swansea??? Never seems to get a mention on here.....
M

With the planned electrification people envisage gradual improvements rather than creating a second route. Your getting trains that are faster than the max line speed so theirs some future upgradability in mind.

It's a bit more complicated than you think.

Not really. Makita09 is pretty much on the nose, though it's not just a simple "Slow!" command. You have a sequence thus:

1. "Approaching station: Reduce speed to 10mph."

2. "Bring train to halt in exactly 120m." (This is often from the same beacon as the above.)

3. "STOP!" (The final beacon, located at the point where the train must be stopped. This actually optional, but redundancy is good.)

Note that Message #2 means the computer knows when the train must be brought to a complete halt, so it can make its calculations and begin braking accordingly.

Trains already know their weight. Most new rolling stock also has sensors to check how many passengers are on board and all sorts of other on-board diagnostic features. Including brake monitoring. (Take a look at Siemens' "Desiro City" train's features, which even includes CO2 sensors to determine how much work the air-con in each carriage will need to do.)

Also, as you're already approaching at a mere 5-10 mph, you're not going to be sending passengers flying through the vestibules if you're braking slowly to reach your target.



First beacons are fine but the last beacon defining the stop position needs to be a very narrow beam since as I wrote before, the margin of tolerance is less than a meter in width.


Your logic makes no sense. The train only needs to know when to start braking, and how long for. Physics will take care of the rest. (A stop beacon might well be installed anyway to aid calibration, which is why I describe one above.) It can simply count the number of wheel revolutions as it brakes slowly to a halt. It knows exactly how far it needs to go and how much braking it needs to do. Trains already have sensors in place to check for wheelslips, etc. Or did you think ABS only applies to cars?

To improve reliability and add some redundancy, you'd probably install strategically sited beacons which the train uses to confirm its position along the route. This is much the same principle as that used by GPS, without the need for satellites. Such systems can be extremely precise.

This isn't neurosurgery. It's not even rocket science.


One more problem is inertia, since passengers are not tied down, the center of gravity will move erratic making it difficult to decelerate within the preset deceleration rate. When deceleration rate is too high people will start tumbling over. Amount of braking will vary depending on passenger location as well as number of passenger to meet preset criteria.

Last time I looked, drivers weren't counting up all the standing passengers while they drove. They sure as hell don't check the CCTVs in every carriage just before each station to gauge how the train will respond.


Yes an algorithm can be created to compensate the deceleration rate depending on load but braking will be required to be monitored constantly having another set of sensors liable for breaking down.

Trains already have multiple redundant computer and sensor systems as a key design element. How much do you think five computers, some sensors and their wiring weigh? A hundred kilos or so? Each carriage on a Victoria Line 1967 stock train weighs 20 tons. (The ones with driving cabs and motors weigh 30.) Train design has moved on a tad since Nigel Gresley's day.

I'll say again: not only have Victoria Line trains managed to depart, accelerate, coast, decelerate and stop at the same spots on each platform without issue for nigh-on 40 bloody years, but the DLR has done it without anyone sitting at the controls at all since 1987. Shockingly, not once has a DLR train managed to plough through the buffer stops at Lewisham, Bank, Stratford, Beckton, Woolwich Arsenal or Tower Gateway.

Stimarco - I'm primarily speaking of really primitive automatic systems that hardly employ any computing at all, and how it can be done without lasers or much of anything at all as I'm sure you'll agree, though it hasn't been done that way since the 60s or 70s I don't think!

It's a bit more complicated than you think.
First beacons are fine but the last beacon defining the stop position needs to be a very narrow beam since as I wrote before, the margin of tolerance is less than a meter in width.
Depending on the distance between the transmitting source and antenna, the signal may not fit the window of tolerance depending on wave length.
One more problem is inertia, since passengers are not tied down, the center of gravity will move erratic making it difficult to decelerate within the preset deceleration rate. When deceleration rate is too high people will start tumbling over. Amount of braking will vary depending on passenger location as well as number of passenger to meet preset criteria.
Yes an algorithm can be created to compensate the deceleration rate depending on load but braking will be required to be monitored constantly having another set of sensors liable for breaking down.

I don't mean to be rude as I'm quite new to this forum, but you are just simply wrong. Whilst there are very many elements of train control that are complicated, getting a vehicle to stop in the right place on a platform is not one of them. The stopping distance of 5mph to zero is going to be within a margin of a foot at the most, because it only takes a few feet to stop from 5mph. Passengers are never more than 20% of vehicle weight, fully laden.

First issue with the understnding of the beacons. They are radio operated, and the train travels over them and receives the signal. The only possible way the train can not receive the signal is if the train is not on the track. If the train 'aint on the track, the stopping distance is the least of our concerns.

Secondly, the train does not stop on the last beacon. The train has to pass over the beacon to receive it's instruction, so unless the train becomes clairvoyant, stopping precisely on the last beacon is not possible. But this is not the intention anyway, the beacon is placed a few metres before where we want the train to stop.

On to your next point of passengers. Tumbling of passengers is not an inherent issue in beacon operated train control. Yes, passengers will tumble if the deceleration rate is too high - so just stop the train from breaking harder than this - simple. Most networks have a stipulated maximum deceleration rate for passenger comfort. Max acceleration on Network Rail is 0.75m/s/s (in general) though I don't know what the deceleration figure is, likely to be similar. All trains have a technical capability far higher. Set the normal break to be at or around the network preferred rate, and pay your engineers to keep the train in good condition so this doesn't vary too much. This is of zero concern to the designing of beacon operated train control.

You are making automatic train operation far too complicated. I will explain it explicitly.

Train x is set to decelerate at 0.75m/s/s when empty (i.e. its hardest deceleration)
Station y is on a line with a 10m/s speed limit.
It will take 66 metres to stop the lightest train. No more than 100m for the heaviest.

Put beacon 1 100 metres before the stop point. Beacon 1 says 'SLOW TO 2m/s'.

Then put another beacon just before the stop point that says 'STOP'. From this last beacon, at a deceleration rate of 0.75m/s/s, the train will travel 2.667 metres before it comes to a stop.

For the sake of argument, lets say the train is 20% heavier, so it takes 3.2metres to stop (60cm further), perhaps thats too far. Ok, lets introduce a 3rd beacon, and set beacon 2 to be an instruction to 'SLOW TO 0.5m/s', the lightest train will stop in 33cm, the 20% heavier train will travel less than 10cm further.

I am not sure why you think it needs more technology than this, it is primarily used on systems where all the train are identical or at least very similar, and has been employed for decades.

Also, even if the train did need to work out its momentum and inertia, it doesn't need laser guided hoo hars. The train's computer is given a distance within which it must stop. It calculates the deceleration required, and then adjusts it's breaking accordingly to fit the deceleration envelope specified, by using one simple measurement, speed, and taking one simple action remedy - breaking pressure. If after 3 seconds of the manouvre the train is going fractionally faster than it had intended, it slightly increases it's break force.

In these more modern systems you only need one beacon, the first one, before the station, advising how far the stop point is at the station. Modern trains know precisely how far they have gone by use of their odometer, and it really is childs play to teach it to stop in any feasible set distance. This is more the type of system Stimarco is talking about, where trains have ABS, computers, and there are beacons in the track and GPS tracking. The most peculiar element of this conversation is that I and Stimarco are not talking theoretically - these systems actually exist and have done for years, and are being employed on passenger networks right now.

Drivers have been technically redundant since the late 1960s and entirely so since the 1980s. There is no technical reason why all trains couldn't be automated like the DLR. It's old technology now. It's only the unions who want to keep human drivers around, hoovering up money from the taxpayer for no adequately explored reason.

Would you like me to have a word with Bob (Crow) when we get him on board we will have a superb national railway system of fully automated reliable high speed trains, nothing (else) can stand in our way. Can it? :)

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/HS4-1.jpg

this would be my high speed route,

thoughts?

LGV Nord doesn't run through Amiens :D

Do you have any more information on this?

The dutch and belgians are already using 25 KV for their HSRs, the dutch also built the new freight line from the Rotterdam poor to the german Ruhr area (Betuwelijn) with 25 KV. Almost too quick, seeing that neither the dutch, nor the germans nor private operators had loks capable of running under those conditions (three systems, 1.5 KV holland, 25 KV Betuwelijn, 15 KV Germany). Belgium uses 3KV incedentally.

The germans are still undecided as to the ultimate standard, but european consensus have been found on 25 KV. All newer ICEs seem to require 25 KV and 15 KV operation (Travelling to Paris, eg.). At the moment, only some ICE3s support the two frequency operation, as it's known. The German, Swiss and Austrians have traditionally used 15 KV, 16 2/3 cycles, compared to the more modern, standard of 25 KV, 50 cycles. 50 cycles is power outlet standard almost world wide. So it's not only differing voltages...

Regards

Andy

revised map including great western mainline upgrade. and simplified map.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/ukmap.jpg

Interesting map from AAA94, but it would be years before all these lines are built. I'd like to challenge some of the thinking about the Birmingham end of the London to Birmingham proposed line.

Birmingham New Sreet is too full and is a major blockage. The platforms at Moor Street are too small and the station would not be up to high speed standard. High Speed 2 have said they are considering new station sites in Birmingham City Centre - so where?

Curzen Street is not very central, but what about the wholesale markets site which Birmingham City Council say is not fit for purpose and they are selling it to a development company. The site extends to 21 acres and would enable a station about a quarter of a mile south of New Street.

The station could occupy an East-West alignment, enabling high speed trains to come in on new tracks on the former GW main line, but the line would need to curve to miss Moor Street station.

The station would not need to be a terminus, because a new high speed line could be built to the West, before heading Northwards to run alongside the metro line, and then parallel to the M5 before joining the line to Walsall - Cannock - Rugeley Trent Valley which would need to be upgraded to a high speed line (This line is currently extremely slow and worn out - but could be made to go in a reasonably straight and direct route).

This would make significant progress towards a high speed line from central Birmingham to Manchester.

Anyone any ideas on journey times?

I think what is needed is to take WCML in a tunnel (like crossrail) under London and out the other side to the coast so that area will have its self a proper espress route...and links to the north. No more change at Waterloo taking the Northern Line to Euston!

I think what is needed is to take WCML in a tunnel (like crossrail) under London and out the other side to the coast so that area will have its self a proper espress route...and links to the north. No more change at Waterloo taking the Northern Line to Euston!I don't know if we'll ever see this. The French have talked about a Paris Central station and linking up some of their high speed rail terminals as well but this stuff just costs so much money. You'd have to build at least one station in between as well, at TCR most likely.

LGV Nord doesn't run through Amiens :D

Are there not proposals to create a direct route between Paris and Calais rather than via Lille though?

Are there not proposals to create a direct route between Paris and Calais rather than via Lille though?

Yep - check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Picardie

It's a huge undertaking, and would only really benefit the Eurostar and Amiens people, as I can't imagine the traffic between Calais and Paris is that significant to require that much of an improvement to the service today.

Then again, 20 minutes off a Paris journey would bury the flights. If next-gen trains were doing 320-350 km/h like on LGV Est or AVE, another 5-10 mins off the total journey could potentially offer a 1h45 journey time, which is incredible.

Edited because I think journeys of this speed would even outdo City Airport in a Canary Wharf originating journey to La Defense or Central Paris.

Yep - check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Picardie

It's a huge undertaking, and would only really benefit the Eurostar and Amiens people, as I can't imagine the traffic between Calais and Paris is that significant to require that much of an improvement to the service today.

Then again, 20 minutes off a Paris journey would bury the flights. If next-gen trains were doing 320-350 km/h like on LGV Est or AVE, another 5-10 mins off the total journey could potentially offer a 1h45 journey time, which is incredible.

Edited because I think journeys of this speed would even outdo City Airport in a Canary Wharf originating journey to La Defense or Central Paris.

I imagine it would also free up capacity on the existing LGV Nord too. I'm not aware of how busy it is at the moment but with Eurostar, Thalys and domestic services, I imagine if not ner to capacity already, would become so in the not too distant future.

I think what is needed is to take WCML in a tunnel (like crossrail) under London and out the other side to the coast so that area will have its self a proper espress route...and links to the north. No more change at Waterloo taking the Northern Line to Euston!
Given he uncertainty about cross rail and the length of time to get it this far, I can't see another tunnel under London to link up with the new high speed line. It would also be horrendously expensive. A possibly cheaper alternative would be to build a new high speed line linking Ashford International with Heathrow, where it could link up wih high speed 2. There is already a line heading west from Ashford international, through Tonbridge to Redhill which could form the basis of the route - after that it does get more tricky. This route would enable high speed trains from the continent to the channel tunnel to by-pass London.

The lack of progress, and the lack of a bold, long term vision that provides an integrated transport solution for the whole country is really quite sad. The same poor state of affairs applies to the 3rd LHR runway yes/no argument.

For one, geographical factors act against progress and the longer we delay infrastructure development, the harder it will become. Population density and pure lack of space on which to develop means that we should be looking at building underground for our new HSR needs - atleast certainly in city centres, especially in London.

I am not sure I understand the logic behind choosing Euston as the Central London terminus. It appears that just because it is an existing terminii for one of the London - Scotland mainlines and is ripe for redevelopment, it is automatically the station of choice. Yes, it is well connected in terms of LU lines, but I feel better a choice can be made. I am not sure how the addition of the extra trains will impact on the existing track capacity around the station, and am sure that we'll end up with a HSR terminus that reaches capacity within a few years - even if the build does add extra track. How, for another thing, will we get around the problem of the existing bridges over existing line that are too low for double deck trains - rebuilding them would be very disruptive?

Why not build a brand new station in central London. Building it at Euston, along side the existing WCML will only concentrate demand and supply for services to the North at one station. Is that really the best option?

I'd recommend building a brand new station immediately to the west of St. Pancras. What other than the cost is holding back that option? St Pancras has better connections to the LU than Euston and has already had its underground stations expanded to accomodate more passengers. Building here would allow a direct and easy link to HS1.

On top of that, St Pancras/KC serves Thameslink and therefore gives (will give) good access to Bedford, Brighton and two airports (Gatwick and Luton). As far as I can see, St. Pancras gives all the connections benefits of Euston (and more) so why, oh why, is a new-build next to St. P not given any thought??

As I was saying before discussing terminus choice, space in this country is a prime issue. I think we have to accept that to build a fit-for-purpose HSR, it's going to have to involve putting most of the line through London underground. Yes, it costs more, but in this country we are great at cutting corners and holding back because things cost too much politics gets in the way - 'we can't do that, those people over there don't like it, and that group of NIMBYs don't want it'. It's quite embarrasing as we watch more and more countries press forward with their brand new lines or extensions of existing HSR systems.

It's a shame that the one-time rail pioneers now watch others charge ahead with far better systems built in-line with modern day requirements. We are far too conservative. We cannot expect 50-150 year old infrastructure design and provision to be able to meet todays needs effectively. Can we now not reassert ourselves as a leader in infrastructure design? Make people realise just how important transport infrastructure development is (on both local and national level), and just get the hell on with it. The longer we faff about, the worse it'll be.

Build at Euston...and years in the future when we finally have a HSR system, we'll realise the mistake of choosing it as the terminus. Isn't that what happened with Waterloo International?

Given he uncertainty about cross rail and the length of time to get it this far, I can't see another tunnel under London to link up with the new high speed line. It would also be horrendously expensive. A possibly cheaper alternative would be to build a new high speed line linking Ashford International with Heathrow, where it could link up wih high speed 2. There is already a line heading west from Ashford international, through Tonbridge to Redhill which could form the basis of the route - after that it does get more tricky. This route would enable high speed trains from the continent to the channel tunnel to by-pass London.

i agree i think it should bypass london west from ashford, to gatwick then northwest to heathrow where it would join back to hs2 which would be a heathrow spur line and hs1 hs2 connected.

would look something like this http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/ldnn.jpg (WCML corridor out of euston to willsden and then over a bypass to the GWML corridor out to heathrow)

I think what is needed is to take WCML in a tunnel (like crossrail) under London and out the other side to the coast so that area will have its self a proper espress route...and links to the north.
It's just never going to work financially. A truly high-speed North-South railway cannot go under London, it most go around it.

And all the more so because of the effects of rising sea level in the timescales involved. London will inevitably be subject to regular flooding by 2060.

AAA94 - do you live in wycombe and work at gatwick airport?

I don't think building a station immediately left of St Pancras is the best idea. Having 3 stations side by side is just too high a concentration IMHO - KXSP tube stations and the road infrastructure wouldn't be able to cope with all that traffic. There's also the British Library which most people wouldn't be in a hurry to demolish IMO.

Rebuilding Euston would cause disruptions, true, but wouldn't building an entirely new station cause even more disruptions?

i agree i think it should bypass london west from ashford, to gatwick then northwest to heathrow where it would join back to hs2 which would be a heathrow spur line and hs1 hs2 connected.

would look something like this (Image removed for space) (WCML corridor out of euston to willsden and then over a bypass to the GWML corridor out to heathrow)

Last time I checked, BAA was a private corporation. If air travel is so bloody awesome, they should have ample cash to build their own damned railways and other infrastructure, instead of insisting we taxpayers do it on their behalf. Many major airports around the globe—including quite a few in Europe and the US—don't have any rail access at all, let alone a tube line, Heathrow Express, Heathrow Connect, Crossrail and—if it goes ahead—AirTrack. Are BAA running an airport or a glorified rail terminus which just happens to have parking facilities for Airbus A380s?

If you want to bypass London, HS1 is far more direct and has room for widening should that be necessary. It's also a lot more direct than a bypass running west, south then east around London. (Never mind that engineering challenges posed by crossing an east-west chalk ridge—the North Downs—with an east-west HSR line while avoiding the many towns and villages on the way.)

Such a line would make sense once HSR lines to Wales and the South West are built as a southern London bypass line would have more merit.

I don't think building a station immediately left of St Pancras is the best idea. Having 3 stations side by side is just too high a concentration IMHO - KXSP tube stations and the road infrastructure wouldn't be able to cope with all that traffic. There's also the British Library which most people wouldn't be in a hurry to demolish IMO.

Rebuilding Euston would cause disruptions, true, but wouldn't building an entirely new station cause even more disruptions?

The problem with digging yet more tunnels and underground stations beneath London is the rat's maze of existing underground infrastructure in the city. Any new central London terminus would require major surgery to almost every tube line in the vicinity, as well as the demolition of vast swathes of surface buildings. Getting people out of the station and dispersing them would be a huge challenge in its own right.

You'd certainly need to modify some roads and provide space for people to congregate. Where would the taxi ranks be? How many entrances do you build? How deep will the new tracks be and how can you thread escalators and lifts down to them through the existing tube lines, water services, sewers, electricity mains, gas mains, etc.

A second point is: where should such a station be built? Assuming you're only building one such new terminus, you'd need to choose either the City—which is dead on weekends and outside of business hours on weekdays—or the West End, which is quite a walk from the City.

The ideal—assuming we were building London from scratch—would be to have two major through stations on a multi-track east-west line. (London's key centres are spread along the Thames west-east.) Crossrail 1 is going to have to suffice.

AAA94 - do you live in wycombe and work at gatwick airport?

no i don't.

there doesnt neccecarily have to a station at high wycombe, it was just a town the line would pass near/through. having the line going from ashford to gatwick and to heathrow then up to west mids following the m40 just seemed obvious to me. having a route around london north wouldnt serve heathrow well nor gatwick, i think its obvious for line to go south from heathrow to gatwick. thats just my opinion



If you want to bypass London, HS1 is far more direct and has room for widening should that be necessary. It's also a lot more direct than a bypass running west, south then east around London. (Never mind that engineering challenges posed by crossing an east-west chalk ridge—the North Downs—with an east-west HSR line while avoiding the many towns and villages on the way.)


not quite. most of the line from redhill to ashford intl, would just needed to be upgraded to higher speeds and quadrupled probably would be just a 225kph upgrade, then a new line would have to be built from redhill to staines yes that part would be more tricky but its doable, then the line could use the basis of heathrow airtrack from staines to heathrow which is planned to built in 4 tracks, and could easily be built to 225kph standards a tunnel under heathrow and then northwest to the m40 and follow the m40 to west mids.

a north route would be more viable if it were built via stansted, but that is very indirect, i could see it working, i just think a south route through gatwick to ashford would be better and cheaper. more people from the south, southwest and south coast would be more encouraged to use the line because of easier accesibility than having to travel to london, these people probably make up the most of the gatwick-manchester and gatwick-edinburgh/glasgow flights.

The choice of London terminus for HS2 is going to be really tricky. I think the runners and riders are as follows:

St Pancras - best links for HS1 and the continent, and good underground links, but not good for a new line going West out of London or anywhere near Heathrow. There is also the huge problem of the need for a teminus for Midland main line/ East Midlands trains services from Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffied. If I was a bookmaker, I'd sugest odds of 8/1

British library site - close to St Pancras, but demolishing the multi million pound, purpose built british library, a church, graveyard and significant numbers of homes would be unpopular, so very difficult politically. I'd suggest odds of 12/1

Euston - a big advanage here, is the station needs re-developing and WCML passengers already use Euston. Lots of platforms and a possible high speed route out could be built without demolition and redevelopment on an unacceptable scale. I'd suggest 2/1 joint favourite.

