HS2

[Butler Henderson]

Other countries safeguarded closed railway routes for potential reuse which could have helped today re the GC. Any slowness in the route was largely due to the island platforms but as local stations became closed it would have been possible to realign the tracks through their sites .

[Mike Storey]

Why are we still discussing/promoting an alternative route to the existing HS2? It has been approved (for the fourth time at least) and is now being built. 

 

What are some of you on????

[Mark Saunders]

3 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

Why are we still discussing/promoting an alternative route to the existing HS2? It has been approved (for the fourth time at least) and is now being built. 

 

What are some of you on????

 

Because they can!

 

It's all over bar the shouting!

 

You will never satisfy some people!

[APOLLO]

Bit like Brexit !!!!!!

 

Brit15

[Trog]

22 hours ago, rue_d_etropal said:

Good article in The Spectator abiut reopening old GCR route as alternative to HS2 , thought I was only one thinking of it,

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/there-is-a-far-better-option-than-hs2-and-it-already-exists/?fbclid=IwAR0odzKudej03_eJlvSzqn3hvHGfzJVYGYBwh9XbFFQMBbNG9EfIn2hMKzc

 

 

If the writer has done so little research that he does not even know that the GC was NOT built to a continental loading gauge is there any point in listening to his other guesses.

[caradoc]

2 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Other countries safeguarded closed railway routes for potential reuse which could have helped today re the GC. Any slowness in the route was largely due to the island platforms but as local stations became closed it would have been possible to realign the tracks through their sites .

 

As already said, the GC did not generally go where HS2 is needed, and where it did (ie into London) a new route and terminus is having to be built anyway.

 

[Flittersnoop]

39 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

It's all over bar the shouting!

 

A contender for 2020 Optimist of The Year award?

 

British history is littered with projects that got a lot further than the current state of HS2 before they were cancelled.

[Mike Storey]

1 minute ago, Flittersnoop said:

 

A contender for 2020 Optimist of The Year award?

 

British history is littered with projects that got a lot further than the current state of HS2 before they were cancelled.

 

Could you please name one, that had already committed c.£12 billion (at today's prices)????

 

Thank you.

[spamcan61]

5 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Could you please name one, that had already committed c.£12 billion (at today's prices)????

 

Thank you.

Can't be bothered to Google at the moment but maybe some of the previous channel tunnel attempts?

[jamie92208]

14 hours ago, spamcan61 said:

Can't be bothered to Google at the moment but maybe some of the previous channel tunnel attempts?

I was also thinking of TSR2 and the New Nimrod saga but don't have the figures.

 

Jamie

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by jamie92208

[spamcan61]

7 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I was also thinking of TSr2 and the New Nimrod saga but don't have the figures.

 

Jamie

 

Ah yes, then there's the whole UK space programme that put a satellite into orbit then stopped.

Edited February 18, 2020 by spamcan61

[spamcan61]

21 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I was also thinking of TSr2 and the New Nimrod saga but don't have the figures.

 

Jamie

 

Not sure if Palmerston's follies were even completed, I recall they were jolly expensive but I don't suppose it counts if the project is actually completed, even if the result is a white elephant.

[Bernard Lamb]

37 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Could you please name one, that had already committed c.£12 billion (at today's prices)????

 

 

Probably the defence of Singapore.

Bernard

[Butler Henderson]

1 hour ago, caradoc said:

 

As already said, the GC did not generally go where HS2 is needed, and where it did (ie into London) a new route and terminus is having to be built anyway.

 

Partly agreed but the HS2 route that has been drawn up is hardly direct for the East Midlands-London; it could have been perfectly practical to build a curves near Rugby to take GCHS2 services to Birmingham as a minimal approach connecting to the existing lines or a completely new line thence to Crewe and Manchester as is proposed.  How much more dramatic it would be to see a HS2 train flying over Nottingham Midland rather than a NET tram.

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Other countries safeguarded closed railway routes for potential reuse which could have helped today re the GC. Any slowness in the route was largely due to the island platforms but as local stations became closed it would have been possible to realign the tracks through their sites .

The Great Central was a route that nobody really wanted apart from the M, S & L. Ry. I believe even the shareholders were not impressed.

It avoided any centres of population south of Rugby and duplicated services north of Rugby. It was never really successful.

The Midland extension to London had taken much of the possible traffic from the East Midlands to London.

It's little wonder it got the axe, it probably only survived as long as it did as a moderately useful freight route whilst such things as coal were around as common loads.

Any prospect of re-opening anything north of Rugby vanished decades ago.

 

 

[Dava]

"It is never too late. Anything built on in past 50 years is not worth saving, or certainly not as important as what will be distoyed by building HS2 as planned"

 

The. University where I now work in Leicester demolished the Bowstring bridge and embankment to build a leisure/sports centre and student residences. The whole line through the city has been redeveloped apart from the restored station and a greenway. Restoring the line through Leicester or Nottingham is impossible. I know both cities well.. Both cities have moved on. We need a modern, higher capacity reliable electrified fast line to London, now. That pledge was broken in favour of HS2 by maybe 2040.

