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HS2 under review


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48 minutes ago, Flittersnoop said:

Pity the poor sods in Wolverhampton, etc who currently have a good service of fast trains direct to London but, thanks to the wonderful "progress" that HS2 represents, will now have to put up with slower journeys or getting off at New St, walking to Curzon Street and waiting for the next HS2 train!

 

Of course, the problem of putting a 125mph train on the new line wouldn't arise if the new line wasn't being so ridiculously and expensively over-specified! 

 

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the only way HS2 could have been designed worse would have been for it  to use a different gauge.

 In a rare break from apathy , I actually submitted a comment to one of the consultations, suggesting a link from  Curzon Street onto the Duddeston Line as a relatively cheap  way of allowing trains to continue to Wolverhampton and other destinations, especially if it were included from the outset and not necessarily connected to all platforms. It would mean a reversal but the two lines cross anyway and it is in an area where speeds are low. Given its simplicity , I would have thought it could work commercially and provide an emergency exit to Curzon Street 

I received a very general reply which didn't answer the point.

 

I guess the teams are now looking for ideas to remove cost rather than even modest increases, although there was a recent change to include passive provision for an additional  link to Liverpool.

 

The original concept also envisaged a link, presumably going in the other direction to allow trains to continue to Bristol, but this didn't seem to make it to the consultation. 

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2 hours ago, melmerby said:

As regards people being a Chartered Engineer.

It doesn't actually mean a lot.

 

It means an awful lot.

We had to employ a Chartered Engineer for legal reasons.

If there ever was a serious problem he was the chap who had to go to court and explain things.

Our expert had to be better qualified than the other peoples expert.

On a day to day basis if he got  phone call from a customer he would ask me and the other chap in the office what we would suggest.

Yes, he was an academic of the highest order and had worked on some top class projects. 

However day to day problems in an industrial production environment were not his forte.

Bernard

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32 minutes ago, royaloak said:

So you have seen the proposed timetables have you, or are you simply making assumption using your preconceived prejudices? 

 

There will of course be some losers, there always are, but overall there will be many more who benefit, its just the way it is.

I am making assumptions using the arguments put forward by fans of HS2 on here and elsewhere; that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML you increase capacity on the WCML  by having all the trains running at roughly the same speed, with stops at the intermediate stations.

 

You don't live in Wolverhampton, then?! Or Coventry, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton or any of the other places that will have to suffer a loss of express trains so that the "many more" people in Central Birmingham can get to London faster? 

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2 minutes ago, Flittersnoop said:

I am making assumptions using the arguments put forward by fans of HS2 on here and elsewhere; that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML you increase capacity on the WCML  by having all the trains running at roughly the same speed, with stops at the intermediate stations.

 

You don't live in Wolverhampton, then?! Or Coventry, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton or any of the other places that will have to suffer a loss of express trains so that the "many more" people in Central Birmingham can get to London faster? 

Oh come off it.

Now you are trolling.

Nobody on here has said anything about removing all the fast direct trains.

As has been pointed out to you none of us are aware of any details regarding just what services will be provided.

Come back in ten years and we can discuss it sensibly.

I have just been to Cheddington and seeing the number of new houses being built and knowing the lack of local jobs the service to the local station will have to be updated long before HS2 comes along.

That is but one of several changes in local populations where the service will need to be reviewed.

We can just add Wolverhampton to the list, although I feel sure that the powers that be are aware of their needs.

Bernard

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2 hours ago, Pandora said:

Passing the exams is only the start, and the easy part of the route,  proving to the professional body, following several years of hard work and  responsibility,    to be  a  fit and proper candidate for  election  , separates the wheat from the chaff. 

Well as I found out, it is very much who you know, rather than what you know, that was the route to progressing to be chartered.

I was informed by someone fairly well up the tree, who was involved with the organisation whose exams I took, that Tech Eng was on offer as it was and I would have duly progressed to Chartered after a few years of keeping my nose clean.

I have no reason to believe it was b*llshit.

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Flittersnoop and i have said  several times that we are in favour of a new line but for some reason people have ignored those comments... But We want a better integrated system than HS2 will give us. I suppose that's too much to ask though as with most decissions with rail these days joined up thinking doesn't come into it.