Paddington - not well backed so far, but as the other riders fall, Paddington could turn out to be a dark horse. The location is not the best for the city and business communities, but acceptable for leisure travellers, tourists and the West End. It has two major advantages. The first is the geography. It would be ideal for a high speed line that called at Heathrow on the way to Birmingham, and it wouldn't be too difficult building the route or finding platform space. The second advantage is crossrail, which would also help free up platform space. Whilst tube connections are currently limited, the additional destinations offered by crossrail could swing it Padington's way. Paddington is also a name known internationally. For these reasons, I'd make it 2/1 joint favourite.

Old Oak common - has some appeal as a potential site is available, and is on the right side of London for the line to the North and West to Heathrow and Birmingham, but is some way out. It does't have good existing or planned transport infrastructure and can't see it cutting the mustard for a prestigious high profile project like High Speed 2. Likely to be equally unpopular with business passengers and leisure travellers who wouldn't see it as a destination of choice. Odds of 20/1 might be appropriate here.

Marylebone - The only thing going for Marylebone is the Chiltern Line curently terminates here and this could be the basis for part of the new HS2 line. Capacity, status, tube connections, distance from the City are all reasons not to back Marylebone. I can't even see it being used on a temporary basis while a new terminus is built elsewhere. Odds of 15/1 seem mean.

Liverpool St - not my suggestion, but an earlier poster was keen. Just can't see it personally, although people in the City might find it covenient. Wrong side of London, for Heathrow and links to birmingham, no capacity anyway, difficult to re-develop, lots of very expensive tunnelling. I can't see many backers at 25/1.

Completely new build on another site - possible but no obvious site, and access could be expensive, particularly if lots of tunnelling is involved. Odds of 8/1 perhaps?

if im honest although euston is cheapest the most obvious and will probably happen. if im completely honest they should either build a new underground terminus or a new overground terminus above ground on a viaduct. would be expensive (demolition/tunneling) but its really the best thing. they tunneled under northwest london when they first built euston. and the built over london when the first built waterloo and st pancras, that would have been expensive. still did it.

not quite. most of the line from redhill to ashford intl, would just needed to be upgraded to higher speeds and quadrupled probably would be just a 225kph upgrade, then a new line would have to be built from redhill to staines yes that part would be more tricky but its doable, then the line could use the basis of heathrow airtrack from staines to heathrow which is planned to built in 4 tracks, and could easily be built to 225kph standards a tunnel under heathrow and then northwest to the m40 and follow the m40 to west mids.

"Redhill"?

Gatwick is south of Redhill. How will HS trains from Ashford reach it? By reversing? You need to get your trains into the station from the south. Fire up Google Maps (or your map site of choice) and take a good look at it. The Tonbridge route isn't an option.

You'll note that there's a disused railway leading off (quite sharply) and heading out to East Grinstead and Groombridge. This line is much more curved than the Tonbridge route and most of it is now gone, ("Beeching Way" in East Grinstead itself is built on part of it.) So there's nothing "easily upgraded" about it and you'd need to plough a new HSR route anyway to eliminate all those curves.

I'm not saying it can't be done technically. I'm just curious as to how viable a new HSR line serving just two airports and a railway junction (while ignoring Leatherhead, Dorking, Guildford and others) will be.

I can just about imagine a southern east-west HSR line being built eventually, if only to provide decent orbital links for the southern Home Counties, but your line wouldn't fill that demand at all.

They could combine cross rail with a HSR scheme...
Link a souththern tunnel with HS1 and a north western tunnel to HS2 with trains running under London and out the otherside... if they made the tunnels 4tracks it would be like the nyc subway. 2 local tracks topping at bond street etc whith express high speed trains just zooming by in the centre...

"Redhill"?

Gatwick is south of Redhill. How will HS trains from Ashford reach it? By reversing? You need to get your trains into the station from the south. Fire up Google Maps (or your map site of choice) and take a good look at it. The Tonbridge route isn't an option.

You'll note that there's a disused railway leading off (quite sharply) and heading out to East Grinstead and Groombridge. This line is much more curved than the Tonbridge route and most of it is now gone, ("Beeching Way" in East Grinstead itself is built on part of it.) So there's nothing "easily upgraded" about it and you'd need to plough a new HSR route anyway to eliminate all those curves.

I'm not saying it can't be done technically. I'm just curious as to how viable a new HSR line serving just two airports and a railway junction (while ignoring Leatherhead, Dorking, Guildford and others) will be.

I can just about imagine a southern east-west HSR line being built eventually, if only to provide decent orbital links for the southern Home Counties, but your line wouldn't fill that demand at all.

In fairness it could be done. There are tentative plans to create a direct link from the Redhill - Tondridge line to the Brighton mainline southwards at Redhill, although Tescos have submitted plans for a supermarket on precisely there area where the line would have to pass over so lets hope Redhill council throw it out. You couldn't have through trains via Gatwick unless the route came significantly off line from the Tonbridge - Redhill route, but it could gain access in both directions with spurs at Redhill.

The line from Ashford to Redhill could be upgraded German style for 300km/h, and perhaps without quad tracking it. Now that many local services will be diverted via HS1 it would be possible to find one or two paths per hour for a high speed train in between the local ones. Someone would need to work out how to dual-power from OHLE and the existing 3rd rail, or just use the 375s with pantographs on that particular route.

The section from Gatwick to HS2 would be tricky and a new build, but I think that section would financially justify a new build more, as Gatwick and Brighton to the north would generate more traffic than Brighton and Gatwick and the rest of the country to the continent (possbly), and a Gatwick - Heathrow shuttle would go down a storm. And traversing the north downs is not impossible - The M25 does just that and for environmental impact reasons would be a good alignment to take.

However, such a link would inevitably end up like the LGV via Amiens in France - a costly addition that gets put to the back of the queue behind other more pressing needs, but would be nice to have.

In fairness it could be done.

As I said, I'm not arguing that it's technically impossible. It just doesn't make any sense: AAA94's route diagram clearly showed his HSR line running via Gatwick, not Redhill, but that's merely my pedantry talking. My key problem is that the primary goal is to provide an "HS2 London Bypass", yet the suggested route is much longer than simply using HS1. If capacity should become an issue, you can easily four-track HS1 from Stratford to Ashford if necessary. (Beyond Stratford, the new tracks could form the link with HS2 as HS2-to-Europe services would probably use Stratford as their London stop.)

There simply isn't enough physical distance between the major conurbations south of London to justify full-on HSR. I think upgrading some orbital lines ICE-style is therefore more viable. We know it's possible to build 140mph commuter stock, so that's not at issue.


Someone would need to work out how to dual-power from OHLE and the existing 3rd rail, or just use the 375s with pantographs on that particular route.

If you upgrade the Redhill-Tonbridge route to high speeds, you have to use OHLE and high-voltage AC power. (These lines are slow. Third rail electrification is what most metro networks use. It's not suited to high-speed trains.) Dual-voltage trains would suffice for local orbital services, although passing loops would likely be needed at most of the stations to ensure HS2 services aren't held up.


The section from Gatwick to HS2 would be tricky and a new build, but I think that section would financially justify a new build more, as Gatwick and Brighton to the north would generate more traffic than Brighton and Gatwick and the rest of the country to the continent (possbly), and a Gatwick - Heathrow shuttle would go down a storm.

Agreed. The Brighton Main Line corridor is ripe for an ICE-style upgrade. However, the M23's original corridor right into Clapham is still available—the land was bought, but the new motorway section was never built. The land has no housing on it that I can see; it's just light industrial sheds, trading estates and the like. I suspect this would be a more likely routing. A connection between Gatwick and Heathrow is almost in place already: Redhill—Guildford—Staines—Heathrow (via Airtrack.) Upgrade as much of the route for 140mph running and you're golden!

And traversing the north downs is not impossible - The M25 does just that and for environmental impact reasons would be a good alignment to take.

The North Downs ridge is broadly on an east-west axis. The M25 traverses the North Downs twice, but on a relatively short north-south axis. (If you've ever driven down to the A21 from Junction 3 of the M25, you can't help but notice it. It's a good thing rubber tyres cope so well with gradients!) The proposed route would need to cross it on an east-west axis. This would require some heavy-duty civils work. Given the already marginal BCR for the route, I honestly can't see this happening.

... If you want to bypass London, HS1 is far more direct and has room for widening should that be necessary. It's also a lot more direct than a bypass running west, south then east around London. ...
Does that mean, loosely speaking, building a new HS line due North from somewhere near Ebbsfleet? And then striking Westwards once well clear of London.

That seems to me the cheapest way to go around London if an aim is to provide for HS nonstop trains from the Midlands to the Chunnel.

ok i understand where your coming from, here's a revised map. i think a southern bypass would be more viable unless towns like welwyn and st albans and stansted airport were included. heres a map showing all possible routes.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/allpossibleroutestobypasslondon.jpg

note-some routes are more probable than others, i think the south route via weybridge,guildford,gatwick and tonbridge would be best.
or via weybridge, leatherhead,redhill,gatwick and tonbridge.

if the route was going to be north, id have it split from the mainline south of banbury to luton and luton airport, stevenage, stansted airport,chelmsford, basildon and joining back onto the hs1 at ebbsfleet.
just my opinion, im open to other thoughts to improve my maps.

thoughts?

As I said, I'm not arguing that it's technically impossible. It just doesn't make any sense: AAA94's route diagram clearly showed his HSR line running via Gatwick, not Redhill, but that's merely my pedantry talking. My key problem is that the primary goal is to provide an "HS2 London Bypass", yet the suggested route is much longer than simply using HS1. If capacity should become an issue, you can easily four-track HS1 from Stratford to Ashford if necessary. (Beyond Stratford, the new tracks could form the link with HS2 as HS2-to-Europe services would probably use Stratford as their London stop.)

I agree.

There simply isn't enough physical distance between the major conurbations south of London to justify full-on HSR. I think upgrading some orbital lines ICE-style is therefore more viable. We know it's possible to build 140mph commuter stock, so that's not at issue.

I can only think of international trains fully bypassing London, domestic ones from the south coast and Gatwick, heading north various places, and a shuttle between Gatwick and Heathrow, as viable services in their own right, and whether these would justify the cost of building the infrastructure at all is a serious doubt.


If you upgrade the Redhill-Tonbridge route to high speeds, you have to use OHLE and high-voltage AC power. (These lines are slow. Third rail electrification is what most metro networks use. It's not suited to high-speed trains.) Dual-voltage trains would suffice for local orbital services, although passing loops would likely be needed at most of the stations to ensure HS2 services aren't held up.

The maximum speed for 3rd rail is 100 mph - the linespeed between Tonbridge and Ashford, and that I doubt will change, NR would never find a reason to evolve the 3rd rail technology to do so. Because the BCR is so low the only way improve that route would be to install OHLE and ETCS at the next renewals, and hope there are enough dual stock for the local services or fit the OH equipment on to the rest of the 375s, and increase the linespeed of the existing track to 250-300km/h. This would also avoid planning inquiries over that section. There are already passing loops at Headcorn, Paddock Wood and Tonbridge, perhaps another could be installed at Edenbridge.

The North Downs ridge is broadly on an east-west axis. The M25 traverses the North Downs twice, but on a relatively short north-south axis. (If you've ever driven down to the A21 from Junction 3 of the M25, you can't help but notice it. It's a good thing rubber tyres cope so well with gradients!) The proposed route would need to cross it on an east-west axis. This would require some heavy-duty civils work. Given the already marginal BCR for the route, I honestly can't see this happening.

True, but all new build lines are pretty heavy duty engineering, and the hill at junction 8 on the M25 is a good indicator of the gradient required, which high speed lines can get near to. This particular bit would probably need a stretch of tunnel though, whatever alignment was chosen.

Nonetheless I agree with you that if such a proposal ever got built it would be after a direct link through the centre of London had already been created, as that is now the easiest option. Assuming they build HS2, then all a continental link requires is working out how to join HS1 and HS2. Even if that means a tunnel for the entire link that would be cheaper than building a 100 mile London by-pass.

i still think a south route via heathrow weybridge/woking guildford ,tonbridge and gatwick would be justified.

the customers living in these areas make up the most of the out of london customers which use heathrow and gatwick. plus, brighton, hove, southampton and pourtsmouth will most probably be more likely to use the link. southampton airport customers will also be more likely to the line. were talking millions of extra people using the line if its built south rather than a tunnel through north london or a north of london bypass.

southampton, pourtsmouth, brighton, bognor regis, crawley, guildford, woking, basingstoke and bournemouth will be more likely to use the line because they wouldnt have to travel all the way ton london to get to it. theyd be less likely to fly to places.

having stops at ,heathrow,guildford, woking and gatwick, would mean interchange with the brighton mainline, south western mainline and great western mainline whick bring millions of pottential user of the line. this would justify the cost. which wouldnt be more than it cost to build hs1 for a line of relativly the same distance reaching millions more customers.

southwest trains, fgw and southern, could run shuttle services from these settlements in the south(west). to the hsr station like south eastern and southern do to ashford. also southwest londoners would probably take a train to gatwick, woking/weybridge or heathrow rather than go into central london.

plus its also a gatwick heathrow connector which is viable on its own. so an extension of this and upgrading to hsr would be be viable.

thoughts?

Much as I like the idea of extending HS2 through Heathrow, Gatwick, and on to the Channel Tunnel, and the easier access to high speed rail that this would bring to the South of England, the project would have to compete with so many others for public funding, that it's realistically never going to happen. It would be behind the other high speed rail priorities of:

HS2 - London - Birmingham (just look how long this has taken to get this far)
HS2b - Birmingham International to Trent Valley WCML
HS2c - Birmingham centre - Stafford
HS2d - Stafford - Manchester
HS2e - Leeds - Mancheser - Liverpool
HS2f - Stafford to Preston
HS2g - Preston to Glasgow / Edinboro
HSXC - Birmingham - Derby - Sheffield - Newcastle
HS3 - London - Nottingham - Sheffield - Leeds - Edinboro
HS4 - London -Bristol - Cardiff - Swansea

If we're honest, just to get that far in our lifetimes would be amazing, and there will be lots of arguements along the way about routes and priorities.

I've listed these in the order I think they would get built (if ever), but the Government in the future may decide high speed rail isn't a priority at all, and focus on sorting out major bottlenecks in the traditional rail network (afer the London - Birmingham HS2 which is essential).

In this case, my priority for sorting out the bottlenecks would be as follows:

1) Birmingham New Street by-pass or new station in central Birmingham (would benefit cross country travel and West Midlands commuting)
2) Midland main line - new London platforms, and 4 tracking up to Nottingham and derby
3) railway connections and infrastructure in Sheffield
4) railway connections and infrastructure in Leeds
5) alternative route for the southern part of the East Coast Main Line

Perhaps posters in Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Scotland and Wales might make a case for alternaive schemes, but all of the above are rapidly approaching crisis point, with no works scheduled to resolve the problems and no electrification plans either.

So, with all the above needs, what chance of a high speed line south of London?

... It would be behind the other high speed rail priorities of:
HS2 - London - Birmingham (just look how long this has taken to get this ...

A new right of way of
HS2 - Purfleet Triangle - Stansted - Birmingham International
seems a much better route for a first HS2 for the money.

With continuations from Purfleet to provide a HS service
From Birmingham Intl to St. Pancras via Stansted (the very high speed more than makes up for the extra distance),
AND a second non-stop HS service
From Birmingham Intl to the Continent via the Chunnel.

Neatly provides TWO hugely needed services for the price of one with a relatively cheap "green fields all the way" construction.

i dont know about stansted, i suggested a route via stansted and everyone said it would be too indirect and were quik to decide against it. i think a route via, heathrow, oxford and following the m40 to bham having stops at either oxford or banbury would be the best route to bham ?

i suggested with a route to stansted, using the lea valley corridor but then where would the terminus be? st pancras? but then where would mml services be diverted? a route west out of london out of euston WCML then a flyover at old oak common/willsden jct to the GWML out to heathrow then northwest to the m40 and birmingham.

From Birmingham Intl to St. Pancras via Stansted (the very high speed more than makes up for the extra distance),


Not so, if HS2 was built to Stansted, Birmingham trains would be going the wrong direction, and the total extra distance would be about 50km, which is about 10 minutes at 300km/h. This negates half of the benefit of HS2 - a direct route gives a journey time of 45-50 minutes, 20 minutes less than the existing pendolino. If HS2 is built on a longer and therefore more costly route, not only is it more expensive but the benefit to the passenger is halved. If the HS2 trains stopped at Stansted the journey time would be the same as the pendolino - that would make for some great headlines. "£30bn for a scenic greenfield detour and its still as slow!" Add to this that every train from the north has the same extra 10 minutes on its journey, and it looks even less attractive.

I can't see the justification for including Stansted on HS2, it is a costly detour, impacting travel times for little benefit, when common sense says Stansted should be linked to a more appropriate route - the ECML, or even an HS3. Not to say that the airport should be totally disconnected, but the primary routes should serve their primary functions first or they will not achieve a sensible benefit/cost ratio to obtain funding.

If the route for HS2 goes straight into central London, as is most likely to be the case, and a link is dug to the start of HS1, domestic services get a quick run and only trains to the continent get slightly held up, and even then only because of the speed restrictions on HS1 at the London end (its something like 240km/h west of Rainham or thereabouts though I may be mistaken) - the route HS1 to HS2 would actually be as near to the straightest route as possible.

why is there even a debate of how to link HS2 with HS1, surely you do it via a small link at Primrose Hill/Camden. This is of course dependent on there actually being a benefit linking to HS1.

Incidentally, HS2's consultants deliver their report on 31st December....busy Christmas for them!

I can't see Stansead being on the HS2 route to Birmingham. I think it's a much stronger candidate for HS3 to Nottingham and Sheffield.

There is, of course still some debate as to whether high speed trains should serve the airports at all!

yes the route from primrose hill to hs1 could work, but i dont think they would be able to build it to hs standards unless is was entirely in a tunnel.

and they will probably connect hs2 and 1 the whole point is to free up capacity at airports and get more people on trains to europe than flying, and of course so we can get everywhere quicker.

i recon they will probably do a tunnel from the WCML corridor to hs1.

though my prefered route would be south from heathrow to guildford gatwick and ashford.

i think it will be more probable that the government will opt for a cheaper build hs3, branching off hs2 at tamworth on my route, or rugby on other routes northeast to derby, east to emi northeast to nottingham then north to sheffield, leeds and west to leeds airport and further west to bradford or just to leeds. or continuing north to harrogate, middlesborough and newcastle. but i think the birmigham/tamworth leeds/bradford will be built first heres how it could look

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/hs1hs2hs3.jpg
thoughts?

^^ I would like to see a better Manchester-Sheffield route. The current one via Stockport thru the Hope Valley is awful!

I'm not sure of AAA's alignment. All journeys to London (apart from Oxford) are loopy, and that's especially true for the Midland branch. A loopy routing just takes away the advantage of HSR...

http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/politics/2009/10/crossrail_v_manchesterleeds_in.html

AAA94: Why go through Oxford and Banbury? It is longer and more expensive (as longer and nearer urban areas)

the routes to london are not 'loopy' they are exactly the same as what nr ar proposing except on nr's route the line pretty much follows teh existing WCML, ive gone for a new route via oxford and banbury. a route via oxford and banbury isnt much longer than a route via mk, northampton. but i can do a map with oxford and banbury if you so wish

trains wouldnt have to go to birmingham to get to teh midlands, there would be a junction after tamworth for london-leeds trains, the midland branch continuing to bham is just so that it allows for quiker journer times for trains travelling from the north to bham

the routes to london are not 'loopy' they are exactly the same as what nr ar proposing except on nr's route the line pretty much follows teh existing WCML, ive gone for a new route via oxford and banbury. a route via oxford and banbury isnt much longer than a route via mk, northampton. but i can do a map with oxford and banbury if you so wish

You have a few 'isn't-much-longers' here and there, and before you know it it's 'quite a bit longer' when you put them all together. Why bother with HSR if you can't use it to full potential with the most direct routing possible?

The route from Birmingham International to Tamworth is likely to be built to allow HS2 trains to continue further North to Manchester via the Trent Valley line anyway. It could follow the M42 alignment, so there wouldn't be too much opposition from NIMBYs and the route is reasonably straight forward to build (if ever these projects can be).

Extending to Derby wouldn't be too complex to build and could be used for faster cross country trains so is a real possibility.

To use the route as a high speed route for London to Sheffield trains though is different. It might be quicker than the dreadfully slow and overcrowded Midland MainLine route, but it's really not getting the maximum benefit out of high speed rail because of the extra time that the route would have over a more direct route.