 

Dava

[melmerby]

If anybody's interested in the GC around Leicester and Nottingham

See Here

[royaloak]

17 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

That said, I don't believe in completely homogeneous fleets either. It seems to me very odd that GWR uses essentially the same train for both 90 minute and six-hour journeys.

Not by choice, blame the lack of a sensible electrification policy and lack of suitable trains.

[runs as required]

6 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Yes short sightedness to the nth degree. Just as the the GC was closing the Japanese were building their bullet trains, when Woodhead closed the French TGV was firmly established as their future - the French have not looked back, nor have the Japanese. The Chinese build HST's relentlessly. We are a  very crowded little island, with a history nasty & useless politicians (i.e. Marples back then who had vested interests in Motorway construction).

 

This is the perennial argument between planners (aspiring to future-proof) and those who advocate "the Hidden Hand" of Adam Smith and the Market.

The latter have been in the ascendancy in the UK for the last 40 odd years - whereas planners have held their own in Holland and France.

 

As for the future: I do hope 20-30 year strategies for the North do attempt  to balance connectivity and carbon neutral  environmental transformation. (did anyone hear Jim Al-Khalili on Radio 4 this Tuesday 18/02 ?)

Someone a few pages back mentioned "flood- proofing"  (it being uppermost in our minds now ).

How is this done engineeringwise? For example on (electrified) existing transPennine lines - and on up to Darlington and across to Hull?

HSTs often ran through quite deep water on the ECML around Croft Spa.

dh

[Zomboid]

8 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Partly agreed but the HS2 route that has been drawn up is hardly direct for the East Midlands-London;

HS2 has to serve Birmingham, and the East Midlands will benefit from the connectivity to central Birmingham and the station at the NEC/ Airport. And that's in addition to the improved connection to London.

 

Admittedly the East Midlands station isn't in an especially wonderful location, but 10 years after HS2 opens it'll probably be a cluster of skyscrapers as the station will draw investment and employment to the immediate area. With the geography of the Nottingham/ Derby area there's nowhere particularly great to put it.

[Joseph_Pestell]

8 hours ago, Dava said:

"It is never too late. Anything built on in past 50 years is not worth saving, or certainly not as important as what will be distoyed by building HS2 as planned"

 

The. University where I now work in Leicester demolished the Bowstring bridge and embankment to build a leisure/sports centre and student residences. The whole line through the city has been redeveloped apart from the restored station and a greenway. Restoring the line through Leicester or Nottingham is impossible. I know both cities well.. Both cities have moved on. We need a modern, higher capacity reliable electrified fast line to London, now. That pledge was broken in favour of HS2 by maybe 2040.

 

Dava

 

I don't think we can blame lack of electrification progress on MML (& GWML) on HS2. Govt lost patience with electrification of GWML due to massive overruns on time and cost.

[Flittersnoop]

34 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I don't think we can blame lack of electrification progress on MML (& GWML) on HS2. Govt lost patience with electrification of GWML due to massive overruns on time and cost.

So when HS2 inevitably starts (! We're already there, aren't we?) to suffer from massive overruns on time and cost (which is the main achievement of the 21st century rail industry, after all) we can, by your own logic, watch while the government loses patience and trims back HS2 or cancels it altogether! In cliche terms, that's why people who think "it's all over bar the shouting" are actually counting their chickens before they're hatched!

[Joseph_Pestell]

12 minutes ago, Flittersnoop said:

So when HS2 inevitably starts (! We're already there, aren't we?) to suffer from massive overruns on time and cost (which is the main achievement of the 21st century rail industry, after all) we can, by your own logic, watch while the government loses patience and trims back HS2 or cancels it altogether! In cliche terms, that's why people who think "it's all over bar the shouting" are actually counting their chickens before they're hatched!

 

No, you are stretching "logic" there. Not electrifying a stretch of line still leaves you with an operational railway. So it's not a major political decision to cancel or postpone it.

 

HS2 is of quite a different order. Not building it would have far more negative consequences for economic development in the Midlands and the North and a gummed up WCML.

 

I also think that the political landscape has changed. Like him or loath him, and whatever his true motivations, Boris is a politician who likes to see things get done.

[62613]

Would I be correct in thinking that HS2 is the largest single railway project, in terms of mileage, ever attempted in this country. The only others that come close are probably the Great Northern, The London & Birmingham and the Grand Junction, surely.

[Flittersnoop]

49 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

No, you are stretching "logic" there. Not electrifying a stretch of line still leaves you with an operational railway. So it's not a major political decision to cancel or postpone it.

 

HS2 is of quite a different order. Not building it would have far more negative consequences for economic development in the Midlands and the North and a gummed up WCML.

 

I also think that the political landscape has changed. Like him or loath him, and whatever his true motivations, Boris is a politician who likes to see things get done.

Yes, HS2 is of a different order, but so is the price tag and scope for delay and cost overrun. All the supposed benefits are pure speculation, so the "we can't afford not to build it" argument is very weak, and since the construction period will stretch way beyond the next general election, tying HS2's future to the political fortunes of Boris Johnson is a very high-risk strategy indeed. Northern MPs will get very little benefit from construction work in Buckinghamshire etc if their constituents still have a chronically overcrowded and inreliable rail commute into Manchester or Leeds.