 

Looking at the car park Sandwell and Dudley which serves the black country cans be added to Wolves.

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24 minutes ago, Terra-Nova2 said:

 

The original concept also envisaged a link, presumably going in the other direction to allow trains to continue to Bristol, but this didn't seem to make it to the consultation. 

This could easily be added later as on it's journey into Curzon St. It runs alongside both the Birmingham - Derby line and the Stour Line.

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27 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Oh come off it.

Now you are trolling.

Nobody on here has said anything about removing all the fast direct trains.

As has been pointed out to you none of us are aware of any details regarding just what services will be provided.

Come back in ten years and we can discuss it sensibly.

I have just been to Cheddington and seeing the number of new houses being built and knowing the lack of local jobs the service to the local station will have to be updated long before HS2 comes along.

That is but one of several changes in local populations where the service will need to be reviewed.

We can just add Wolverhampton to the list, although I feel sure that the powers that be are aware of their needs.

Bernard

I think you are very much mistaken. The argument has been made on here many times that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML and thereby reducing the diversity of train speeds you increase capacity. If you retain fast trains to placate passengers from Wolverhampton, Coventry and Milton Keynes, you instantly lose that capacity increase. That's not "trolling", that's a fact, Bernard. Sorry.

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48 minutes ago, Flittersnoop said:

I am making assumptions using the arguments put forward by fans of HS2 on here and elsewhere; that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML you increase capacity on the WCML  by having all the trains running at roughly the same speed, with stops at the intermediate stations.

 

You don't live in Wolverhampton, then?! Or Coventry, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton or any of the other places that will have to suffer a loss of express trains so that the "many more" people in Central Birmingham can get to London faster? 

 

What about the people in Manchester and Leeds?  Why should they be denied the ability to get to London faster, which the second phase of HS2 will provide.

 

As for those people in Coventry, Milton Keynes, and anywhere else south of Birmingham maybe they will be happy that they will be able to get a seat (given all the traffic from Birmingham and north that HS2 will take away from the existing network).

 

Because the alternative (which is do to nothing) means at some point soon capacity will be reached, fares will go up to control demand, and full trains by the time they reach places like Milton Keynes.

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5 minutes ago, mdvle said:

 

....Because the alternative (which is do to nothing) means at some point soon capacity will be reached, fares will go up to control demand, and full trains by the time they reach places like Milton Keynes.


It could be more draconian than that.

With the predicted population growth (the UK is now at 67million and expected to pass 70 million before the end of this decade) and with increasing demands for travel, attempting to price control demand and overcrowded trains may not be sustainable.

Actually restricting the sale of tickets and the use of trains will have to be implemented to prevent a total meltdown of the service.

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3 hours ago, Hobby said:

 

My understanding is that HS2 is in addition to the existing trains as we supposibly need that extra capacity. In reply to your comment to Flitersnoop about signalling or other technology none is suggesting a return to old methods of signalling or other old technologies and I feel you are being a bit unfair with that comment! I do not believe his comments suggested that. But what is needed is an integrated network but this, certainly as far as Brum, is a stand alone line with no onward connections to other parts of the West Midlands without station and train transfers... That is a big backward step. 

Wrong end of the telescope I'm afraid.  HS2 will remove a gradually increasing number of the faster trains from the WCML as it grows northwards beynd Birmingham.  Hence it creates extra capacity in a different speed band on the WCML.  The whole point of building (the ill-named HS2) is to relieve capacity problems on the WCML 

3 hours ago, Pandora said:

Lord Berkeley, his  evidence being  the proven expertise  of Japanese railways of  high-speed  operation of dedicated lines for passenger trains for a capacity  figure of  12 trains per hour.

What is the evidence  for a capacity of 18tph on HS2?

Surely the evidence from Japan and SNCF must be heeded in the HS2 case.

 

Some information on japanese High Speed services

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen

Why should 'evidence' from Japan and SNCF be heeded in respect of a completely different railway with totally different signalling?  You will inevitably get an answer to the question you ask so if you ask how many trains per hour somebody operates over any sort of railway they will tell you.  If you ask them what the planned headway is with a particular signalling system they should be able to tell - but that is still not the same thing as asking how many trains they either actually run per hour or could run.  