Derby to London currently takes one and a half hours at best. Sheffield to London currently takes about 2 hours from memory, so I'm sure these times could be improved.

If it could be done relatively cheaply, it could be used as a short term fix, as a faster route, but not necessarily one with all of the attributes of a high speed route.

There is also a perceived longer term future need to alleviate the ECML which would not be addressed by this route.

I therefore don't think this is an alternative to a HS3 route direct from London to Nottingham to Sheffield and onwards to Scotland.

yes the route from primrose hill to hs1 could work, but i dont think they would be able to build it to hs standards unless is was entirely in a tunnel.

It would be.

An obvious trick would be to use this to provide a way of four-tracking both HS2 and HS1 by using the two outer tracks to provide the link, this avoiding the need to drill two new pairs of tunnels into both Euston and St. Pancras.

E.g.

Take four tracks up from (say) Ashford all the way to Stratford International. Just beyond the station box, you build suitable crossovers so HS1 Domestic trains can switch to the original tunnels and proceed into St. Pancras. The outer tunnels then diverge from HS1 and head off to HS2 near Primrose Hill where they now become the 'slow' lines for HS2. This also reduces the tunnelling costs into Euston's HS2 platforms as you'd only need to worry about two tracks. Birmingham—Paris services would simply use Stratford International as their 'London' stop, before switching to the fast lines.


...the whole point is to free up capacity at airports and get more people on trains to europe than flying.

That's the logic for France's TGV, but the UK's need for HSR is to increase capacity. Both the West Coast and East Coast Main Lines are already pretty damned quick compared to most EU rail routes. (Most of Italy's classic lines barely manage speeds above 80mph!)

Even Network Rail have admitted in their own study that there's no real justification for HSR to the West Midlands alone: the difference in journey times simply wouldn't be that great. You need to go a lot further for the line to be attractive. Journey times are key. If you're going to build an HSR that goes all around the houses, you're throwing away the only advantage HSR has: faster journeys.

though my prefered route would be south from heathrow to guildford gatwick and ashford.

People rarely commute by plane, so where would the regular traffic come from? Neither Guildford nor Ashford have populations the size of Birmingham or Greater Manchester.

Furthermore, Guildford is already linked to Gatwick (VXC services via Reading), while the proposed "Airtrack" project will also link it with Heathrow. The distances are relatively short from Guildford, so HSR won't reduce the journey time by much.

A cross-country HSR route to the West might justify a southern Home Counties HSR line, but if you're going to build a load of tunnels anyway, you might as well just bite the bullet and build the line right through London—with one stop at TCR—and link up with HS1 somewhere on the surface between Stratford and Ebbsfleet. Plenty of open space there.

You have a few 'isn't-much-longers' here and there, and before you know it it's 'quite a bit longer' when you put them all together. Why bother with HSR if you can't use it to full potential with the most direct routing possible?

i just chose to have the route bham via banbury and oxford, i dont really care about that tbh.

a route branching from rugby probably wouldnt be enough in the longrun to releive the ECML but for the first 10-20 years of the hsr line branching at rugby, i think it'd be fine. remember the trains to leeds/bradford and edinburgh wouldnt be needed as much naturally freeing up capacity on the line. eventually when the line would be at capacity a route to london branching before leicester would probably work via peterbrough, cambridge stansted stratford then into euston and st pancras.

a initial HS3

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/hsas.jpgg

b middle HS3

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/hsas8.jpg

the line could use upgraded ECML lines from leeds to newcastle

AAA94 - congratulations on the impressive maps again!

It will be very interesting to see the proposed HS2 route in December. If the route goes anywhere near Rugby, than I think the rest of your predicted routes could be close. There would be big advantages with the light blue XC route from Birmingham International to Nottingham and the yellow HS3 route from Rugby you have drawn as:

(1) Neither route is particularly long, so could well be more affordable
(2) They both could use existing or previous transportation corridoors for significant parts of the route.

I would like to see the XC routes improved...
tbh I don't see any whole new long distance high speed lines being build due to time and cost etc...

I think all what will happen is that the signals will be upgraded on the W/ECML for trains to run at 140Mph and that will be it, sorry if that sounds pesemistic lol

Prof Andrew McNaughton hinted yesterday that the initial HS network could look like a Midlands diamond with a spur to London.

The diamond would be Birmingham (through-running) to Manchester to Leeds to Sheffield back to Birmingham. This (he hopes) would have the effect of converging the above cities and creating a "Northern Super-City" which could compete economically with London in Europe.

The future would see lines coming from that diamond to Cardiff, Scotland and Newcastle.

He also hinted that the stations would be so big that they cannot go in the middle of the cities. For example, the Stratford box is 1070m long, but ideally the stations would be 6000m long (including turn-outs and "slow-down" lanes). Clearly, most cities couldn't accommodate the Stratford box let alone anything bigger. The cost also would be a minimum of £300m. He said that it's easier to build as near as possible to the town and let the town grow towards the station. This actually causes economic growth too. HSLs could cause MAJOR change to the cities that we see today - if done properly.

Prof Andrew McNaughton hinted yesterday that the initial HS network could look like a Midlands diamond with a spur to London.

The diamond would be Birmingham (through-running) to Manchester to Leeds to Sheffield back to Birmingham. This (he hopes) would have the effect of converging the above cities and creating a "Northern Super-City" which could compete economically with London in Europe.

The future would see lines coming from that diamond to Cardiff, Scotland and Newcastle.

He also hinted that the stations would be so big that they cannot go in the middle of the cities. For example, the Stratford box is 1070m long, but ideally the stations would be 6000m long (including turn-outs and "slow-down" lanes). Clearly, most cities couldn't accommodate the Stratford box let alone anything bigger. The cost also would be a minimum of £300m. He said that it's easier to build as near as possible to the town and let the town grow towards the station. This actually causes economic growth too. HSLs could cause MAJOR change to the cities that we see today - if done properly.

It's an interesting idea, however if cities are to change radically then you would hope that local authorities would be deeply involved in the planning process. You don't want a situation where national infrastructure undermines the quality of the urban environment/breaks communities etc. like often happened with the motorway building project.

I presume you mean a 600m station, not 6km?

He also hinted that the stations would be so big that they cannot go in the middle of the cities. For example, the Stratford box is 1070m long, but ideally the stations would be 6000m long (including turn-outs and "slow-down" lanes).

Six thousand metres?! When a full Eurostar set is only 400 m?

Out of town HSR stations would be a disaster.

The time savings made in the added speed will be lost getting to the stations.

Also, developments will spring up in areas that can only be reached by car.

Bad bad bad idea.

I'm not keen on out of town stations either. They would mean the stations would primarily be accessed by car while the areas around them would develop rather like areas near motorways do: low density car-serviced sprawl such as strip malls.

It's an interesting idea, however if cities are to change radically then you would hope that local authorities would be deeply involved in the planning process. You don't want a situation where national infrastructure undermines the quality of the urban environment/breaks communities etc. like often happened with the motorway building project.

I presume you mean a 600m station, not 6km?

Apparently, the local authorities DO want to get involved and they understand the requirements.

No, I meant a 6km station. Obviously, the actual station box does not need to be 6km, but bear in mind that the radius of a line designed for 400kph running is 7200m, and that the fastest points on the market at 230kph, this limits how you can design your stops.

I think (if I can read my notes accurately) that what he meant (and bear in mind that he is the CHIEF ENGINEER of HS2 - so he knows what he's talking about) is this:

1) The station platforms are off the through lines
2) The points need to be 3000m away from the end of the platform so that when the train slows down for the station, it doesn't impact trains behind.
3) This means that you have to at least quad track for 6km, but in the actual station itself, you need 6 lines (2 through, 2 for up and 2 for down) for a reasonably well serviced station.

This whole set up has to be virtually dead straight. How many cities do you know that have this kind of space available?

Does this help?

Out of town HSR stations would be a disaster.

The time savings made in the added speed will be lost getting to the stations.

Also, developments will spring up in areas that can only be reached by car.

Bad bad bad idea.

I think you miss his point. Cities are always evolving. Out-of-town stations start off as out-of-town but then they get integrated. When done properly, the economic growth is brought near the station.

Who says you have to use cars to get to where you need in the city? This is down to city planning surely? What about Tram lines - they are already in Manchester and Sheffield etc - the extension would be worth it. Other areas could have segregated busways as a minimum.

The point he made continuously through the lecture was this:

"there's no point building HS Lines unless you plan to run them FULL"

By that, he means 20 trains per hour, 400m long, 1100 seats (over 20,000 people). The only cities in the country where they might even contemplate building new inner city stations I suppose would be London, Birmingham and Manchester - but even this would seriously impact the business case.

You can't think of HS in the same way that you think about Classic lines. The Germans tried it this way, and apparently their "HS" average speed is similar to our Classic lines.

You need to be radical, otherwise the business case falls apart.

Personally, I think out-of-town stations would start off being awkward, but give it 20 years, and they will not be out-of-town any longer. They'll be the centre of thriving new business zones.

One more point, don't expect to see HS trains stopping at medium size cities (he gave Darlington and Sheffield as examples). HS Lines are about National economic importance, not regional importance.

Argue with this as much as you like - most of what I said is quoted directly from a man who has spent much time researching this. Most of us on this forum haven't...

I accept totally what you say.

If you go back far enough through this thread I posted what I thought would happen.

Essentially WCML ish alignment with stops near Brum and Manc airports. However, to get those 20 trains an hour I am not sure we will not ALSO see trains entering the city centres on old track.

From memory, although I may be correct, GMPTE have spoken about wanting to bring it into the city, they have been very involved with the DfT in drawing up their plans.

Suppose we will find out soon enough as the HS2 plans are out in the next couple of months.

At the moment my biggest fear is the reaction of the cities that are NOT going to be included. If the line does not go to Scotland, Sheffield, Liverpool or where ever, then their politicians may make a very lot of noise about wasted tax payers money etc etc.

Also, the Tories reaction will be important, will Thersa Villars agree to go along with their plans? I suspect she will actually.

I accept totally what you say.

Good - constructive discussions are always better!

If you go back far enough through this thread I posted what I thought would happen.

Essentially WCML ish alignment with stops near Brum and Manc airports. However, to get those 20 trains an hour I am not sure we will not ALSO see trains entering the city centres on old track.

Yes, I think this is one of two factors that will be incredibly important:

1) Classic lines will definitely pollute service on HS lines
2) Classic lines will force us to use modified trains which are smaller than commonly available European gauge trains. This (apparently) costs twice as much per train (ref: Eurostar as an example)

From memory, although I may be correct, GMPTE have spoken about wanting to bring it into the city, they have been very involved with the DfT in drawing up their plans.

Good luck to them - it will cost billions and probably won't be worth it.

Suppose we will find out soon enough as the HS2 plans are out in the next couple of months.

At the moment my biggest fear is the reaction of the cities that are NOT going to be included. If the line does not go to Scotland, Sheffield, Liverpool or where ever, then their politicians may make a very lot of noise about wasted tax payers money etc etc.

Legitimate concern. However, Prof McNaughton's point is that cities need to start pooling together to pull their weight internationally. If Brum, Mank, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield clumped together to make a super city (not necessarily building all over the green belts, but using good transport links to bridge the gaps), then that new super city would be incredibly powerful.

Also, the Tories reaction will be important, will Thersa Villars agree to go along with their plans? I suspect she will actually.

Another good point - although I think they will be forced to work within parameters that HS2 will provide them with, rather than blue-sky thinking.

The lecture I heard yesterday was profoundly sensible. It was an engineer's response to a difficult set of questions.

Out of town stations are certainly going to be cheap to build, but I have rather a lot of doubts whether they will be cost effective.

City centres work because resources are concentrated, thus generating economies of scale. Shops and businesses of various sizes, and civic functions all depend on each other, and they collectively generate enough concentrated traffic making public transport viable to operate.

An out of town station (at the start at least) will be very isolated. The station itself will not generate enough concentrated traffic to make itself fully accessible by local public transport. Most people would need to take 2 buses/trams in order to access the station, changing at city centre. It's only those people who live on the station - city corridor that collectively won't be affected. Those living equidistance between the station and the city centre but not on the corridor would probably only get a 30-minute interval service to the station, since non-radial bus routes can typically only support that level of service. The overall result is reduced accessibility and increased car use.

Then businesses are faced with a dilhema. If they chose a city centre location, yes they can share resources with other city centre functions, but getting to other offices would be a bit of a nightmare. If they locate their office next to the station, they are isolated from the rest of the city. For a start, employees would be much more likely to use their cars. Then you have your national businesses still separated from the rest of the city, and the benefit of these extra businesses to the local community is likely to be limited.

I don't think we need to build a 6km 6-track HSL through the city. Modifying the station and the approach to enable European-gauge trains to operate, and building bypasses shouldn't be prohibitely expensive (compared to full-on HSR infrastructure). If most trains only call at 1 or 2 intermediate stations, then the use of little stretches of classic lines would only slow the journey down by 10-20 minutes at most, which is more than offset by easy access to the station.

He also hinted that the stations would be so big that they cannot go in the middle of the cities. For example, the Stratford box is 1070m long, but ideally the stations would be 6000m long (including turn-outs and "slow-down" lanes).

Obviously, the actual station box does not need to be 6km, but bear in mind that the radius of a line designed for 400kph running is 7200m, and that the fastest points on the market at 230kph, this limits how you can design your stops.

Ah, you confused me with your terminology. I don't think of the trackwork approaching a station as part of the station, but you're right that it needs to be considered in the plans.

Prof Andrew McNaughton hinted yesterday that the initial HS network could look like a Midlands diamond with a spur to London.

The diamond would be Birmingham (through-running) to Manchester to Leeds to Sheffield back to Birmingham. This (he hopes) would have the effect of converging the above cities and creating a "Northern Super-City" which could compete economically with London in Europe.


Well bugger me, someone else who has realised that London must stop hoarding all the nation's eggs in its basket. Hurrah!



He also hinted that the stations would be so big that they cannot go in the middle of the cities. For example, the Stratford box is 1070m long, but ideally the stations would be 6000m long (including turn-outs and "slow-down" lanes). Clearly, most cities couldn't accommodate the Stratford box let alone anything bigger.


Station boxes like Stratford are dug from the surface downwards, but this isn't the only way to build such infrastructure; it's just the cheapest. Did he explain why these stations and approaches couldn't be built in tunnel?


He said that it's easier to build as near as possible to the town and let the town grow towards the station. This actually causes economic growth too. HSLs could cause MAJOR change to the cities that we see today - if done properly.

This seems a little simplistic to me. When the classic lines were built, there was no other choice for equivalent journeys and journey times: It was rail or horses. We have cars as an alternative today. I would be very surprised if the new stations aren't sited somewhere suspiciously close to an existing classic line for rail access.

The problem of having to deal with the UK's national loading gauge is certainly an issue, but giving up and building stations out on the periphery of major cities seems a little... cheap.

Another problem with this rationale is that the growth that does happen around out-of-town stations is often the result of a spurt of regeneration rather than slow, organic growth. The A21 between Catford and Bromley ran through open countryside right up until the 1920s. Bellingham's station served little more than open fields and the odd farm. Even today, Ravensbourne and Beckenham Hill are little better than rural stops.

Another problem is that nobody has really tried this approach for an entire city. Penge and Bellingham are one thing. Birmingham and Manchester are quite another. There's a real danger that the historic centres of these cities could suffer, their larger businesses gradually lured away by the new out-of-town "Development Opportunities". Those that remain will see their footfall dropping. These smaller businesses then suffer and the historic centre's entire character changes—possibly for the worse.

I'll grant that building a tunnelled station beneath, say, Newcastle Central could be diplomatically described as "a bit tricky", but we've had nearly 200 years of practice. We have a blank slate as far as HSR is concerned. We need to learn from the mistakes of those who came before us.

I don't think we need to build a 6km 6-track HSL through the city. Modifying the station and the approach to enable European-gauge trains to operate, and building bypasses shouldn't be prohibitely expensive (compared to full-on HSR infrastructure). If most trains only call at 1 or 2 intermediate stations, then the use of little stretches of classic lines would only slow the journey down by 10-20 minutes at most, which is more than offset by easy access to the station.

I'm not an expert so I won't answer your questions any more than I have already, except to say that slowing the journey down is missing the point. HSLs to be cost-effective have to be 100% utilised. This means 20tph. Connections to classic lines reduces this to 14tph (according to NR - Modern Railways Oct, and also Prof McNaughton).

The best way is a segregated way - anything else is compromise

I don't see why we can't have both city centre stations and out of town ones. There cannot be a one-size fits all approach. Manchester can accomodate a 400 metre platform extension to Piccaddily. Birmingham will need a new station, but no trains will need to go through at 350km/h because the likelihood is the fast trains will bypass the city entirely and only a terminus required. Sheffield may need a whole new station with high speed through running. Other cities will be left with their existing infrastructure, and shorter trains will have to serve them.

I doubt a new high speed line would acquire an out of town station as the sole substitute for a city centre station at any of the major cities.

I'm not an expert so I won't answer your questions any more than I have already, except to say that slowing the journey down is missing the point. HSLs to be cost-effective have to be 100% utilised. This means 20tph. Connections to classic lines reduces this to 14tph (according to NR - Modern Railways Oct, and also Prof McNaughton).

The best way is a segregated way - anything else is compromise

They don't need to be quite 100% utilised. Most of Europe's HSLs run above 50%, but few approach 100% LGV-Sud Est and LGV Nord possibly, yet some lines get less than 50%.

Segregated is best but that also doesn't mean a dead-straight line must be built through all city centres. LGV-Nord through Paris into Gare Du Nord is pretty much segregated entirely from local traffic, but its still built with the confines of the classic line's land, and doesn't have high speed as a result. LGV Nord remains one of the most successful HSLs in the world.

Nonetheless high speed traffic won't be entirely segregated, especially not to begin with as HS2 plan to run trains further north of Birmingham. It would be silly to wait until the next section is built to Manchester before having any high speed trains to Manchester.

Station boxes like Stratford are dug from the surface downwards, but this isn't the only way to build such infrastructure; it's just the cheapest. Did he explain why these stations and approaches couldn't be built in tunnel?

No, but he did say that tunnels on the open track are 5-6 times more expensive than building on the surface. I'd guess that stations (being wider etc) would be considerably worse (i.e. more than 5-6 times)


Another problem with this rationale is that the growth that does happen around out-of-town stations is often the result of a spurt of regeneration rather than slow, organic growth. The A21 between Catford and Bromley ran through open countryside right up until the 1920s. Bellingham's station served little more than open fields and the odd farm. Even today, Ravensbourne and Beckenham Hill are little better than rural stops.

Another problem is that nobody has really tried this approach for an entire city. Penge and Bellingham are one thing. Birmingham and Manchester are quite another. There's a real danger that the historic centres of these cities could suffer, their larger businesses gradually lured away by the new out-of-town "Development Opportunities". Those that remain will see their footfall dropping. These smaller businesses then suffer and the historic centre's entire character changes—possibly for the worse.


Well, I suppose the A21 corridor probably isn't similar really. Planning has moved on since the 1920s and while I kind of accept your point, Prof McNaughton specifically said that in this country, the Parkway concept has only been done properly ONCE (Bristol Parkway - his words, not mine). I'm guessing that they would prefer to model these Parkway stations on that model. He also said that this is something that the French are pioneering, we're not very good at it.


I'll grant that building a tunnelled station beneath, say, Newcastle Central could be diplomatically described as "a bit tricky", but we've had nearly 200 years of practice. We have a blank slate as far as HSR is concerned. We need to learn from the mistakes of those who came before us.

Yeah, I have to admit from an engineering point-of-view, I do think that tunnelling should have come on. In 1906/7, 3 new tube lines opened in London, and yet these days it seems to take an absolute age both to design and build.

Personally, I think that those tasked with HS2 have already looked into the history, but they also are looking into the future wanting to make some real difference to this country.

I'm not an expert so I won't answer your questions any more than I have already, except to say that slowing the journey down is missing the point. HSLs to be cost-effective have to be 100% utilised. This means 20tph. Connections to classic lines reduces this to 14tph (according to NR - Modern Railways Oct, and also Prof McNaughton).

The best way is a segregated way - anything else is compromise

But lack of accessibility is a huge compromise.

The reduction in tph is probably a result of flat junctions, which could perhaps be solved by grade-separate junctions (which would be more expensive, but likely not prohibitively so).

And putting my cynical hat on, I wouldn't be surprised if the out-of-town option is 'favoured' because developers can squeeze some quick juice out of it. A city centre location doesn't quite present such opportunities, but offer long-term organic growth for the whole community.

But lack of accessibility is a huge compromise.

The reduction in tph is probably a result of flat junctions, which could perhaps be solved by grade-separate junctions (which would be more expensive, but likely not prohibitively so).

All junctions are to be grade separated. The limit is down to the turnout speed and the lack of reliability on the classic lines.

Prof Andrew McNaughton hinted yesterday that the initial HS network could look like a Midlands diamond with a spur to London.

The diamond would be Birmingham (through-running) to Manchester to Leeds to Sheffield back to Birmingham. This (he hopes) would have the effect of converging the above cities and creating a "Northern Super-City" which could compete economically with London in Europe.

The future would see lines coming from that diamond to Cardiff, Scotland and Newcastle.

He also hinted that the stations would be so big that they cannot go in the middle of the cities. For example, the Stratford box is 1070m long, but ideally the stations would be 6000m long (including turn-outs and "slow-down" lanes). Clearly, most cities couldn't accommodate the Stratford box let alone anything bigger. The cost also would be a minimum of £300m. He said that it's easier to build as near as possible to the town and let the town grow towards the station. This actually causes economic growth too. HSLs could cause MAJOR change to the cities that we see today - if done properly.

Simple - build in those areas of urban desolation often found on the edges of city centres. Everyone's got them.

All junctions are to be grade separated. The limit is down to the turnout speed and the lack of reliability on the classic lines.

Hmm one would hope that in 30 years' time at least all the major classic lines would have had their signalling upgraded and bottlenecks would be improved one way or another. Or is this even wishful thinking?

Thanks for the clarification though. :)

Simple - build in those areas of urban desolation often found on the edges of city centres. Everyone's got them.

6km long peices of land? 1.07 km long peices of land? Which cities? Which areas?

IF a new station is built in Manchester, other than one possibly at the airport I would imagine that between Sports City and the city centre would be the obvious choice, plenty of empty land, plus decent Metrolink connections to the rest of Manchester.

Would stretch the city further east. From above the city centre would appear to stretch from Media:City in the west, about 5miles to Sports City in the East.

6km long peices of land? 1.07 km long peices of land? Which cities? Which areas?

I can think of huge tracts of deindustrialised around inner Glasgow, and I'm sure there are such spaces in the inner cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham.. but is there space for rail corridor to those spaces?

IF a new station is built in Manchester, other than one possibly at the airport I would imagine that between Sports City and the city centre would be the obvious choice, plenty of empty land, plus decent Metrolink connections to the rest of Manchester.

Would stretch the city further east. From above the city centre would appear to stretch from Media:City in the west, about 5miles to Sports City in the East.

Yeah that sounds very beneficial. Maybe find a use for the casino site? Would that involve a railway tearing it's way through built-up areas?

It would be very close to the existing WCML that passes through Stockport. Either existing tracks could be used, or tunnels would be required.

It would be very close to the existing WCML that passes through Stockport. Either existing tracks could be used, or tunnels would be required.

And you don't think it's too far from the city centre?

No, not at all.

You can walk from Ancoats, which is on the edge of what most would see as the city centre, to City's ground in less than 20mins. On a tram (which will run at least every 6mins) it will be 5mins away.

No, not at all.

You can walk from Ancoats, which is on the edge of what most would see as the city centre, to City's ground in less than 20mins. On a tram (which will run at least every 6mins) it will be 5mins away.

And someone said earlier, the city centres would grow towards the new HSR stations. So what about Liverpool and Birmingham? Are there realistic locations for an HSR station near the city centres, or will they have to use classic lines and existing infrastructure?

Whisper it quietly, but the Tories (who are the ones who matter) are not talking much about Liverpool in their HSR plans.

From experience of Moor Street, there is a shed load of land in that part of central Brum.

Moor Street station. New Street lines go underneath. Lots of space to the east on the latter approach.

However, the most likely surface approach into Birmingham is presumably the GWR route towards Moor Street via Dorridge and Tyseley. Trains could turn off north just past Tyseley to line up with the New Street line.


http://i35.************/ku7o0.jpg

You could run a line into Glasgow City Centre through the East End quite easily ( roughly following the u/c M74 and the huge existing rail corrider ), not that I really expect HSR to reach Glasgow in the next few decades.

Why cant we just go mental and build railways on top of other railways.

Is there some engineering or maintenance thing stopping this? I guess its the expense of closign the existing lines.

Would be enormously expensive and complicated.

Massive H&S issues.
Bridges, tunnels, stations..
Despite what has been said on here, I still think through the countryside we will see new tracks, existing tracks being used some of the time into cities.

Moor Street station. New Street lines go underneath. Lots of space to the east on the latter approach.

However, the most likely surface approach into Birmingham is presumably the GWR route towards Moor Street via Dorridge and Tyseley. Trains could turn off north just past Tyseley to line up with the New Street line.

Moore st.. That's the one with a huge brown brick monster of a viaduct carrying the line to it? So this would mean an HSR station at Moore St, but trains still having to pass through New st, and the classic lines. Do NR not prefer a spur to each city centre rather than a through route?

Ah poor Liverpool. I see plans are already afoot among the Tories to alienate entire cities. Stickin' to their strengths!

Surely it will be spurs into the Cities.

Likewise, I would imagine Liverpool would get a spur in reality, just the Tories are not mentioning them yet.

I do worry about how cities not in the initial plans will re-act. Could 'in fighting' amongst the northern cities hold them back again?

Surely it will be spurs into the Cities.

Likewise, I would imagine Liverpool would get a spur in reality, just the Tories are not mentioning them yet.

I do worry about how cities not in the initial plans will re-act. Could 'in fighting' amongst the northern cities hold them back again?

I personally don't think Liverpool should be left out, nor will it. By other cities, if you mean Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, then they will justifiably kick up a fuss but ultimately be left out. The reason being, isn't the whole point in a new build track to
A) relieve the WCML which will be over-capacity starting south of Rugby from 2020?
B) take passengers from the 2 busiest domestic air routes Glasgow & Edinburgh?

For their sizes, Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds to say the least are very poorly served by rail. But the government is so behind with meeting carbon emissions targets and keeping the country's vital infrastructure alive it can never improve services for these cities because it is too busy playing catch-up.

You could run a line into Glasgow City Centre through the East End quite easily ( roughly following the u/c M74 and the huge existing rail corrider ), not that I really expect HSR to reach Glasgow in the next few decades.

Definitely do-able but where would the terminus be? Central couldn't handle it.

I think the ideal location is Sighthill Park. A gaping hole just outside the city centre, with the Queen st tunnel emerging just to the west and an existing tunnel underneath (for transport links). And the st.rollox corridor to the east running the short distance to the edge of the city from where a clear run can be made south to england, east to edinburgh and maybe one day, north.

The added advantage is it aids the city centre's growth to the north - easily the most underdeveloped part of the city.

Why cant we just go mental and build railways on top of other railways.

It's been done! (Ah, the inventive Scots.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/HollowHorn/TGSE00050.jpg


http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1399&start=30


And some video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/scotlandonfilm/media_clips/clip_display.shtml?topic=transport&subtopic=land&clip_name=bennie_railplane_v&media_type=video

With regards the cities that may be missed off...

the is no way whatsoever the HS2 or the Tory proposals will please everyone. Not a chance.

Be it some area will have to wait another decade, be it another city will have more services, or even some cities are missed entirely, at some point we must accept that independent consultants are drawing up these plans, with no political bias.

It would be very helpful if all stakeholders could agree to lobby for whatever HS2 / Tories propose before they are announced, come the fine detail becoming available there will be potentially huge division will could harm this enormously.

Good old divide and conquer. If the north is divided by the proposals, instead of the area generally getting something positive nothing will come our way and that money be spent down south.

Definitely do-able but where would the terminus be? Central couldn't handle it.

I think the ideal location is Sighthill Park. A gaping hole just outside the city centre, with the Queen st tunnel emerging just to the west and an existing tunnel underneath (for transport links). And the st.rollox corridor to the east running the short distance to the edge of the city from where a clear run can be made south to england, east to edinburgh and maybe one day, north.

The added advantage is it aids the city centre's growth to the north - easily the most underdeveloped part of the city.

I have no idea if this makes it possible, but the distance from the middle of Central Station to the other side of the river is a little over 400m. And there are supports currently sitting unused beside the bridge leading in to the station from the time when it was wider. So, it is remotely possible that long enough platforms could be created, and remotely possible that there is space for said platforms and extra tracks in.

I have no idea if this makes it possible, but the distance from the middle of Central Station to the other side of the river is a little over 400m. And there are supports currently sitting unused beside the bridge leading in to the station from the time when it was wider. So, it is remotely possible that long enough platforms could be created, and remotely possible that there is space for said platforms and extra tracks in.

Good point! If the bridge was widened on to the old supports, platforms could concievably be extended out onto it. That doesn't address the capacity problems. I personally - to digress - would convert the neilston, ek, paisley canal, cathcart circle lines to light rail with a new terminus east of st.enoch. Then Central is freed up for commuter destinations outside the conurbation, and of course High Speed 2!

to be quite frank. out of town hsr stations are just not going to work. why do you think the victorians didn't go and build kings cross and waterloo out of london, and victoria and piccadilly out of manchester, because its just not going to work.

if we are going to do this properly and get the line feasable, we need to do this properly, if that means extending current stations, remoddleing approaches and so on, or building tunnels and underground stations then so be it.

but stations need to be in the center of the city, and prefferably through running.
we built the great stations we have to today, we built the snow hill tunnel in bham and the thameslink tunnels in london, it's not as if were doing something we've never done before.

this country built the first railways and the first underground railways for christs sake, so quite frankly, there is no question about our ability to do this. its simply because the. government can't be bothered.

No, it is nothing to do with the government not being bothered - much more acurately the population are not that bothered.

We get the government we deserve, fact is transport is not, and probably never will be a major issue at election times in the UK - if it was a major issue for the population as a whole then the government would act differently.

Reducing the cost of petrol would go down much better with mile more people in this country that building HSR across the country. OUR government simply reflects that.

Whisper it quietly, but the Tories (who are the ones who matter) are not talking much about Liverpool in their HSR plans.

From experience of Moor Street, there is a shed load of land in that part of central Brum.

well perhaps this time the tories will fairly distribute the benefits of this scheme. Manchester, Leeds etc will require spurs and Liverpool, being a major port and growing economic player will get the connections it needs and deserves. A token link to Manchester wont cut it and wont at the end of the day win votes.

There should be simultaneously plans to link all large conurbations. A link to Manchester, but not Liverpool would kill Liverpools emerging competitiveness before it gets started, as well as miss out on it economic opportunities.

Again, lets hope the tories surprise us.

well perhaps this time the tories will fairly distribute the benefits of this scheme. Manchester, Leeds etc will require spurs and Liverpool, being a major port and growing economic player will get the connections it needs and deserves. A token link to Manchester wont cut it and wont at the end of the day win votes.

There should be simultaneously plans to link all large conurbations. A link to Manchester, but not Liverpool would kill Liverpools emerging competitiveness before it gets started, as well as miss out on it economic opportunities.

Again, lets hope the tories surprise us.

Because Tories are all about fair distribution, right?

Just to add my two cents vis a vis the political situation. The railways in this country are no longer state-run. Whatever this means one thing is for certain, the railways are now operated under corporate practices and corporate contracts. Concerns that a politician can wade in, ignore the plurality of professional stakeholders and their widely publicised and well-put-together studies, and come up with an answer all of their own which is nowhere near sensible, are in my opinion unfounded.

The best example is electrification. In the early 90s a politician would have gotten away with deciding electrification is pointless - whereas now it lasts for two years before the industry forces a volte-face from the government. In the early 90s British Rail could not have invested in studying electrification if the politicians told them not to. Now the TOCs, ATOC, Network Rail, the ROSCOs, not to mention other NGOs, all have vested interests and are fighting for them, and investing in fighting for them. And they all conclude electrification is the way, and have effectively managed to point this out to the government.

The same is and will be true for high speed rail in this country. We will either get a very effectively designed HS2, or not at all. Precisely because the politicians cannot get away with doing anything too stupid, because they contracted out too much of the work. They may remain captain of the ship, but they will have to pay for the silence of their subordinates now, by buying out the contractors. All of them.

to be quite frank. out of town hsr stations are just not going to work. why do you think the victorians didn't go and build kings cross and waterloo out of london...

You, er, might want to do a little research before making such assertions. The London Underground exists precisely because the Victorians built most of London's termini in such bloody stupid places.

Waterloo isn't even in London: it's in Southwark, on the wrong side of the Thames and at some distance from the City. Why do you think the London & South Western Railway built the Waterloo & City Line?

King's Cross was built in what at the time was considered London's suburbia and is a bit of a walk from the City.

Paddington was built in open countryside. (There's a famous engraving of the station showing it surrounded by nothing but fields!)

but stations need to be in the center of the city, and prefferably through running.
we built the great stations we have to today, we built the snow hill tunnel in bham and the thameslink tunnels in london, it's not as if were doing something we've never done before.

Nothing is technically impossible. It's politics and economics which have the final say, not engineers. This was the case even in Brunel's day. The government is elected by the people. Ergo, if the government doesn't want to build something, or go that extra mile, it's only reflecting the will of the people who put it in that position of power to begin with.

We get the government we deserve. We get the services we deserve. We get the infrastructure we deserve. Stop blaming the government: they're only in power because WE put them there.

Because Tories are all about fair distribution, right?

:lol: Point, just hope they might have turned over a new leaf....

Sorry if this was covered much earlier in the thread but several months have passed and things might have changed. Has any indication been given to reusing any of the former Great Central mainline south of Rugby (and possibly north as well for a route up to Leeds)?

You, er, might want to do a little research before making such assertions. The London Underground exists precisely because the Victorians built most of London's termini in such bloody stupid places.

Waterloo isn't even in London: it's in Southwark, on the wrong side of the Thames and at some distance from the City. Why do you think the London & South Western Railway built the Waterloo & City Line?

King's Cross was built in what at the time was considered London's suburbia and is a bit of a walk from the City.

Paddington was built in open countryside. (There's a famous engraving of the station showing it surrounded by nothing but fields!)



Nothing is technically impossible. It's politics and economics which have the final say, not engineers. This was the case even in Brunel's day. The government is elected by the people. Ergo, if the government doesn't want to build something, or go that extra mile, it's only reflecting the will of the people who put it in that position of power to begin with.

We get the government we deserve. We get the services we deserve. We get the infrastructure we deserve. Stop blaming the government: they're only in power because WE put them there.

the origional plan for the london and sw railway was for a station at waterloo bridge and then the mainline would have continued to the city

and, most mainlines had station on the city periphery and the center, eg

LNWR, euston and broad st LSWR waterloo, london bridge LNER kings cross, moorgate and so on.

however since then cities have changed and got bigger, and for a new hsr station to be built out of the city center or near the city center is just out of the question, one of the main advantages and advertising points for rail opposed to flying is that it gets you right into the city center, and noone really has to travel far to get to them.

and tell me one political party which has a chance of getting elected that would spend millions of £ on building huge hsr stations in city centers? or spending that much taxpayers money on anything that needs to be done. no they just go and spend it on the selves and claim our money for thier things, the fact of the matter is there is no political party that has the balls to spend a large amount of money on anything or take risks, so really we have a vote but its meaningless, because most parties policies are practically the same, im not about to go on some political rant because its completely off subject.

the point is, this is nothing to do with who votes and the will of the people, its to do with the parties them selves, there is no real right wing tories of left wing labour anymore, its all pretty much in the middle. and really who ever we vote for there would be no radical change, unless some barbaric party like the BNP were voted in, and i hope to god that never happens.

the fact of the matter is,
hsr stations need to be in the city centers. fact

Sorry if this was covered much earlier in the thread but several months have passed and things might have changed. Has any indication been given to reusing any of the former Great Central mainline south of Rugby (and possibly north as well for a route up to Leeds)?

Quoting Prof McNaughton, chief engineer of HS2: "None of the existing lines are straight enough"

He also talked about using brand new alignments.

I suspect that we will see a hybrid of approaches. We'll probably see the line use available corridors in cities big enough to warrant a station, and we'll see new alignments in the countryside.

HSLs are also capable of much steeper (3.5% rather than 1%) tracks than Classic rail, meaning that you'll generally see them going over hills rather than through or round.

I have no idea if this makes it possible, but the distance from the middle of Central Station to the other side of the river is a little over 400m. And there are supports currently sitting unused beside the bridge leading in to the station from the time when it was wider. So, it is remotely possible that long enough platforms could be created, and remotely possible that there is space for said platforms and extra tracks in.

I think it would be better to build a completely new terminus on the bridge/approach to Glasgow Central. There'd be room for plenty of platforms and the current station could be used as a concourse and whatever else you want to go in there.

the origional plan for the london and sw railway was for a station at waterloo bridge and then the mainline would have continued to the city
And the original plan for the City & South London Railway (i.e. the original section of the Northern Line) was for it to be cable hauled throughout. Much like the London & Blackwall Railway (now part of the DLR) was on its opening.

No plan has ever survived contact with the enemy.


and, most mainlines had station on the city periphery and the center, eg. LNWR, euston and broad st LSWR waterloo, london bridge LNER kings cross, moorgate and so on.

Waterloo is a long walk from the City. It's opposite Westminster. Broad Street was built at staggering cost, made a mint until the electric tram took away most of its business (as it did for Ludgate Hill), and neither London Bridge (Southwark) or Kings Cross (Camden) were in the City when built either. Euston is even further out.

Moorgate was originally an open-air station, also built at staggering expense. £500 / sq. ft. is a lot of money today, but that was the price for Bank when that station was built in 1900.

Building a new central London station on the surface, or using a top-down construction method to build one, is going to be unavoidably expensive. The sensible solution is to build it underground as a through station with no termination facilities—like central London stations on Thameslink, only faster and probably four-track—so that you don't have to build as much station to begin with. No need for double the platforms. No need to allow trains to be turned back. This is the only sensible option for a new "London Central" station. The same argument is likely to apply to other major UK cities too.


and tell me one political party which has a chance of getting elected that would spend millions of £ on building huge hsr stations in city centers?

No political party wants to put off its voters. New Labour have made two huge U-turns in recent years on both electrification and HSR. Why? Because rail and 'green' travel have become fashionable and trendy.

The problem is that politics is now almost entirely reactive, rather than proactive. We've traded foresight and planning for endless crises and firefighting. This tends to lead to fits and bursts of splurging on new infrastructure, which looks cool and makes for great photo opportunities. ("See? We're building NEW railways!") Bread and butter maintenance and improvements tend to be sacrificed on the altar of infrastructural bling.


no they just go and spend it on the selves and claim our money for thier things

The MPs' expenses scandal is a distraction. Compared to the mind-boggling robbery committed by Brown's chancellorship, the shortsighted, short-termist banking industry and the EU—whose own accountants have failed to sign-off on their own accounts for fifteen years now—a few thousand quid here and there is peanuts.

The government's PPP and PFI thefts alone have cost us billions, and we're stuck with them for 30-odd years. Our hospitals and schools can no longer put off building maintenance or other infrastructure payments: they're tied into their PFI contracts. The only cuts they can make are in staffing. That is the legacy of Brown, Blair and Major.

The LibDems might not be perfect, but at least Vince Cable actually saw the banking crisis coming. (And they're the only party willing to at least consider electoral reform too.)


the fact of the matter is, hsr stations need to be in the city centers. fact

You'll get no disagreement from me on that score.

Sorry if this was covered much earlier in the thread but several months have passed and things might have changed. Has any indication been given to reusing any of the former Great Central mainline south of Rugby (and possibly north as well for a route up to Leeds)?

There are significant stretches of the Grand Central that could be used, but as Jang0 pointed out none of the victorian-built lines are straight enough. So much re-alignment would need to take place that it may not prove any cheaper than building on virgin land. It would look like the south-east coastal mainline in Spain, check it out on Google Maps. You can see how significant stretches of new alignment are still needed even when trying to use using an existing one. And Spain has not upgraded that particular route for 350km/h+, otherwise they would have just built another line entirely.

At last these discussions have got around to talking about the politics of high speed rail. There are many Tory seats in the home counties like Buckinghamshire, and high speed 2 could go straight through the County without stopping. That situation will be replicated elsewhere along the full route. How do you "sell" the scheme to the communities along the route, who get all the blight of the construction, but none of the benefit. Is there any chance of running high speed commuter trains on the route, or will it be fully segregated?

We here that the success of high speed rail is dependant upon fast journey times with very few (if any) stops. In reality it looks like that will mean stations at London, Heathrow, Birmingham International and Manchester for High Speed 2. For anyone wanting to travel from anywhere else, is it just tough - no benefit for you?

If the diamond formation lines are ever built, it could mean additional high speed stations at Sheffield and Leeds, but surely stops at other towns and cities in between would be avoided in order to keep the routes high speed. Another poster even said that Professor McNaughton suggested that Sheffield was a small city that therefore might not warrant a high speed station. As it's one of England's top 5 cities, there's not much chance for anywhere else then!

And by the way, the train will only stop on the edge of the cities, so you have to find your own way from there.

High speed lines are also seriously high cost. Sinking so much of the transport budget into contentious schemes, where there could be huge public outcry, with so little local benefit for the constituencies along the route would be very high risk politically.