 

I know - from looking at their timetable graphs - what headway can be used on LGV Nord at =186mph but the relatively antiquated TVM  signalling system on the LGV's is light years away from what will be installed on HS2 where the theoretical headway (according to the project's own figures)  is 24tph at the maximum speeds.  And there can be a difference between theoretical and practically achievable headways as the GWML (and probably the WCML?) has shown in the past because the theoretical headway calculations in Britain have erred a little on the conservative side in the past. 

 

3 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

No, of course not. What a silly thing to suggest.

 

But I do think that Pendolinos should be able to use the new line as a diversion route in case there's a problem on the WCML, or in case there's a problem with the fleet of new HS2 trains, or maybe even by freight trains at night. All those things would be signs that the new route really is another part of the national rail network.

Why should the nature of the lie - and the train speed mix which costs capacity - be built to accommodate Pendolinos which in many respects will be obsolescent by the time it opens?   I don't disagree - as I have said on numerous times in the is thread - with the proposed very high speeds and have, I repeat, suggested =186mph would be amore realistic target although that would need to be carefully costed (as I have already said) because of its impact on resource requirements and maintenance costs.

 

But building a new long distance passenger railway with speeds hobbled to 1970s speeds (or even the best an existing Pendolino could manage) is not going to make fir the most economic use of train and crew resources.   Equally having two types of train -one captive and one for running onto classic lines has its advantages because if the different markets and - more critically - the nature of what has to happen to a train design in order to let it run over a classic British loading gauge line.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Flittersnoop said:

I am making assumptions using the arguments put forward by fans of HS2 on here and elsewhere; that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML you increase capacity on the WCML  by having all the trains running at roughly the same speed, with stops at the intermediate stations.

 

You don't live in Wolverhampton, then?! Or Coventry, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton or any of the other places that will have to suffer a loss of express trains so that the "many more" people in Central Birmingham can get to London faster? 

That's a daft statement.  The basic premise was not to get people from Birmingham to London and vice versa faster but to deal with the capacity problems on the WCML but them some daft ideas about fancy headline speeds, no doubt pushed along by dimwit politicians, began to obscure the whole point of building the line.  Take away the fastest trains, or more correctly reduce their number per hour, and you will inevitably create more capacity on the WCML - which will definitely benefit the inhabitants of Milton Keynes and could be used to the advantage of those traveling from Nuneaton and - in some respects - even from Coventry.

 

The exact mix and use of extra capacity that will be created on the WVML has no doubt already been given some very serious thought by some people but we hardly know any detail as yet and in any case change will be staged because the whole of the new route does not open at once.  But - as I've already said - take away four trains per hour to/from Birmingham running at maximum line speed will generate more than four additional paths per hour in the main part of the speed range.

Edited by The Stationmaster
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Divisions in this mainly technocrat thread seem to be between: 

  • those with contemporary technical expertise in rail engineering - with General Management (train running) predominating
  • those with wider experience on a spectrum from engineering via urban management to economic policy; political viewpoints and on into the environmental sciences.

The common ground between us all is that public policy must curtail high energy consuming private journeys that threaten existential sustainability.

 

My position on this firmed up on Christmas Eve while a passenger in an all electric car travelling on the M40 in heavy traffic from junction 10 ( A34) down to Paddington to collect an aged friend. 

Nihilistic motorway driving during this trip was more blatant than I have ever witnessed before in Britain: highly expensive cars constantly weaving dangerously right across the lanes -  often with young guys laughing as they cut people up

 

We unanimously  decided  HS2 should be the M40 - totally converted to electric railway ...  PROBLEM SOLVED

dh

Edited by runs as required
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45 minutes ago, Flittersnoop said:

I think you are very much mistaken. The argument has been made on here many times that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML and thereby reducing the diversity of train speeds you increase capacity. If you retain fast trains to placate passengers from Wolverhampton, Coventry and Milton Keynes, you instantly lose that capacity increase. That's not "trolling", that's a fact, Bernard. Sorry.