So many of the routes suggested on this forum have sought to link locations and routes where there are currently bottlenecks or gaps in the railway infrastructure. But given that high speed rail would by-pass anything but the largest cities, most of these lines would not work as high speed lines.

Perhaps we need to spend our finite railway budget elsewhere, such as electrification, new classic rail routes to remove bottlenecks and enhance access where it is genuinely needed (Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds spring to mind.).

And what about all those voters who have to stand on a lengthy commuter train each day. How do the politicians explain to them that the railway budget for the next 15 years is being spent on a high speed line linking London, Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester, so there is no budget left to improve their line?

I read the feedback from Professor McNaughton's comments with great interest. If the reports are accurate, then the case for high speed rail is not proven, and it's created huge doubts in my mind as to whether new high speed rail lines are the right approach.

Whisper it quietly, but the Tories (who are the ones who matter) are not talking much about Liverpool in their HSR plans.

From experience of Moor Street, there is a shed load of land in that part of central Brum.

In Central Birmingham, there is loads of land to the North of the current WCML which enters central Birmingham from the East. The land can be seen below. Arup had the idea of a new Grand Central station to replace New Sreet, but Birmingham City Council have rubbished the idea of a railway station here. The old GW line to Moor Street can be seen coming from the South South East. The line was originally four tracks, but Moor Street might not have enough platform space.

http://http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=52.479613,-1.8883245&z=16&t=h&hl=en-GB

At last these discussions have got around to talking about the politics of high speed rail. There are many Tory seats in the home counties like Buckinghamshire, and high speed 2 could go straight through the County without stopping. That situation will be replicated elsewhere along the full route. How do you "sell" the scheme to the communities along the route, who get all the blight of the construction, but none of the benefit. Is there any chance of running high speed commuter trains on the route, or will it be fully segregated?

We here that the success of high speed rail is dependant upon fast journey times with very few (if any) stops. In reality it looks like that will mean stations at London, Heathrow, Birmingham International and Manchester for High Speed 2. For anyone wanting to travel from anywhere else, is it just tough - no benefit for you?

If the diamond formation lines are ever built, it could mean additional high speed stations at Sheffield and Leeds, but surely stops at other towns and cities in between would be avoided in order to keep the routes high speed. Another poster even said that Professor McNaughton suggested that Sheffield was a small city that therefore might not warrant a high speed station. As it's one of England's top 5 cities, there's not much chance for anywhere else then!

And by the way, the train will only stop on the edge of the cities, so you have to find your own way from there.

High speed lines are also seriously high cost. Sinking so much of the transport budget into contentious schemes, where there could be huge public outcry, with so little local benefit for the constituencies along the route would be very high risk politically.

So many of the routes suggested on this forum have sought to link locations and routes where there are currently bottlenecks or gaps in the railway infrastructure. But given that high speed rail would by-pass anything but the largest cities, most of these lines would not work as high speed lines.

Perhaps we need to spend our finite railway budget elsewhere, such as electrification, new classic rail routes to remove bottlenecks and enhance access where it is genuinely needed (Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds spring to mind.).

And what about all those voters who have to stand on a lengthy commuter train each day. How do the politicians explain to them that the railway budget for the next 15 years is being spent on a high speed line linking London, Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester, so there is no budget left to improve their line?

I read the feedback from Professor McNaughton's comments with great interest. If the reports are accurate, then the case for high speed rail is not proven, and it's created huge doubts in my mind as to whether new high speed rail lines are the right approach.

Its what ive been arguing all year, you take the Japanese example where they run an express, a stopping and a commuter service on the same high speed line, you just overtake the slower trains.

Lets face it the most likely scenario is a core HS network, then they will say "I can add another station here for only £30m" and it will grow through private investment.

Arup had the idea of a new Grand Central station to replace New Sreet, but Birmingham City Council have rubbished the idea of a railway station here.


What went through the minds of the Council decision-makers? Grand Central would have been brilliant for Birmingham itself, and for Britain. It would have had the capacity for existing services and platforms long enough to cater for HSR trains.

Instead, we're left with New Street, which will have a new ticket hall built above the same shit platform layout. :nuts:

the only other place in birmingham acutely close to the city center but by no means a city center station is a large peice of disused land by the edgebaston reservior

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/bhams.jpg

which is on the corridor leaving new st to the northwest, would mean the demolition and rehousing the buisnesses and warehouses around the main piece of land, but its dooable, the route could then go into a tunnel under the western part of the city center then coming above ground just after fives eye station and using this southern corridor out of birmingham, once ouf birmingham the line could strike southeast and serve leamington spa before continuing down to euston

the route out of the city to the north, could follow the existing lines out of new st to wolverhampton, once out of the urban area the line could continue on its course to manchester, liverpool and beyond.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/bhams3.jpg

the route with a through stn at edgebaston and branch to BHI, vs NR proposal.

unless theres a parkway station for bham, i think this is the only way we can get a nice big HSR station in bham, maybe not to the city center, but certainly close enough.

shuttle services could operate between the new edgebaston station and new st. i would mean tweaking the proposals slightly, so it doesnt serve BHI, but a branch line could easily be built from leamington to BHI.

heres how a line could look using the corridors into the new edgebaston stn

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/bhams2.jpg

Kettledrum - the advantage to those 'blighted' areas is the existing railways have loads of freed up capacity, enabling loads of additional trains on the older tracks for commuter services.

Bear in mind, we have to build extra tracks from London towards the Milton Keynes area if we are going to increase train frequencies on that route in the future as passenger numbers increase.

If we do not build the HSR lines, it will be the people in the home counties complaining about the fact the trains are infrequent, full etc. To enable them to get a better service we need to free up space on their tracks.

Kettledrum - the advantage to those 'blighted' areas is the existing railways have loads of freed up capacity, enabling loads of additional trains on the older tracks for commuter services.

Bear in mind, we have to build extra tracks from London towards the Milton Keynes area if we are going to increase train frequencies on that route in the future as passenger numbers increase.

If we do not build the HSR lines, it will be the people in the home counties complaining about the fact the trains are infrequent, full etc. To enable them to get a better service we need to free up space on their tracks.
Winning the hearts and minds of the people in the "blighted areas" will not be that simple.

Sure, there will be vastly improved services for the intermediate stations on the existing WCML, and this will hugely benefit the planned populaion growth in the South Midlands (e.g. at Milton Keynes), but what if HS2 is not routed near the existing WCML and the affected population does not benefit from more local services because the new route that goes through their locality is high speed only with no stops between Birmingham and London?

New lines built for speeds of say 125 mph (instead of the high speed line proposed) could also have a fast commuter service for intermediate stations, and be cheaper to build and be cheaper to run - and still release capacity on existing lines, so why go for high speed given the problems that the chief engineer has been outlining recently?

Currently the strategic reason for high speed is not clear, the business case is unproven, and money is very tight. It may be the most cost effective way to provide that extra capacity on the existing home counties lines is HS2 but this has not yet been demonstrated. It will need to be a very compelling arguement with benefits spread across all affected areas and the wider rail network.

We've all got excited at the prospect of high speed rail and drawn innovative new routes to serve new communities. These are clearly not going to happen. Councils have grouped together to become a pressure group to attract high speed rail to their areas. For all councils except Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinbugh this now seems pretty pointless. Now we find out that this isn't the idea of high speed rail at all. The sole purpose appears to be to compete with the airlines on Manchester to London routes and to free up capacity to provide more local services on the WCML. That's a hard sell.

HS2 will also surely take most of the railway infrastructure budget for years to come. So, great for Birmingham, good for manchester and good for Milton Keynes. For everyone else - you are the weakest link - you're left with nothing.

AAA94 - I'm familiar with the the Edgebaston Reservoir site. It's not too far from Birmingham City Centre, but I still think it's a long shot. Birmingham City Council have produced development briefs for Eastside (including the old Curzen St station) and also for the Wholesale markets site that is just south of new street and being vacated. Even though the council have ignored the railway transport infrasructure needs in the plans for these sites, I still think these are more likely (for a through station) and/or additional platforms at Moor street (for a terminus). Frankly, if Birmingham City Council don't play ball with these sites (which need redeveloping anyway and they aleady own, then Birmingham doesn't deserve a high speed station. Birmingham International is really in Solihull and that could be the only Birmingham destination.

Through running would be to the Trent Valley Line. If there is through running in central Birmingham, I'd be interested in why you think it would be on the route you've chosen.

Why go in from the South (already a full commuter route?) and not on the old GWR 4 track route from Solihull (where there's loads of space)?
Why go out North via Wolverhampton and not try a more direct route to Stafford via Walsall, Cannock and Rugely?

Winning the hearts and minds of the people in the "blighted areas" will not be that simple.

Sure, there will be vastly improved services for the intermediate stations on the existing WCML, and this will hugely benefit the planned populaion growth in the South Midlands (e.g. at Milton Keynes), but what if HS2 is not routed near the existing WCML and the affected population does not benefit from more local services because the new route that goes through their locality is high speed only with no stops between Birmingham and London?

New lines built for speeds of say 125 mph (instead of the high speed line proposed) could also have a fast commuter service for intermediate stations, and be cheaper to build and be cheaper to run - and still release capacity on existing lines, so why go for high speed given the problems that the chief engineer has been outlining recently?

Currently the strategic reason for high speed is not clear, the business case is unproven, and money is very tight. It may be the most cost effective way to provide that extra capacity on the existing home counties lines is HS2 but this has not yet been demonstrated. It will need to be a very compelling arguement with benefits spread across all affected areas and the wider rail network.

We've all got excited at the prospect of high speed rail and drawn innovative new routes to serve new communities. These are clearly not going to happen. Councils have grouped together to become a pressure group to attract high speed rail to their areas. For all councils except Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinbugh this now seems pretty pointless. Now we find out that this isn't the idea of high speed rail at all. The sole purpose appears to be to compete with the airlines on Manchester to London routes and to free up capacity to provide more local services on the WCML. That's a hard sell.

HS2 will also surely take most of the railway infrastructure budget for years to come. So, great for Birmingham, good for manchester and good for Milton Keynes. For everyone else - you are the weakest link - you're left with nothing.

Which in a roundabout way of saying it is exactly what I have been saying.

The biggest threat to this happening is not from the transport sec or treasury in my view but from area that will cmpaign againt it a their area will not be served.

HSR does not top every two min in Europe, will the transport sec have the balls to press through such a scheme in the UK?

Who knows, no one, not even the politicians do.

AAA94 - I'm familiar with the the Edgebaston Reservoir site. It's not too far from Birmingham City Centre, but I still think it's a long shot. Birmingham City Council have produced development briefs for Eastside (including the old Curzen St station) and also for the Wholesale markets site that is just south of new street and being vacated. Even though the council have ignored the railway transport infrasructure needs in the plans for these sites, I still think these are more likely (for a through station) and/or additional platforms at Moor street (for a terminus). Frankly, if Birmingham City Council don't play ball with these sites (which need redeveloping anyway and they aleady own, then Birmingham doesn't deserve a high speed station. Birmingham International is really in Solihull and that could be the only Birmingham destination.

Through running would be to the Trent Valley Line. If there is through running in central Birmingham, I'd be interested in why you think it would be on the route you've chosen.

Why go in from the South (already a full commuter route?) and not on the old GWR 4 track route from Solihull (where there's loads of space)?
Why go out North via Wolverhampton and not try a more direct route to Stafford via Walsall, Cannock and Rugely?

a north south route would be more direct for through trains travelling to scotland, the old eastside where grand central was going to be built is being transformed into a campus, i think edgebaston could be our only shot, unless the snow hill tunnel is quadroopled and there is a hsr station at moor st (partly underground, and all the virgin trains are diverted here and the trains to moor st could be diverted to new st, and trains can continue through running to the north following the M5 out of birmingham, heres how it could look,

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/bhamss.jpg

i think a through station at birmingham is probably best as it can offer more tph, e.g if everytrain from london to the north stopped at birmingham, and everytrain from north to london stopped at birmingham, with some relief lines at peak times, plus the virgin trains services, that would be something like 30tph, that would then cater for the manchester bham services, the scotland bham services aswell.

AAA94 - I'm familiar with the the Edgebaston Reservoir site. It's not too far from Birmingham City Centre, but I still think it's a long shot. Birmingham City Council have produced development briefs for Eastside (including the old Curzen St station) and also for the Wholesale markets site that is just south of new street and being vacated. Even though the council have ignored the railway transport infrasructure needs in the plans for these sites, I still think these are more likely (for a through station) and/or additional platforms at Moor street (for a terminus). Frankly, if Birmingham City Council don't play ball with these sites (which need redeveloping anyway and they aleady own, then Birmingham doesn't deserve a high speed station. Birmingham International is really in Solihull and that could be the only Birmingham destination.

Through running would be to the Trent Valley Line. If there is through running in central Birmingham, I'd be interested in why you think it would be on the route you've chosen.

Why go in from the South (already a full commuter route?) and not on the old GWR 4 track route from Solihull (where there's loads of space)?
Why go out North via Wolverhampton and not try a more direct route to Stafford via Walsall, Cannock and Rugely?

a north south route would be more direct for through trains travelling to scotland, the old eastside where grand central was going to be built is being transformed into a campus, i think edgebaston could be our only shot, unless the snow hill tunnel is quadroopled and there is a hsr station at moor st (partly underground, and all the virgin trains are diverted here and the trains to moor st could be diverted to new st, and trains can continue through running to the north following the M5 out of birmingham, heres how it could look,

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/bhamss.jpg

i think a through station at birmingham is probably best as it can offer more tph, e.g if everytrain from london to the north stopped at birmingham, and everytrain from north to london stopped at birmingham, with some relief lines at peak times, plus the virgin trains services, that would be something like 30tph, that would then cater for the manchester bham services, the scotland bham services aswell.

i think a through station at birmingham is probably best as it can offer more tph, e.g if everytrain from london to the north stopped at birmingham, and everytrain from north to london stopped at birmingham, with some relief lines at peak times, plus the virgin trains services, that would be something like 30tph, that would then cater for the manchester bham services, the scotland bham services aswell.

This would add approximately 6-8 minutes journey time for every passenger who wishes to travel from London to the north but isn't interested in Birmingham. Great for the passengers of Birmingham, providing they get a seat and don't have to wait for the next train. Extremely pointless for everyone else. And at great cost.

Birmingham can have it's own services to the north and south, just like at present. This also means only one approach into Brum is needed, and the expensive high speed track can be built on open farmland.

There is absolutely no need for all trains to call at Birmingham, just like there is no need for all south of France trains to call at Lyon.

http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2009/10/30/mp-s-advised-north-motorists-should-fund-manchester-upgrades-61634-25048389/ not going to be popular!

He is right about renaming the Manchester Rail hub though.

Crossrail for the north makes much more sense.

This would add approximately 6-8 minutes journey time for every passenger who wishes to travel from London to the north but isn't interested in Birmingham. Great for the passengers of Birmingham, providing they get a seat and don't have to wait for the next train. Extremely pointless for everyone else. And at great cost.

Birmingham can have it's own services to the north and south, just like at present. This also means only one approach into Brum is needed, and the expensive high speed track can be built on open farmland.

There is absolutely no need for all trains to call at Birmingham, just like there is no need for all south of France trains to call at Lyon.
but if you don't build a through route in Birmingham, it means passengers from the North do not have a high speed route to central Birmingham, so it's a bit of a missed opportunity. There's no reason why it shouldn't be considered alongside the more probable by-pass route through the open countryside. I'm expecting all sorts of excuses as to why it can't happen, but the engineering would be a piece of cake compared with the work being done in central London.

The Moor Street to Snow Hill route would need a new tunnel, but this is only 580 yards long and would enable the North-South route that AAA94 has drawn out. With that exception, the transport corridoors are already there.

North of Birmingham, the route could follow a similar alignment to the metro route to West Bromwich and then following the M5 North, or crossing Sandwell Valley and then a route via Walsall - Cannock to Safford.

South of Birmingham, the route could use the former 4 track trackbed of the old GWR route from Solihull - Olton - Tyseley to Moor Street. Only 2 of these tracks are currently in place, so the through route is a real possibility. The only real barrier that I can see is the 580 yard tunnel that would need building. The benefits of making central Birmingham as a HSR destination from the north would surely be worth it?

but if you don't build a through route in Birmingham, it means passengers from the North do not have a high speed route to central Birmingham, so it's a bit of a missed opportunity.

Not necessarily, a single spur is the concept used by Network Rail in their recent proposal. Services for the north and south use the same spur to the high speed line.

The most obvious route for the spur is along the water orton corridor.

The main issue with building through a city is noise and blight - nimbyism will get in the way of a surface route through the city. However the route you have proposed would not be suitable for high speed anyway, north or south. At best an alignment could be found for 200km/h, perhaps 250 at a stretch. The engineers at HS2 want 350km/h at least. Nonetheless, even a 200km/h alignment would have to deviate somewhat from the existing railway alignments, required compulsory purchase, which is expensive in a city.

Frankly it is a non-starter. The engineers are unlikely to repeat the excesses of engineering involved in HS1 - London had absolutely no suitable south-east approaches and required a totally new build to get to the city centre at speed. Hence the costly investment. There is no need for this approach in Birmingham - the area directly to the east of Birmingham is countryside, and not sea. All services that could possibly be envisaged for Birmingham can sensibly be provided without having to go through the city.

To recap, going through the city centre is unlikely because;

Costly
Alignment not good for very high speed unless tunnel throughout
Local NIMBYs (that would have a point IMO)
No operational benefit

if every train stopped at bham or even most trains did it wouldnt make that much of a difference, if you think about it all trains to the north call at either- warrington, stoke and stafford, and i almost guarantee that if the WCML went through central bham, all trains to the north would stop at bham.

6 - 8 minutes to stop at bham is nothing, having a spur restricts capacity and means a larger station would need to be built, a through station would mean a smaller station and potentially more tph.

the snow hill tunnel quadroopling, yes it would be expensive, but any city center hsr in bham would require a tunnel, whether it be moor st, the platforms would have to be entended well into the snow hill tunnel. and it would have to be extensivley rebuilt. and having it as a terminal station will at on the JT from the north to bham

having through station everywhere possible would be the best idea, a through station in manchester could aslo be built, the line would then travel north to burnley before continuing northwest to the lake district. a route with bham and manchester as through stations is shorter than the route proposed.

a through station in manchester could be built near the sportcity site, south of the site just shy of piccadilly, there is a large piece of disused land just off the approach to piccadilly, a station either through or terminal could be built here a route north out of manchester would be by the existing route past sport city and the northwest through colyhurst (tunnel or viaduct) probably viaduct.then out of the existing northern corridor through crumpsall then following the m66 out of the city, then the a56 to burnley then continuing north on my route. heres how it could look

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/myroutevsNR.jpg

heres how it could look (this shows nr's route)
through stations could be built with 4 platforms(2 islands) and 2 through lines 1 island for trains in one direction i.e: fasts and slows.

if every train stopped at bham or even most trains did it wouldnt make that much of a difference, if you think about it all trains to the north call at either- warrington, stoke and stafford, and i almost guarantee that if the WCML went through central bham, all trains to the north would stop at bham.

The WCML is very selective in where it's trains call at south of Liverpool and Manchester. Few trains stop at more than 3 or 4 stops, and this will likely continue on any HSR, as per best practice throughout the industry. For every train that needlessly stops at Birmingham you sacrifice a stop at another station. Granted Stafford may only need one train per hour between London and Manchester. So thats already one stop of 6-8 minutes. Then it is stopping at Birmingham as well. Thats 12-16 minutes. Plus a few more stops at Crewe and Stockport, and you've added 25-30 minutes to the journey.

The most efficient way to utilise capacity is to have the train stop at as few stations as possible yet still obtain a high loading factor. Evening rush hour Eurostars to Paris are full with no stops on the way - exactly how train operators like it. For the stations in between add another train. This way both trains are stopping at only the stations required - there is no redundancy, and both sets of passengers get a faster journey. In the case of the WCML the other train comes from another source - a comparison with Eurostar would be if a Birmingham to Paris train at approximately the same time but wasn't full stopped at Stratford and Ashford. Eurostar doesn't have the freedom to do this for many reasons but this kind of thing happens elsewhere and would be expected on any future HSR. Or there is the Japanese approach where there are fast services interdispersed with stoppers. The stoppers call at smaller stations where the passengers are typically not traveling as far and don't mind stopping more, but also I don't believe the stoppers stop everywhere - it takes a few stoppers to hoover up every station.

HSR cannot be treated like a metro service stopping everywhere unnecessarily. Besides, I am sure passengers at Brum would prefer to arrive 10-15 minutes before they depart, get on the train, sit down and make themselves at home before the train leaves, rather than getting on an already half full train, after a few hundred people have gotten off and out of the way, and then having to wait behind other passengers fiddling about with luggage and finding their seats etc. It is all in all a better experience for passengers at the big cities to have their own discrete services - faster, less stressful embarkation, and in the case of Birmingham, less blight on the city itself.

6 - 8 minutes to stop at bham is nothing, having a spur restricts capacity and means a larger station would need to be built, a through station would mean a smaller station and potentially more tph.

A spur does not resrict capacity at all on paper, in practice there is a slight impact. If there are 4 tph from London to Brum, and 4 tph from Brum to the north, then the London train turns off the main line and the Brum to the north train slots in to the gap the other train leaves. In the other direction the same thing happens. The technical maximum would be 7 tph per northbound, and 7 tph southbound from Brum. More than sufficient. The impact on the main line would be almost nothing. (e.g. London to Scotland train 4 minutes in front of London - Brum train, London Scotland train passes Brum spur, where 2 minutes behind it the Brum - north service joins at approximately 200km/h, which is itself 2 minutes before the London - Brum service has got to the spur; by the time the Brum - north service is up to linespeed it will be about 4 minutes behind the London - Scotland service - so no impact on line capacity. Meanwhile the London - Brum service is slowing to 200km/h for the turnout to the spur, this will add a minute or so, holding up the train behind it a little. So this approach effectively uses 1.5 train paths to accommodate both services). In practice I doubt more than 5tph in each direction would be needed. Northbound I suspect some services would serve Dudley and Wolverhampton as well and not use the available spur.

the snow hill tunnel quadroopling, yes it would be expensive, but any city center hsr in bham would require a tunnel, whether it be moor st, the platforms would have to be entended well into the snow hill tunnel. and it would have to be extensivley rebuilt. and having it as a terminal station will at on the JT from the north to bham

Snow hill would require a completely new tunnel thats correct, but this isn't the most expensive part, to get an HSR thrugh birmingham it will need probably 10-15 miles of HSR tunnel, along with 10-15 miles of elevated sections, trashing large areas of surburbia, and an HSR station will need to be built in there somehow as well. I estimate getting accross Brum in this way will cost about the same as Crossrail, or roughly half the entire budget mooted for HS2 section 1 thus far.

having through station everywhere possible would be the best idea, a through station in manchester could aslo be built, the line would then travel north to burnley before continuing northwest to the lake district. a route with bham and manchester as through stations is shorter than the route proposed.

I agree with you that it is preferable for the big cities to be directly on the mainline. The first investigation into any route should focus on this first. But my investigations quite obviously show to me that there is no way to get an HSR route through Birmingham or Manchester without doing a repeat of HS1, tunnelling.

a through station in manchester could be built near the sportcity site, south of the site just shy of piccadilly, there is a large piece of disused land just off the approach to piccadilly, a station either through or terminal could be built here a route north out of manchester would be by the existing route past sport city and the northwest through colyhurst (tunnel or viaduct) probably viaduct.then out of the existing northern corridor through crumpsall then following the m66 out of the city, then the a56 to burnley then continuing north on my route. heres how it could look

I think you need to do a larger scale proposal, if you did you would see how hard it is to actually put the route anywhere you are proposing without digging billions of pounds worth of tunnels. If you find a route that is satisfactory for your own specifications then I'll gladly take it all back, but I wouldn't accept it is possible unless I see a proposal showing the precise route proposed, that shows every building that needs to be demolished. I know this is pedantic but we all have Google Earth at our disposal and if we are that certain of our proposals then we can prove them. Also, whilst I'm not a nimby, I do object to large scale infrastructure projects burning through virgin territory (settle to carlisle) when an existing blighted corridor (M6) can be used to much less environmental impact.

Are you sure that the Water Orton route into Birmingham is wide enough to take HSR as well as existing rail services - or would that route also involve widening and demolition as it approaches central Birmingham - at least with the 4 track GWR route from Solihull, the route is already there and wide enough for extra capacity.

"The main issue with building through a city is noise and blight - nimbyism will get in the way of a surface route through the city. However the route you have proposed would not be suitable for high speed anyway, north or south. At best an alignment could be found for 200km/h, perhaps 250 at a stretch. The engineers at HS2 want 350km/h at least. Nonetheless, even a 200km/h alignment would have to deviate somewhat from the existing railway alignments, required compulsory purchase, which is expensive in a city."

What the engineers want and what can be afforded may turn out to be different. I agree that a through route through Birmingham would probably have the speeds you suggest, but my view is that a lower speed through route might be worth it.

I still feel all of this should be properly considered and costed in the current work being done by HS2 and shouldn't be too readily dismissed. There would inevitably be some compulsory purchase and some tunnelling but possibly not on the scale you fear.

Are you sure that the Water Orton route into Birmingham is wide enough to take HSR as well as existing rail services - or would that route also involve widening and demolition as it approaches central Birmingham - at least with the 4 track GWR route from Solihull, the route is already there and wide enough for extra capacity.

Yes it is fine. The route is 6-8 tracks wide, of which some tracks have been removed but the bridges remain. The existing lines and freight terminals would need rationalising. From a few km out of the centre the alignment is good for 125mph, and thats if a train can accelerate to that speed by then (all trains using the spur would be stopping at Brum or they wouldn't be on the spur)

The route through Solihull is good for 90-110mph if we are to use the alignment as it is and make use of the quad track layout.

What the engineers want and what can be afforded may turn out to be different. I agree that a through route through Birmingham would probably have the speeds you suggest, but my view is that a lower speed through route might be worth it.

I still feel all of this should be properly considered and costed in the current work being done by HS2 and shouldn't be too readily dismissed. There would inevitably be some compulsory purchase and some tunnelling but possibly not on the scale you fear.

I agree, it would not be a proper study if they did not. They will investigate such an option, and the amount of info about such an option provided in the HS2 report will show how far into such an option they went before it was discounted.

If there is not a lot of tunnelling and CP and it's therefore not built for HSR what is the point? There is a (sort of brand new) 125mph route through the west midlands already, the Trent Valley. Not that this should necessarily affect our judgement, but if we build a conventional speed section for 20 miles across a big city for our flagship HSR to the north then every railway engineer across the globe will be banging their head on the table wondering what planet the Brits are on. As various studies have said (NR, Greenguage, etc), to ignore the practices of successful HSR projects around the globe would be silly.

To put some figures on it, slowing down from 350km/h (HS2 aspiration) to 160km/h, and then reaccelerating to 350km/h would slow down a train by about 3-4 minutes. Travelling 20km across Brum at 160km/h instead of 350km/h costs an extra 4 minutes. If all trains stopped at Birmingham then slowing from the remaining 160km/h to stop, and start again would cost another 2 minutes, plus dwell time. An expensive white elephant if you ask me.

A high speed route through Brum would be better, but then we hit the cost issue of tunnelling etc. Forgive my cynicism but I think such a route will get a paragraph in the final report before being dismissed as too costly and ineffective and inefficient.

tunneling in manchester and bham would be very minor, the most expensive part of the bham through route would be the snow hill tunnel, but if there was a central london terminus in bham, so tunneling would have to be done, or radical extension. eastside is no longer an option the land has been sold and a campus is being built on it. the snow hill tunnel would be expensive to rebuilt but nowhere near as expensive as the hs1 corridor into london. the after the tunnel the existing corridors out of bham untill the M5 are there where the line would follow. assuming the line south of m'cr jct is built with 4 tracks. with fast trains only calling at major cities, e.g if bham and manchester were through stations. only and m'cr and b'ham.

getting into m'cr from the south is easy just follow the existing corridors from m'cr airport untill the piccadilly corridor right to the hsr station. north is harder. follow the existing corridor past sport city, then it gets harder. north of here there is a disused industrial site used as a car park. the line could go straight through here.and then out on the existing rail corridor out of manchester branching at castleton and continuing on my route. heres how it looks. north of mcr the south route is easy, out on teh existing corridor to m'cr airport

this is teh route from teh north
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w8/Albbie94/mcr.jpg


the route doesnt follw the settle calisle route, it follows the a65 untill the m6 corridor.

The best alignment I can find along that route through Mac has curves of less than 0.8km radius, or 130km/h in terms of permissable speed. Are you suggesting all trains stop at Manchester AND Birmingham? Along with the torutuous routes you are proposing Glasgow - London journeys will be increased by 20 minutes which will be much to the chagrin of the Scottish Parliament. It is not as if this is necessary either.

the route doesnt follw the settle calisle route, it follows the a65 untill the m6 corridor.

my mistake, the point is it is going through practically untouched countryside north of Burnley.

Channel 549 - Discovery Science +1 currently showing program about WCML upgrade.

If there is not a lot of tunnelling and CP and it's therefore not built for HSR what is the point? There is a (sort of brand new) 125mph route through the west midlands already, the Trent Valley. Not that this should necessarily affect our judgement, but if we build a conventional speed section for 20 miles across a big city for our flagship HSR to the north then every railway engineer across the globe will be banging their head on the table wondering what planet the Brits are on. As various studies have said (NR, Greenguage, etc), to ignore the practices of successful HSR projects around the globe would be silly.

In reality, we'll be lucky if the money is found for the high speed route from London to the Birmingham Airport area - that's all the politicians are really committed to at this stage. Anything more is a bonus.

It would make sense for a link to the Trent Valley route to enable trains trains to and from Manchester and the North to benefit from the faster journey times on the new high speed track. It would also make sense for the spur into Birmingham, but this may not be to the same high speed spec.

Longer term - who knows?

i wouldnt describe my route as 'tortoruous', no not every train but the majority of trains, with perhaps 1 of the 2 tph to edinburgh and glasgow stopping at either b'ham, or m'cr.

there would be through tracks at the stations in the cities
so lets assume all the trains will be double decker and 18 coaches.
all the passengars travelling to stations beyond bham(if the train stops at bham) or manchester travel at the top deck section this leaves the whole bottom deck free for people travelling to other destinations, by having through stations this aviods building large terminus stations in city centers,

if all trains from london terminated at either glasgow edinburgh and liverpool, only 4 large terminal stations would need to be built. assuming 24tph will use the line 2 tph would be direct services stopping nowhere but edinburgh and glasgow. 2 tph would stop at bham continuing to glasgow ,2 tph would stop at bham continuing to edinburgh,2 tph would stop at m'cr continuing to carlisle and stopping then continuing to glasgow 2 tph the same but to edinburgh calling at m'cr and carlisle, 2 tph would call at warwick and lemington continuing not stopping at bham, and stopping at stoke then continuing to liverpool docks these 12 trains would be the intercity trains

then south of m'cr airport, semi fasts could operate assuming the line is built with 4 tracks

4 tph could terminate at liverpool docks, and call at LHR, Bham, stoke, m'cr airport, warrington, john lennon int'l, and liverpool docks running between the 2 tph that would be the intercity trains running fast between stoke at liverpool
jt's of 1hr50minutes

4 tph could terminate at edinburgh calling at aylesbury, stoke, m'cr old rd, burnley, , carlisle and edinburgh

running between the 2tph running from bham to carlisle jct
the same would be offered for glasgow 2tph of stopping services calling at LHR, Warwick at leamington, m'cr airport,settle and glasgow. jt's of around 3hr20 minutes to glasgow 3hr10 to edinburgh

so essentially

thats 7 tph to glasgow

7 tph to edinburgh

7 tph to bham

6tph to LHR

6tph to liverpool

5tph to manchester

(the reason more trains would go to liverpool is because its a terminal station, all trains apart from 4 tph north of mcr airport call at mcr old rd.

there would be through tracks at the stations in the cities

Why? Reversing trains is very common in other countries, so why not here? Bear in mind that these are inter-city trains, with a small, single-leaf door at each end of the carriage. Dwell times will not be short. I've seen international Eurostar trains spend a good 10-15 minutes or so at Ebbsfleet. We're not building new Tube lines here.

Consider the following use cases:

1. The train isn't going to stop at the city.

The train can therefore stay on the HS2 trunk route *bypassing* the city. No problem. This route would be built primarily through open countryside, so not a problem.

2. The train is going to terminate at the city.

These services can leave the HS2 trunk route at a flying junction and join a spur into a city-centre station. As through trains won't call at this station, it doesn't need through lines, so a couple of platforms will be all that are needed. (Think Waterloo International.)

Remember, these trains will need a fair distance to decelerate and accelerate. You can't expect to slam on the brakes just outside Manchester Piccadilly and get from 350 km/h to zero in under a mile. This means you do NOT need HSR-grade station throats! You can get away with tacking two lines onto the existing routes for the section closest to the station. As you get further out, you ease the curves and raise line speeds until you're running at high speed by the time you get to the HS2 trunk route.

3. The train needs to stop at the city, before continuing to another destination.

Three options here:

A: Build a spur (as for case 2), and simply reverse the trains out of the station, back to the same junction. You'd need a full, grade-sep junction for both directions to make this work, but that's still a damned sight cheaper than building a brand new line right through the middle of a major conurbation.

B: Instead of a spur, you build a line through the city, (mostly in tunnel), with a city-centre station. This would connect with the HS2 main line at each end. Again, the HS2 'main line' would bypass the city, so the city line needn't be built for high speeds around the station itself. This option is, however, ludicrously expensive. Not even London and Paris have opted for such a design.

C: Much like option A, but coupled with a 'park and ride' station (Ebbsfleet-style) on the city's outskirts. The latter would be used by services which continue on to other destinations; the former by city-centre terminators.

None of this is rocket science. The French, Germans, Italians and Japanese have been building high-speed railways for years now. It's not as if they haven't faced similar challenges.

Interestingly, some of your assumptions are not shared by the chief engineer of HS2.

Why? Reversing trains is very common in other countries, so why not here? Bear in mind that these are inter-city trains, with a small, single-leaf door at each end of the carriage. Dwell times will not be short.

He wants dwell times to be as short as possible. During the IET lecture, he showed a video of a Japanese platform agent dispatching a train efficiently, and on time.

Remember, these trains will need a fair distance to decelerate and accelerate. You can't expect to slam on the brakes just outside Manchester Piccadilly and get from 350 km/h to zero in under a mile. This means you do NOT need HSR-grade station throats! You can get away with tacking two lines onto the existing routes for the section closest to the station. As you get further out, you ease the curves and raise line speeds until you're running at high speed by the time you get to the HS2 trunk route.

Interesting idea, but what's being proposed is that we use ATO so that we can brake as late as possible, and the latest state-of-the-art trains that CAN accelerate incredibly quickly. You're right that these distances are more than a mile, but I think he quoted 3000m between the end of the station platform and the 230km/h turnout.



None of this is rocket science. The French, Germans, Italians and Japanese have been building high-speed railways for years now. It's not as if they haven't faced similar challenges.

Correct - it would be stupid not to learn off previous implementations. I got the impression that he favoured the Japanese approach the most.

Channel 549 - Discovery Science +1 currently showing program about WCML upgrade.
American Version of the program on youtube

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss5Qaewcs8
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPxA0e0XcQQ
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsdzQEIuBw
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvDdh7Hfwhw
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OOoVJ8SF5o
Part 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VlCXIj7BBE

All very good amateur line drawing on maps here.

You seem have have missed many of the drivers, there needs to be the demand for the number of seats on the routes propoed, this appears to have been ignored, but more importantly there needs to be s uply of people to the stations.

Pointless having 4,500 seats per hour from Manchester to London if no more than 2,000 per hour can get to said Manchester train station.

All very interesting these amateur lines, but do not be surprised when HS2 come out with something totally different!

i wouldnt describe my route as 'tortoruous', no not every train but the majority of trains, with perhaps 1 of the 2 tph to edinburgh and glasgow stopping at either b'ham, or m'cr.

there would be through tracks at the stations in the cities
so lets assume all the trains will be double decker and 18 coaches.
all the passengars travelling to stations beyond bham(if the train stops at bham) or manchester travel at the top deck section this leaves the whole bottom deck free for people travelling to other destinations, by having through stations this aviods building large terminus stations in city centers,

if all trains from london terminated at either glasgow edinburgh and liverpool, only 4 large terminal stations would need to be built. assuming 24tph will use the line 2 tph would be direct services stopping nowhere but edinburgh and glasgow. 2 tph would stop at bham continuing to glasgow ,2 tph would stop at bham continuing to edinburgh,2 tph would stop at m'cr continuing to carlisle and stopping then continuing to glasgow 2 tph the same but to edinburgh calling at m'cr and carlisle, 2 tph would call at warwick and lemington continuing not stopping at bham, and stopping at stoke then continuing to liverpool docks these 12 trains would be the intercity trains

then south of m'cr airport, semi fasts could operate assuming the line is built with 4 tracks

4 tph could terminate at liverpool docks, and call at LHR, Bham, stoke, m'cr airport, warrington, john lennon int'l, and liverpool docks running between the 2 tph that would be the intercity trains running fast between stoke at liverpool
jt's of 1hr50minutes

4 tph could terminate at edinburgh calling at aylesbury, stoke, m'cr old rd, burnley, , carlisle and edinburgh

running between the 2tph running from bham to carlisle jct
the same would be offered for glasgow 2tph of stopping services calling at LHR, Warwick at leamington, m'cr airport,settle and glasgow. jt's of around 3hr20 minutes to glasgow 3hr10 to edinburgh

so essentially

thats 7 tph to glasgow

7 tph to edinburgh

7 tph to bham

6tph to LHR

6tph to liverpool

5tph to manchester

(the reason more trains would go to liverpool is because its a terminal station, all trains apart from 4 tph north of mcr airport call at mcr old rd.

Yes tortuous was a bit dramatic of me.

I can see the style of route you are trying to make, sort of Japanese style, which has its merits of course. I assume you are aiming for an entirely segregated network. Using Liverpool as a terminus therefore makes sense. The problem I see is that the route you're proposing doesn't quite fulfill your own objectives.

If it were me, and we were having the route going through city centres, I would go full HSR speeds, the only issue is cost. I would tunnel under central Manchester, and tunnel under Birmingham. Getting through these conurbations at high speed will be £20bn, on top of the rest of the network. With the extra cost the network must provide an awesome service and achieve a massive change in market share to rail for it to be worth it. You would need to provide Javelin style local high speed services in parallel with the national high speed services - I think you alluded to this by saying 4 tracks south of Manchester all the way to London. I assume therefore that you would be providing lots of high speed stations along the route for the stoppers.

So it is massively more costly but you would really be able to sell it, as Kettledrum discussed, to the councils en route that would otherwise get blighted with little benefit. It would also allow a totally radically different use of the classic lines - even more than a basic HSR network would.

Nonetheless I don't feel it is the best solution. I feel it is more practical to use motorway corridors in the countryside and use spurs to get into the cities as the spurs then do not need to be full HSR speed and are easier to build therefore.

Yep, I think it will be quite spartan.

A line from either Paddington, or Euston (in tunnel) up past Greenford and then onto a new M40-esque HSR alignment towards Birmingham International.

A potential Heathrow solution - either the loop proposed to also give T5 access to the GWML, or a new underground station in the vicinity of the area intended T6/Runway 3, North of the current airport. This may link back to London or be a terminus.

From B'ham Int's North/South aligned station, a spur to the west, maybe in tunnel, linking to a terminus station in Birmingham, which would need no more than 5-6 platforms, one with international provision.

From B'ham terminus back towards B'ham Int, there would be a spur to join the HS2 north of B'ham Int to provide B'ham to North journey options.

The main line would join the WCML around Rugeley, and trains would continue on the traditional lines.

I think that's all we'll see for now. Secondly might be schemes such as the already proposed Stafford bypass, and bypassing Crewe also - which would cut time down, but I still think will interface a lot with the traditional lines, rather than being a segregated, dedicated system, sadly!

If the Stockport journey time is reasonably fast, it may be that getting to Leeds via Denton and Huddersfield might be an option to begin with.

Interesting idea, but what's being proposed is that we use ATO so that we can brake as late as possible, and the latest state-of-the-art trains that CAN accelerate incredibly quickly. You're right that these distances are more than a mile, but I think he quoted 3000m between the end of the station platform and the 230km/h turnout.

The engineer wants 350km/h at least, possibly 400km/h. Breaking from these speeds you're talking 10km. It is possible to break harder - there's a youtube vid somewhere of a class 222 emergency breaking from 125mph to zero in a few hundred yards at Northallerton station - it is easily possible. But this is not pactical for maintenance and passenger comfort reasons - the breaks can be seen smoking like they on fire or something! Trains are not allowed to accelerate at more than 0.75m/s/s (according to Roger Ford in Modern Railways review of IEP project) - a simple calculation shows that even if a train had the power to do this rate of acceleration all the way to 350km/h it would take 129 seconds, or 6250 metres (at an average speed of half top speed - easy to calculate as acceleration is linear). It could be done quicker, but you'd get announcements like "This is you're Train Driver speaking, please fasten your seatbelts". Personally I wouldn't mind the seatbelt option!

double

I love UK

Interestingly, some of your assumptions are not shared by the chief engineer of HS2.

Well, nobody's perfect! I'm sure he'll see sense soon enough. :)



He wants dwell times to be as short as possible. During the IET lecture, he showed a video of a Japanese platform agent dispatching a train efficiently, and on time.