 

No, it is not a fact. It is total rubbish. Most of the fast services on the WCML originate north of Birmingham - from Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow mainly. You remove these on to HS2, you create nearly twice that number of paths for slower/stopping services south of Birmingham. That still leaves adequate capacity for fasts and semi-fasts serving Wolves, and stations south on the WCML.

 

Criticism of the business case, for example, is not enhanced by oft-repeating the complete cobblers of the Anti-HS2 brigade, such as HS2 will only be for very rich, business users. I have used HS1 many times, and indeed many other high speed routes in Europe. The vast majority of users are not dressed in suits, nor are they reading the FT. There is no reason to believe why HS2 would be any different.

 

We have some on here arguing that HS2 should be just another railway, trundling along, with no greater benefit than anything we have now (and therefore with absolutely no business case), whilst others suggest moving to Maglev, an even more exclusive form of transportation, with absolutely no capacity to serve anywhere off its immediate point-to-point route. I like a good natter, but this is getting ridiculous.

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2 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

I am making assumptions using the arguments put forward by fans of HS2 on here and elsewhere; that by removing the fastest trains from the WCML you increase capacity on the WCML  by having all the trains running at roughly the same speed, with stops at the intermediate stations.

 

You don't live in Wolverhampton, then?! Or Coventry, Milton Keynes, Nuneaton or any of the other places that will have to suffer a loss of express trains so that the "many more" people in Central Birmingham can get to London faster

I was going to post a sensible reply but as you have posted the ill informed highlighted bit I am simply not going to waste my time.

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Personally, they should have started it at Curzon street and left London sweating, no way you can cancel something that is heading to London but the other way they will find a way.

 

Glad to see on Google Maps that the Curzon St area is now all stripped of car parks and is actually a building site.

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2 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Personally, they should have started it at Curzon street and left London sweating, no way you can cancel something that is heading to London but the other way they will find a way.

I would have started it even further North if possible.

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1 minute ago, royaloak said:

I would have started it even further North if possible.

My late father thought they had, he was convinced they were already tunnelling under his home in Manchester. 

 

I assured him, had they begun it would have been all over the news, perhaps it was the Chinese, who remembers this https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061387/

 

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1 hour ago, runs as required said:

Divisions in this mainly technocrat thread seem to be between: 

  • those with contemporary technical expertise in rail engineering - with General Management (train running) predominating
  • those with wider experience on a spectrum from engineering via urban management to economic policy; political viewpoints and on into the environmental sciences.

The common ground between us all is that public policy must curtail high energy consuming private journeys that threaten existential sustainability.

 

My position on this firmed up on Christmas Eve while a passenger in an all electric car travelling on the M40 in heavy traffic from junction 10 ( A34) down to Paddington to collect an aged friend. 

Nihilistic motorway driving during this trip was more blatant than I have ever witnessed before in Britain: highly expensive cars constantly weaving dangerously right across the lanes -  often with young guys laughing as they cut people up

 

We unanimously  decided  HS2 should be the M40 - totally converted to electric railway ...  PROBLEM SOLVED

dh

 

That would have some capacity - eight tracks!

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2 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

So how many people actually live in Central Birmingham, compared to the Black Country, etc?

 

So, 1.1 million people live with Birmingham City limits, but around another 2.5 million within the Metropolitan area.

 

But, some 48 million journeys originated or ended at Birmingham New Street (data as of 2018/19), whereas only 5.3 million the same for Wolverhampton, for example.

 

So, O Ye Expert on Demographic Transport Demand Forecasting, where would you put your money????

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6 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

Pity the poor sods in Wolverhampton, etc who currently have a good service of fast trains direct to London but, thanks to the wonderful "progress" that HS2 represents, will now have to put up with slower journeys or getting off at New St, walking to Curzon Street and waiting for the next HS2 train!

 

Of course, the problem of putting a 125mph train on the new line wouldn't arise if the new line wasn't being so ridiculously and expensively over-specified! 

 

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the only way HS2 could have been designed worse would have been for it  to use a different gauge.

 

Absolute bulls**t!