The Japanese have a famously zero-tolerance approach to lateness, but "on time" could mean "within 10 minutes" here in the UK. Given how much slack is built into rail timetables by most UK TOCs, I doubt we'll see anything like the infamous Tokyo metro employees forcibly crushing hordes of passengers onto their trains.

Besides, a driver can easily walk the length of the train in five minutes, so stepping-back won't be needed. The trains won't be that long. Which makes reversing them back out again perfectly viable. These aren't tube trains with multiple double-leaf doors on each side.


Interesting idea, but what's being proposed is that we use ATO so that we can brake as late as possible, and the latest state-of-the-art trains that CAN accelerate incredibly quickly. You're right that these distances are more than a mile, but I think he quoted 3000m between the end of the station platform and the 230km/h turnout.


That sounds extremely tight. I don't think any TGV-grade train exists yet which can achieve the specified performance. The best Shinkansen trains today need 2-3 minutes to reach 230 km/h, but note that acceleration is a curve, not a straight line. The power available to the wheels tails off gradually as the train's speed increases. You'll get to 100 kph or so pretty quickly, but next 130 kph will take noticeably longer to achieve.

Granted, HS2 is at least 20-ish years away, so motive power technology is likely to improve a little, but there are some health and safety implications too: you don't want any standing or walking passengers falling over. (Some passengers will still be making their way down the aisle to their seats.)

Heads up - This month's RAIL has some HS information in. This includes notes from the lecture I've been talking about

http://www.railmagazine.com/news/default.asp?storyID=25

out of all the hsr rail schemes in the world i think the japanese have been most succesfull and thier trains are the most effiecient and punctual ,the aproach of going through cities has been most succesfull and has the lowest JT's though it's more expensive than going around the cities, but the route is shorter, and services are more direct and thier are more services. it may be more expensive but in the longrun the japanese approach is best, though it might not get done.

i think a line going through cities would be better than braching and going around them.

Yeah, the upfront costs are there but lets face it these allignments may be around in another 2 centuries!

i think a line going through cities would be better than braching and going around them.

Japanese cities have fewer, and generally smaller, historical areas than the major UK cities. Those historical areas also tend to have little to do with commerce and trade, so the Shinkansen rail network doesn't have to worry about building through anything like the Square Mile, or the historic centres of Liverpool and Manchester. At worst, it has to cope with areas like Canary Wharf, but people don't tend to mind demolishing 30-year-old office blocks as much.

The Japanese are also less prone to NIMBYism. WW2 caused a major cultural shift to pure capitalism, and this had a major effect on their approach to city and infrastructure planning.

One of the biggest headaches in the UK is that much of our existing infrastructure is, itself, protected. Canals criss-cross the midlands like the arteries they once were, but if you tried to redevelop one today, you'd be lynched. (Our Victorians were more than happy to convert canals into railways—the London & Croydon Railway, and the Gravesend-Strood section of the North Kent Railway used converted canals.)

The UK is not Japan. Nor is it Germany or France or Italy. Each nation has its own unique engineering and planning challenges.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1180550_charge_haulage_firms_for_using_roads_says_lib_dem_leader?rss=yes

Would require some serious balls to force that passed the haulage industry.

no its no japan, germany or france, but then again shouldnt that put us to an advantage, we can take the best from every hsr line, and to be quite frank, the japanese have done the best job of it. and if we were to base our system on anyone it should be japan. the geography of the countries are very similar, the cities are in roughly the same places. and japan as lots of historic centers. just like britain. yes building thier lines would have been expensive but to be honest, they are worth the price tag, as they offer the best journey times and the best network

Greengauge21 full report now on their website:

http://www.greengauge21.net/hsr-development-programme.html

New reports:

Final Report: detailed anaylsis of the various scenarios tested (many of which have been mentioned on here) which led the final network scenario that was published in Sept (Fast Forward Report)

Appendix A:
Appendix B - F: including; techical constraints, cost of 4 track alignments, cost of tunnelling, anglo-scottish alignments, M1 vs M11 alignment, infrastructure costs, service patterns, freight benefits and regional benefits.

I'm sure people on here would be particularly interested in the proposed timetables shown in the service patterns.

Greengauge21 full report now on their website:

http://www.greengauge21.net/hsr-development-programme.html

New reports:

Final Report: detailed anaylsis of the various scenarios tested (many of which have been mentioned on here) which led the final network scenario that was published in Sept (Fast Forward Report)

Appendix A:
Appendix B - F: including; techical constraints, cost of 4 track alignments, cost of tunnelling, anglo-scottish alignments, M1 vs M11 alignment, infrastructure costs, service patterns, freight benefits and regional benefits.

I'm sure people on here would be particularly interested in the proposed timetables shown in the service patterns.

Interesting read. (I skipped the more complex maths stuff; I can barely calculate my own age on a good day!)

I'm surprised more isn't being made of the freight benefits. We really need to build some more railfreight capacity and start pricing it off the roads. There's no reason why this couldn't be done—other EU nations cart far more TEUs around their rail networks than we do, and freight was the original reason for building large chunks of our network in the first place.

The M11 routing also struck me as an interesting choice as they seem to envisage a large, underground station in London. (Approaching from the east therefore makes the most sense if you build a through station in central London as you can connect with HS1 near Stratford, tunnel below the Crossrail route, serve Heathrow, and an onwards over an upgraded GWML.) This seems spectacularly expensive to me though. Nailing more platforms onto a rebuilt Euston seems far more sensible.

(A Heathrow HSR route can be built later, when the GWML is upgraded. Let the people of Birmingham use their own damned airport! There's nothing wrong with BHX.)

Interesting read. (I skipped the more complex maths stuff; I can barely calculate my own age on a good day!)

I'm surprised more isn't being made of the freight benefits. We really need to build some more railfreight capacity and start pricing it off the roads. There's no reason why this couldn't be done—other EU nations cart far more TEUs around their rail networks than we do, and freight was the original reason for building large chunks of our network in the first place.

The M11 routing also struck me as an interesting choice as they seem to envisage a large, underground station in London. (Approaching from the east therefore makes the most sense if you build a through station in central London as you can connect with HS1 near Stratford, tunnel below the Crossrail route, serve Heathrow, and an onwards over an upgraded GWML.) This seems spectacularly expensive to me though. Nailing more platforms onto a rebuilt Euston seems far more sensible.

(A Heathrow HSR route can be built later, when the GWML is upgraded. Let the people of Birmingham use their own damned airport! There's nothing wrong with BHX.)

The M11 route does not terminate in Central London. The cost of tunneling an building an underground station beneath an existing London terminal with links to, for instance the Circle Line, would have been very very expensive.

The M11 route would only have happended once HS-NW (as it was called) was complete.

American Version of the program on youtube

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss5Qaewcs8
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPxA0e0XcQQ
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsdzQEIuBw
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvDdh7Hfwhw
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OOoVJ8SF5o
Part 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VlCXIj7BBE

Cheers for the links buddy, watched that on here last night :cheers:

http://i36.************/2n6f9ms.jpg

this is one that i did
comments are welcome :)

http://i36.************/2n6f9ms.jpg

this is one that i did
comments are welcome :)

Shit.

Next to no thought.

10 year old could do better.

You did ask.

Drop the direct Manchester Line, run the Newcastle one from Middlesborough. Run the Bristol-Cardiff route over a Severn Barrage.

Also you have put Southampton in Bournemouth.

ha, if you squint your eyes it almost looks like a british flag,

http://i36.************/2n6f9ms.jpg

this is one that i did
comments are welcome :)

It looks like you've taken a map showing major population centres of the UK - and then drawn some straight lines between them. Well done.

But what has this got to do with high speed rail?

It looks like you've taken a map showing major population centres of the UK - and then drawn some straight lines between them. Well done.

But what has this got to do with high speed rail?


Basically i made the major cities (London, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham) to be connected to the smaller cities (Liverpool, Edinburgh etc .. ).

^^ You're idea of what's a large city and what's a small city is complete horseshit.

And what? I'd have to change at Manchester to get anywhere?

^^ You're idea of what's a large city and what's a small city is complete horseshit.

And what? I'd have to change at Manchester to get anywhere?

Not necessarily.

Using the bonkers map above the trains will simply travel London-Manc-Liverpool.

As has been said elsewhere Gareth, the idea of connecting every city that expects to be connected to HSR is fanciful, it just is not going to happen.

Look at Greengauge and what their analysis threw up.

HSR to Brum, Manc, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh, with HSR/Classic hybrid to the smaller centres - those cities with smaller demand for such a line.

^^ I think for Liverpool & Manchester, the current interest is the same; that being, supporting the idea of a new HS stretch between London & Birmingham, which would benefit everyone else on the WCML north of here. After that, we could lobby to improve the connection northward, at least to around Crewe.

Maybe, but have a look what, and more importantly why, the Greengauge proposals say Manchester city centre should be the next stop and Liverpool should be continued to be served by HSR trains that are capable of running on legacy tracks at a legacy gauge - long term.

It ain't Lucy Meacock coming up with these plans, these are people who have done some seriously in depth analysis.

I'm not terribly concerned, assuming HSR goes as far north as Crewe. If trains serving Liverpool fork off at or near Crewe and onto existing lines, I think it wouldn't be too bad and the time difference wouldn't be a lot different to it being dedicated HSR all the way into Liverpool.

So, like I said, getting HSR further north of Birmingham is a mutual interest for Liverpool & Manchester.

My Granada Reports quip was about Voldermort's idea of Manchester being a large city and Liverpool & Blackpool being small cities. That's classic Granada TV-type stuff.

Fair enough.

I just hope that attitude is replicated come the time the HS2 / Tory plans are announced, especially if as will no doubt be the case that not all cities will be treated equally.

Think the Greengauge proposals said that the Stoke branch to Manchester was the ideal route for HSR into Manchester, then continuing through Manchester further north.

Liverpool would get small 'HSR' trains, that run on legacy track and gauge north of the Trent Valley.

http://i36.************/2n6f9ms.jpg

this is one that i did
comments are welcome :)

Did it take you more then 10 seconds to do that?

As already said all you've done is draw straight lines between places.

And you've got Blackpool, Leeds, Southampton and Norwich in the wrong places.

Not sure why Peterhead is being served.

And that line from Bristol to Cardiff - why don't you just make Bristol-Cardiff trains run via Birmingham.......would be just as indirect.

If you're going to do a fantasy map at least make it worthwhile.

Will that be a bridge over or a tunnel under The Wash just north of King's Lynn?

Fair enough.

I just hope that attitude is replicated come the time the HS2 / Tory plans are announced, especially if as will no doubt be the case that not all cities will be treated equally.

Think the Greengauge proposals said that the Stoke branch to Manchester was the ideal route for HSR into Manchester, then continuing through Manchester further north.

Liverpool would get small 'HSR' trains, that run on legacy track and gauge north of the Trent Valley.

Actually the Greengauge route is into Manchester from the west through Eccles and into a new HS terminus at Manchester Victoria.

There is also a route coming off HS-NW by Stoke which serves Manchester Airport coming in from the south and then heading back to HS-NW rejoining somewhere near Warrington.

This is the final GG21 proposal:

http://i37.************/10oe04w.jpg

This is the final GG21 proposal:

http://i37.************/10oe04w.jpg

Can you show a zoomed in version of the Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield section as I'm a bit confused what they're proposing there? Going from the description Manchester seems to have about 4 HS corridors into the city, which seems a tad excessive.

North-West to Sheffield and East Midlands high speed seems a good idea, as currently these connections are poor by both road and rail.

Not quite what you asked for, but may help...

http://i33.************/afcx21.jpg

Can you show a zoomed in version of the Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield section as I'm a bit confused what they're proposing there? Going from the description Manchester seems to have about 4 HS corridors into the city, which seems a tad excessive.

North-West to Sheffield and East Midlands high speed seems a good idea, as currently these connections are poor by both road and rail.

It is complicated. I don't have a zoomed in version but in brief there would the following:

- the main HS-NW goes between Liverpool and Birmingham roughly following the M6
- main spur into Manchester Victoria coming in from the west (using upgraded classic)
- loop off HS-NW through Manchester Airport
- spur around Crewe to Liverpool (route used by London - Liverpool trains)
- HS-TP to Manchester Airport and then onward to Liverpool (via a new HS line) with a spur to Manchester Piccadilly (using classic)

Thanks, that makes it a bit clearer. So there would be HS two routes into Manchester, a western one and a southern one.

- spur around Crewe to Liverpool (route used by London - Liverpool trains)
- HS-TP to Manchester Airport and then onward to Liverpool (via a new HS line) with a spur to Manchester Piccadilly (using classic)

So, just to confirm, trains into Liverpool from London will use the existing approach from Crewe?

The confusing part is this new HSR line to Liverpool from Manchester Airport. How are they going to do that?

So, just to confirm, trains into Liverpool from London will use the existing approach from Crewe?

The confusing part is this new HSR line to Liverpool from Manchester Airport. How are they going to do that?

I think so.

Acutally, it would just be a HS link from the Manchester Airport - HS-NW loop to a an upgraded existing line into Liverpool. Not sure where though.

Do Greengauge talk about a HSR station in Warrington at all? It was in the Network Rail report as a stop on the way to Liverpool, but I didn't see anything when I skimmed the GG final report.

Do Greengauge talk about a HSR station in Warrington at all? It was in the Network Rail report as a stop on the way to Liverpool, but I didn't see anything when I skimmed the GG final report.

No, HS stations at the following locations:
- Birmingham International
- Birmingham Central
- Manchester Central
- Manchester Airport
- Liverpool Central
- Heathrow
- Stansted Airport
- East Midlands Parkway
- Nottingham Central
- Sheffield Central
- Leeds Central
- Washington Parkway
- Newcastle Central
- Edinburgh Airport
- Edinburgh Central
- Glasgow Central
- Bristol Central
- Bristol Parkway
- Cardiff Central

Basically station in the city centres of major cities and most of these cities either servied by a parkway station or airport station, then also Stansted and Heathrow.

Other places would be served by HS trains on existing lines including Southampton, Portsmouth, Guildford, Cambridge, Derby, Reading, North Wales and Crewe.

Liverpool Central? Is that a mistake? They mean Lime Street, surely?

Liverpool Central? Is that a mistake? They mean Lime Street, surely?

At least Liverpool Central is still a station. I think trains rolling up in Manchester Central would give quite a fright to the conference delegates.

I presume 'Central' just means an as yet unidentified site in the city centre.

^^ Yeah, I never knew there were so many Central Stations in existence.

Well, if Liverpool's gonna need an entirely new station, I would suggest rebuilding the old Exchange Station and sending trains through the Waterloo Tunnel....

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee235/Gareth_Parr/NewLiverpoolStationTerminus.jpg

Lime Street would remain for services to Manchester and beyond.

^^ Yeah, I never knew there were so many Central Stations in existence.

Well, if Liverpool's gonna need an entirely new station, I would suggest rebuilding the old Exchange Station and sending trains through the Waterloo Tunnel....

Lime Street would remain for services to Manchester and beyond.

From what I read Liverpool probably wouldn't get a new station under the Greenguage proposals. Can't find the page now though.

Think they are talking about using a different style train on the Liverpool line (amongst others) as they plan to use the old station.

From memory they say the legacy gauge tracks into Lime Street will be sufficient, just need 'HSR' trains that will run on them - which do exist apparently.

However, as ever I may well be wrong.

Am I right in understanding that 2 of the 4 lines in the "diamond" network theory have not been considered by Greengage21. In particular:

1) the possible HS route between Birmingham and Sheffield; and
2) a direct HS route between Manchester and Leeds (isn't this the one that the conservatives have promised?)

I think, other than the Tory plans, no one has proposed a true HSR route from Manc to Leeds have they?

Think they are talking about using a different style train on the Liverpool line (amongst others) as they plan to use the old station.

From memory they say the legacy gauge tracks into Lime Street will be sufficient, just need 'HSR' trains that will run on them - which do exist apparently.

However, as ever I may well be wrong.

correct, would be the same in Nottingham, Bristol and Cardiff too. The term "central" is a generic term to denote the HS train will stop in the city centre and may need a new station or existing station converted.

I think, other than the Tory plans, no one has proposed a true HSR route from Manc to Leeds have they?

http://www.greengauge21.net/assets/uploads/hsr-development-programme_15_3256709068.pdf

Chapter 3 tests the "Tory route". Although not reported the four networks were ranked accordingly in terms of BCR:

- Reverse E (best) (serves key markets well and cost effeceint)
- H (largest in scope, most services, most benefits)
- Reverse S (very high cost and not very good JT to Leeds or Glasgow)
- Y (worst) (crowding is too high and limited JT benefits for the east)

THe service spec of H could have been improved drastically.

correct, would be the same in Nottingham, Bristol and Cardiff too. The term "central" is a generic term to denote the HS train will stop in the city centre and may need a new station or existing station converted.

If HS2 or the Tories come out with similar proposals, added to the fact that it will be delivered in stages, some later than others, I really cannot see anything but a huge bun fight kicked off by councilors / MPs / newspapers / residents from the areas that feel hard done to.

I just hope this bun fight takes the shape of 'we also want the best reasonably possible, at the earliesy oppurtunity' (which I see no problem with whatsoever), rather than 'this is a waste of money, X is going to benefit much more than us, it should not happen' which I fear may well be the case.

If place X sees place Y up the road getting what the residents of place X see as 'more', despite place X getting an awful lot more than they have today, I can see the divide between our Northern cities coming back and harming us all.

Am I right in understanding that 2 of the 4 lines in the "diamond" network theory have not been considered by Greengage21. In particular:

1) the possible HS route between Birmingham and Sheffield; and
2) a direct HS route between Manchester and Leeds (isn't this the one that the conservatives have promised?)

Both lines were tested although the "diamond" network was not tested together at any point.

If HS2 or the Tories come out with similar proposals, added to the fact that it will be delivered in stages, some later than others, I really cannot see anything but a huge bun fight kicked off by councilors / MPs / newspapers / residents from the areas that feel hard done to.

I just hope this bun fight takes the shape of 'we also want the best reasonably possible, at the earliesy oppurtunity' (which I see no problem with whatsoever), rather than 'this is a waste of money, X is going to benefit much more than us, it should not happen' which I fear may well be the case.

If place X sees place Y up the road getting what the residents of place X see as 'more', despite place X getting an awful lot more than they have today, I can see the divide between our Northern cities coming back and harming us all.

It's a worry. I fear the scheme will be watered down with stations at places that shouldn't be served.

Picking out their recommendations, from page 69 of http://www.greengauge21.net/assets/uploads/hsr-development-programme_15_3256709068.pdf

Based on our assumed start dates for construction, and a rate of construction of 60km per year, our
modelling assumption is that the first phase of the network would be delivered by 2021, including links to
Heathrow and Europe.
The scenario tests demonstrated that the initial case for a HS route in the north west corridor is stronger
than for one in the north east corridor. We therefore recommend that the first phase consists of London
to Birmingham and Manchester; it might be possible to realise this phase in two parts delivering early
benefits for Birmingham.
Once the route to Manchester is available services to Edinburgh and Glasgow on the west coast would
immediately be diverted to the high speed route between London and the north west, thus saving
valuable time.
There could also be services to the East Midlands and South Yorkshire via Birmingham International
which will be faster than current MML services.
The Heathrow and HS-CT links should be built as part of this first phase, in part to deliver immediate
benefits, with services both to north east and north east England, but also to avoid the disruption of
subsequent engineering work when links were made from HS-NW to these routes. The actual timing of
the Heathrow Station construction may be affected by decisions on a third runway and sixth terminal; if
this goes ahead as planned, then it would be sensible that construction of the station and the terminal is
coordinated.
The initial build of rolling stock will need to include both UIC gauge double deck trains to operate between
London and Birmingham/Manchester, and British (W6A) gauge trains to operate on other routes.

This phase delivers a substantial portion of the freight benefits through releasing capacity on the critical
west coast main line. It also allows for an increase in commuting services to the rapidly growing Milton
Keynes/ Northampton area.
Phase 2
The largest gains are made when the HS network links London to Edinburgh and Scotland. The potential
for extensive switching from air and hence reduction in CO2 emissions is greatest here, as is the increase
in rail trips. We have therefore modelled extending the line from the north west to Scotland as the next
priority, reaching this point by 2027.
This will result in a HS line throughout to Edinburgh and Glasgow. UIC gauge trains could then operate
on these lines giving substantially increased capacity, although our forecasts indicate that some increase
in service frequency will also be required to carry the demand. The released British gauge trains can
then be cascaded to some of the cross-country services that operate from the south and south west to
Edinburgh and Glasgow via the high speed line.
The extension to Scotland delivers further freight benefits.
Provided the network strategy is delivered broadly to the proposed timescales, there should be adequate
capacity to operate all services on the HS-NW route, but this will become increasingly full prior to the
completion of the next phase.
Phase 3
To deliver increased capacity north from London a route on the east coast to the East Midlands, Yorkshire
and Newcastle is the next priority. This is also required as the ECML will be heavily overloaded, even
with the transfer of London – Edinburgh traffic to the west coast HS route. This means that it may be
appropriate to prioritise this investment earlier, possibly ahead of the full route to Scotland via the West
Coast. We have modelled delivery of this incremental addition to the network as being achieved by 2035,
but it is technically possible for this to be delivered much earlier as there is no direct dependency on
Phases 1 or 2. Indeed, it is entirely feasible for this phase to be taken forward ahead of Phase 2 and even
as a first phase; this might be desirable to avoid economic activity being sucked from the Eastern
corridor to the north west by the presence of high speed links to London in that corridor.
This scenario essentially provides additional HS services to Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle, and also
services to East Anglia (Stansted, Cambridge Norwich). There is no transfer from the West Coast
assumed at this stage.
There is likely to be a need for additional UIC gauge and British gauge trains at this stage; it may be that
the shorter distance trains to East Anglia are formed of rather different rolling stock.
Phase 4
In our network strategy, we have included within this phase three elements: the extension via the east
coast route to Edinburgh, the Transpennine route, and the western route to Bristol and Cardiff. For
modelling purposes, we have assumed these are delivered by 2041, but, again, many of these elements
can be delivered earlier.
In reality the western route is self standing (once the Heathrow station and links are constructed), and as
we consider it to be a partial high speed route, it might be constructed at whatever time appears
necessary to meet the capacity needs of the route.
The Transpennine route is as much for local and regional role, and again the timescales are flexible
depending on these other needs.
The completion of an East Coast route to Scotland allows for the transfer of Edinburgh services from the
West Coast to the East Coast which is less crowded; some European services also go via Stratford and
the East Coast.
The rolling stock required for this final phase is likely to be UIC gauge to operate to Edinburgh, plus
British gauge to operate to Bristol and Cardiff. At some point new trains will be required to replace the first generation high speed trains – rolling stock is generally considered to have a lifespan of about 30
years.

All in all I found the report very good. It builds on the previous reports by Atkins and Network Rail, and I can't fault their logic. For example in deciding not to go for a quad-track solution north out of London (which is the HS2 preliminary proposal) but instead two separate double track routes, they found no particular benefit in the numbers of either approach, but they saw that a quad-track scheme will bunch a lot the expenditure into the first phase, delaying first phase implementation and potentially affecting the funding approach. One by one these reports are investigating everything and I think HS2 are in danger of actually getting it right.

Not quite what you asked for, but may help...

http://i33.************/afcx21.jpg

Logical suggestions from GG21 and a helpful map from Jon10. With only 60km per year being added to the network from 2021, scheduling each stage is going to be controversial as cities argue their respective cases. At least if there is acceptance that this network is a desirable long term outcome, with the arguable additions of (1) Manchester - Leeds (direct) and (2) Birmingham - Sheffield (via Derby), the network could then be built in a series of logical stages.

Anyone dare to suggest a running order?

Anyone dare to suggest a running order?

What do you mean by running order?

What do you mean by running order?

What should be built first I'm guessing... clearly it's London-Birmingham, then on to Manchester - Liverpool, then Glasgow/Edinburgh. After that it'll probably be the whole ECML, then the links between the two, and finally the line to Bristol and Cardiff.

Just building on what was said on the previous page, are there really that many 'Central' stations still out there? The only three I can think of are Southampton, Glasgow and Liverpool. A lot of cities just have 'Brighton' or 'Preston' or something unique, e.g. Portsmouth Southsea or Exeter St Davids.

Newcastle Central.

Although what's Central Newcastle these days has probably moved somewhat. There maybe a city centre but what generates all the people movement is not just confined to that area.

http://www.greengauge21.net/assets/uploads/hsr-development-programme_15_3256709068.pdf

Chapter 3 tests the "Tory route". Although not reported the four networks were ranked accordingly in terms of BCR:

- Reverse E (best) (serves key markets well and cost effeceint)
- H (largest in scope, most services, most benefits)
- Reverse S (very high cost and not very good JT to Leeds or Glasgow)
- Y (worst) (crowding is too high and limited JT benefits for the east)

THe service spec of H could have been improved drastically.

does that mean a reverse E - one that tracks up the ECML would be the best with the highest benefit to cost ratio? :dunno:

Anyone dare to suggest a running order?

simultaneous routes northwards :)


just focussing on WCML all the way to scotland would be a bad mistake, because it would mean 30 or 40 years later that the east cost finally gets a line - meaning a massive shift in the economics of the country with east cost cities suffering.

Also... it is routes from london to manc, and london to leeds that are going to run out of capacity first - so spending 20 years building up to scotland before reaching leeds doesnt make sense - especially when the route to glasgow has a negative cost to benefit ratio and just will not have enough people using it as has been suggested by HS2 who have found it quite hard to make a viable case for a link to scotland (which further reinforced the idea that a link to scotland is primarily political)

Also - ideally whilst capacity issues shud be a priority - the other priority should be reaching the largest economic centres first to have the most fundemtal effects/benefits for our country - ie leeds, manchester, and brum - whose economies are all pretty much the same size, and whose ripple effect is the largest.

Just building on what was said on the previous page, are there really that many 'Central' stations still out there? The only three I can think of are Southampton, Glasgow and Liverpool. A lot of cities just have 'Brighton' or 'Preston' or something unique, e.g. Portsmouth Southsea or Exeter St Davids.

Wigan used to have a Central as its third town centre station but it was demolished decades ago. Central does seem a common name whenevr theirs more than one station to tell you which one you should be getting off at perhaps?

i think just a route to bham then to m'cr a l,pool should be built first, then a branch should built just south of b'ham in warickshire branching to nottingham and then north to sheffield and onto leeds. the west coast line should then continue to carlisle, the scottish should fund thier own lines to join on with the english hsr system they seem to have a habit of leeching off out taxes and we dont get anything back, if they want it so much they can fund 100miles of hsr from glasgow and edinburgh to carlisle.

then transpennine routes should be considered, one from sheffield to manchester, another from manchester to leeds and another from manchester to liverpool. after all the crucial routes are finnished, finally a leeds, newcastle- edinburgh route should be considered

to summarize

a-

london b'ham

b-

b'ham- m'cr airport

c- mc'r airport, central manchester, and , liverpool john lennon then central liverpool

d- waricshire, nottingham-leeds via sheffield

e- m'cr, carlisle/carstairs

f-cartairs edinburgh, glasgow

g-leeds-newcastle

h-newcastle-edinburgh

See what I mean about the swabbles!

Even though a 'non-offical' report has suggested that one approach should be taken over another, a report that will not be the one that is actually used to progress the plans, yet you can still see the angst from people concerned that their area will lose out.

We all know in reality that some areas will get HSR miles before others.

Brum can expect shiny new fast trains by 2021 if all goes well.

Newcastle by 2040(ish) if the GG proposals are followed.

When the HS2 / Tories proposals do come out and it says that, for example, the ECML will be built before the WCML aligment, I can see a right old stink kicking off by all those that feel left out.

We have seen a tiny glimpse of that on here already, when the real proposals are out the reaction of those 'hard done to' (despite actually getting a lot more than they have today) could well kill the scheme in my view.

Imagine the road lobby along with the 'hard done to' coallition working against a very very small section of the country and a government short of cash.

10 years down the line we will still be moaning about the fact all investment goes to London, ignoring the fact the oppurtunity to get the investment in the North was killed by 'jealous' northern cities.

Wigan used to have a Central as its third town centre station but it was demolished decades ago. Central does seem a common name whenevr theirs more than one station to tell you which one you should be getting off at perhaps?

It was also common on the Great Central Railway, to distinguish their stations from those of other railways in the same settlement.

Just building on what was said on the previous page, are there really that many 'Central' stations still out there? The only three I can think of are Southampton, Glasgow and Liverpool. A lot of cities just have 'Brighton' or 'Preston' or something unique, e.g. Portsmouth Southsea or Exeter St Davids.

Not sure how many of these are properly used but MOIRA lists the following as Central, together with those already mentioned:

Acton
Burnley
Greenock
Hackney
Hamliton
Hyde
Lincoln
Redcar
Sinfin
Southend
Telford
Wrexham
Wembley

The GG report only uses Central to specify a central station, nothing more.

does that mean a reverse E - one that tracks up the ECML would be the best with the highest benefit to cost ratio? :dunno:

Best out of the the four options I mentioned about.

However, in the full analysis that GG21 undertook the following was tested:

London to Manchester (via Birmingham): BCR ~ 2.75
London to Leeds (via Nottingham and Sheffield): ~1.75

There general concensus is that Manchester should be done first (if building a single line). The question is then whether you go to Scotland or do Scotland and East Coast simultaneously.

From the GG21 report:
"it may be appropriate to prioritise this [East Coast] investment earlier, possibly ahead of the full route to Scotland via the West Coast. We have modelled delivery of this incremental addition to the network as being achieved by 2035, but it is technically possible for this to be delivered much earlier as there is no direct dependency on Phases 1 [to Manc] or 2 [to Scotland]. Indeed, it is entirely feasible for this phase to be taken forward ahead of Phase 2 and even as a first phase; this might be desirable to avoid economic activity being sucked from the Eastern corridor to the north west by the presence of high speed links to London in that corridor.

So the suggested GG21 running order is:

Phase 1: London - Manchester
Phase 2: Manchester - Scotland
Phase 3: London - Leeds/Newcastle (although if possible occur at similar time to Phase 2)
Phase 4.1: Leeds/Newcastle to Edinburgh
Phase 4.2: Transpenine (although can happen whenever the west and east routes are complete)
Phase 4.3: London - Cardiff (stand alone and can occur once capacity is reached)

simultaneous routes northwards :)

Also... it is routes from london to manc, and london to leeds that are going to run out of capacity first - so spending 20 years building up to scotland before reaching leeds doesnt make sense - especially when the route to glasgow has a negative cost to benefit ratio and just will not have enough people using it as has been suggested by HS2 who have found it quite hard to make a viable case for a link to scotland (which further reinforced the idea that a link to scotland is primarily political)


Ok, I don't have the figures to contradict your 'route to glasgow has a negative cost benefit ratio' claim, but you can't support it either. And what is 'not enough people?'

from Greenguage:

The largest gains are made when the HS network links London to Edinburgh and Scotland. The potential
for extensive switching from air and hence reduction in CO2 emissions is greatest here, as is the increase
in rail trips. We have therefore modelled extending the line from the north west to Scotland as the next
priority, reaching this point by 2027.
This will result in a HS line throughout to Edinburgh and Glasgow. UIC gauge trains could then operate
on these lines giving substantially increased capacity, although our forecasts indicate that some increase
in service frequency will also be required to carry the demand. The released British gauge trains can
then be cascaded to some of the cross-country services that operate from the south and south west to
Edinburgh and Glasgow via the high speed line.
The extension to Scotland delivers further freight benefits.
Provided the network strategy is delivered broadly to the proposed timescales, there should be adequate
capacity to operate all services on the HS-NW route, but this will become increasingly full prior to the
completion of the next phase.
Phase 3
To deliver increased capacity north from London a route on the east coast to the East Midlands, Yorkshire
and Newcastle is the next priority. This is also required as the ECML will be heavily overloaded, even
with the transfer of London – Edinburgh traffic to the west coast HS route.


I read also in the NR proposals that London to Edinburgh/Glasgow offered the biggest scope for a mode change in transport - air to rail. That surely means cost and environmental benefits. As well as freeing capacity for freight.

I acknowledge capcity constraints should be addressed too, but shouldn't building the spine of a new network be the priority here?

http://www.rail-magazine.com/_files/images/r630cover.jpg

HIGH SPEED 2 TO ENGINEER WORLD-BEATING 400KPH LINE NORTH

http://www.rail-magazine.com/_files/images/r630_news1_large.jpg

The world’s fastest high-speed railways could create a northern city in Britain with the size and influence to compete with London, according to High Speed 2 engineer Andrew McNaughton.

Revealing that HS2 would be engineered for 400kph (250mph), he made the claim in a lecture in London on October 22 when he said: “High-speed rail can do something for this country that nothing else can - a northern super city.”

High-speed rail (HSR), he explained, could put “Birmingham closer to Manchester than Westminster is to Docklands.”

McNaughton told the packed lecture theatre of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) that a network of high-speed lines could link Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the East Midlands to create this ‘super city’. Branches could run from this central network to London, Cardiff, Newcastle and Scotland.

He warned of creating a London-centric network too, saying that if planners were not careful everyone would end up in London where there would not be the room for schools and hospitals to support the increased population.

McNaughton talked of a high-speed network that had both city centre stations and parkways to attract businessmen from cars with quick links. ....

http://evansb.home.comcast.net/~evansb/Pie%20in%20the%20Sky%2034x28in,%201978%20.jpg

http://evansb.home.comcast.net/~evansb/Pie%20in%20the%20Sky%2034x28in,%201978%20.jpg

Not really, that's pretty much what they have wanted to achieve from the outset. I know HS1 is only 186mph at the moment but they have run trains in excess of 200mph and can be upgraded for 250mph running (when the Eurostar Rolling Stock is replaced).

Northern super city perhaps the pie in the sky?


London to Leeds (via Nottingham and Sheffield): ~1.75


That low? Really?

Not a lot inbetween ends and its essentially a direct ECML replacement which would have far less usage afterwards. In its favour its probably the cheapest to build.

That low? Really?

Yup, it wasn't fantastic. While the benefits of serving Leeds and Manchester were similar the benefits (and lower costs) of Birmingham over Sheffield/East Midlands were significant.

Of course, it is a different story if you could create a HSR network overnight. If you could do this the largest BCR would be west coast to Manchester and east coast to Leeds/Newcastle and Scotland.

Northern super city perhaps the pie in the sky?

Correct.

This super-city talk just sounds like another buzz word bandied about to try and make us feel better about ourselves.

sounds like a re-hash of John Prescott's legacy: Northern Way.

Correct.

This super-city talk just sounds like another buzz word bandied about to try and make us feel better about ourselves.

The South East can only take so much more growth in population and commerce. It's also a very bad idea to have all our national eggs in one basket. Building up the northern conurbations makes sense.

The result would be:

1. Fewer people using London's infrastructure just to get to somewhere else. (E.g. Heathrow and Stansted airports.) They would have perfectly good connections from their own metropolis.

2. A more balanced population, with the Northern metropolises relieving pressure on the South East's overheated housing market and local infrastructure.

3. Improved access to Scotland and Wales for commuters. This last is the reason why extending HSR to Scotland up both coasts makes financial sense: people can live in Scotland and commute to Manchester or Newcastle. They can't sensibly commute from Scotland to London. (Ditto for North Wales, which lacks any major conurbations of its own and has ample room for commuter expansion.)

4. The North was the original driving force behind the Industrial Revolution. Today, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle remain major population centres, but their poor connections limits growth. It can take ages to get between these centres directly. Fixing this problem should unlock a lot of potential.


Once the North has been taken care of, the West and South West can get some attention too, though the Bristol / South Wales area is likely to be the focus of most of the investment there. The Cornish peninsula lacks large conurbations, but an HSR line might be built there if only to remove the area's reliance on the troublesome Dawlish sea wall sections. It probably won't be that much more expensive than reopening one of the closed lines, and there'll already be an HSR-grade line to Bristol by then. If the West's regeneration takes place, parts of the South West will likely become a commuter region.

The South Coast—particularly Portsmouth and Southampton—may see upgraded mainline speeds and capacities in the second half of the century too. (An HSR line approximately following the south coast is a distant possibility if demand for travel to Europe rises in the West. I suspect we'll see an undersea link into Ireland first though.)

Another problem likely to rear its head is that of freight: if the purpose of HSR is to relieve pressure on London and build up new metropolises, those new urban areas will also increase demand for goods. Those goods have to get there somehow. Preferably without cluttering up the roads, which are unlikely to see much more expansion.

Best out of the the four options I mentioned about.

However, in the full analysis that GG21 undertook the following was tested:

London to Manchester (via Birmingham): BCR ~ 2.75
London to Leeds (via Nottingham and Sheffield): ~1.75

There general concensus is that Manchester should be done first (if building a single line). The question is then whether you go to Scotland or do Scotland and East Coast simultaneously.

From the GG21 report:
"it may be appropriate to prioritise this [East Coast] investment earlier, possibly ahead of the full route to Scotland via the West Coast. We have modelled delivery of this incremental addition to the network as being achieved by 2035, but it is technically possible for this to be delivered much earlier as there is no direct dependency on Phases 1 [to Manc] or 2 [to Scotland]. Indeed, it is entirely feasible for this phase to be taken forward ahead of Phase 2 and even as a first phase; this might be desirable to avoid economic activity being sucked from the Eastern corridor to the north west by the presence of high speed links to London in that corridor.

So the suggested GG21 running order is:

Phase 1: London - Manchester
Phase 2: Manchester - Scotland
Phase 3: London - Leeds/Newcastle (although if possible occur at similar time to Phase 2)
Phase 4.1: Leeds/Newcastle to Edinburgh
Phase 4.2: Transpenine (although can happen whenever the west and east routes are complete)
Phase 4.3: London - Cardiff (stand alone and can occur once capacity is reached)

Yes - that may well be the the implied running order in GG21 but the financial and political realities may be different - and result in smaller sections being built at a time to build up the network in smaller stages.

Unless money is forthcoming from the Scottish Parliament, I think the Scottish legs of the network risk being delayed until towards the end, along with the London - Cardiff dream.

I am therefore not convinced that Mancheser - Scotland would be phase 2.

Manchester to Sheffield or Leeds could be phase 2, as could an upgraded and faster route from Birmingham International to Sheffield via Derby (like GG21 I am not sure if this would be upgraded to full high speed status).

These are 2 legs of the diamond network suggestion that were not taken up by GG21 but would be a more affordable way of connecting the Yorkshire cities with the High Speed network, instead of waiting for a new ECML line via Stanstead and Nottingham.

I think the new ECML would be a more longer term aim and be built in stages (if ever):

London - Stanstead
Stanstead - Cambridge
Cambridge - Nottingham
Nottingham to Sheffield (possibly linking up with a route from Derby built earlier)

Phase 5 would be links to Newcastle and then on to Scotland on either the West Coast of East Coast or both.

I'm not sure when and how Liverpool would get is link.

Correct.

This super-city talk just sounds like another buzz word bandied about to try and make us feel better about ourselves.

I kind of see what all the super-city advocates are getting at, but I don't know if they're interpreting what a HSR network would actually do.

The argument seems to be that if you connect Brum, Manc, Liv, Sheff, Leeds, Notts together better they'd form some kind of economically agglomerated unit. I can see why that might happen and although I'm not sure it's as simple as is implied, I imagine it would enable companies in each of these regional economies better access to other markets and greater growth opportunities. Slowly you could hypothesise that the London/Northern economic divide may narrow, or at least not get wider.

However for the network to be viable it will also have to pull all these regional cities closer to London because that's where most existing business goes. In which case the 'northern super-city' won't grow together in isolation from London, but under the influence of our London-centric economy. So won't the northern cities while becoming more economically integrated with each another, also become more economically integrated with London?

In which case would it not simply be a multi-centric English agglomerated economic region (or "super city"), rather than a specifically northern one?

The last thing I am is an economist or a geographer so I might be taking our of my hole, but it seems logical to me.

Lol, Sinfin Central (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinfin_Central_railway_station). Long gone I'm afraid.

Linking up a number of cities and towns with a high speed rail link does not create a 'super city' or whatever buzzword people like to use. If it did, the whole Dijon / Becanson area would have to be one big supercity now; but it isn't. They might be cities connected by high speed rail and yes that gives some advantages, but it does not make it one city in any way. Regional commuter rapid transit might do that in a way, but then still I don't see it work as all these places are just too far away from each other with big non-urban areas in between. It might work between Liverpool and Manchester I guess.

Cardiff Central - although not very central - maybe Cardiff Centre South West would be a better name ;o)

Linking up a number of cities and towns with a high speed rail link does not create a 'super city' or whatever buzzword people like to use. If it did, the whole Dijon / Becanson area would have to be one big supercity now; but it isn't.

It depends heavily on what the existing cities are capable of. France still has a mixed economy with a lot more emphasis on local agriculture. (Similar to Italy in this respect.) France also doesn't have a single, overheated region which hogs all the socio-cultural and economic pies. 25% of the UK's entire population is based in the south east of England. This is NOT healthy over the long-term, by any metric. Finally, the decision to gamble our economy on tertiary industries alone—mostly in the financial sector—exposes the UK to the global economy's fluctuations. We need a more balanced economy, with a good mix of industries.

Liverpool and Manchester are likely to be the main beneficiaries of HSR-sparked regeneration. However, HSR alone is certainly not going to be enough. The classic rail network also needs to be upgraded—ideally electrified in full—so that local, urban services can be provided to feed the high-speed ones.

(Incidentally, electrification of our rail network is arguably more important than HSR in the short term. Once low- and zero-emissions vehicles go mainstream and we all purr about in electric cars, the sight of noisy, dirty diesel trains is going to become a huge thorn in rail's side.)