 

ALL the OFFICIAL documents so far produced (and accepting they are understandably a bit of a 'best guess situation given we are talking about what might happen in a decades time) say that Wolverhampton and Birmingham NS will BOTH retain a service equivalent to what is currently provided today - as per paragrph 15 of this letter. https://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/25599/letter-from-the-department-for-transport-on-hs2-track-access-issues-2017-09-08.pdf

 

All this talk of Wolverhampton services being turned into all station stoppers or making an excessively large number of station calls is scaremongering by the Anti-HS2 brigade and has NO BASIS IN FACT!

 

The most recent thinking can be found here on page 89 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/699029/CS866_D_Assumptions_Report_PFM_7.1.pdf

 

Just because one 'expert' in the form of Lord Berkeley has come out against HS2 doesn't mean he is right. Where a jury is unable to reach unanimous decision, we allow a majority verdict to be returned - not pander to the one or two jury members in the minority. The same is true with official reports - and just because a politician (and yes Lord Berkley is very much one of those!) has been out voted by his other committee members doesn't in any way mean he is some sort of beacon of light!

 

 

11 hours ago, Hobby said:

 

It's notreally about platform space, though, the issue is the approach lines, especially from the south where the CC trains come in on the Derby lines. Take out 6 trains an hour each way and you free up an awful lot of paths. Putting in a new junction from the Stour to the Derby lines where the up/down Camphill line is now would allow the Euston terminators use of that half of the station as well. Someone mentioned the 4-tracking of the BHM-COV corridor earlier which was another scheme that disappeared without trace, another would be the re-instatement of the 4-track section out to Solihull as well...

 

It's all academic though as the real money will be spent on a self contained line from Brum to London!

 

It will be interesting to see, when it's finally built, if it really does relieve pressure on the current Midlands to London lines or just turns out a white elephant used only by those who can afford it...

 

Yet again we find ourselves tackling fools like you who still cannot get your head round the fact that HS2 HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAKING JOURNEYS BETWEEN LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM QUICKER!

 

HS2 is basically being built to remove MANCHESTER, LIVERPOOL, THE NORTHWEST AND SCOTLAND services from the WCML NOT BIRMINGHAM TRAINS!

 

Secondary objectives include a big uplift in capacity to the northern sections of the MML (a route which has been fatally crippled by the provision of only 4 terminating platforms at St Pancras and an intensive Thameslink service eating up train paths) and the ability to provide a step change in service provision on the cross country core.

 

Everybody with any amount of engineering sense knows that a 250mph line to Birmingham ONLY is not viable - just as HS1 only serving Kent domestic destinations or only being used by Eurostar would not be viable either.

 

Thus the ONLY reason Birmingham comes into the HS2 picture is:-

 

(i) It happens to fall halfway along the route thus representing a logical place to break construction into two sections

(ii) It is a good place to start the East Midlands leg as it has a big enough population to support trains starting / terminating there and heading to the north west or north east*

(iii) It is a large, growing centre of population that is struggling to have enough trains provided via the WCML to/from London.

 

* If the London leg of the Y takes 20 tph then you have 10 spare train paths on each of the northern legs which can be used for trains starting / finishing in Birmingham and going north. Given the core cross country axis *Birmingham - Derby - Sheffield - Leeds) is slow and regularly suffers from overcrowding there is plenty of suppressed demand for HS2 to take advantage of.

 

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7 hours ago, melmerby said:

As regards people being a Chartered Engineer.

It doesn't actually mean a lot.

Following some exams I took, which were not exactly mind stretching I could have followed the path to be a Chartered Engineer but couldn't see any advantage to it at the time so didn't persue it.

Maybe in later years it might have opened more opportunities in a change of employment.

 

There speaks somebody who has never tried to achieve Chartered status.

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30 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

So, 1.1 million people live with Birmingham City limits, but around another 2.5 million within the Metropolitan area.

 

But, some 48 million journeys originated or ended at Birmingham New Street (data as of 2018/19), whereas only 5.3 million the same for Wolverhampton, for example.

 

So, O Ye Expert on Demographic Transport Demand Forecasting, where would you put your money????

And growing pretty steadily, having overtaken both Paddington a few years ago and Euston last year.

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19 minutes ago, 96701 said:

 

There speaks somebody who has never tried to achieve Chartered status.

True, but it was dangled in front of me as being fairly routine in the field I was working in at the time (Quality Assurance)

 

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