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This rendering shows how the preserved, old Curzon St. station building is located at the far end of the new HS2 station.

The main entrance being at the opposite end on Moor St. Queensway, right next door to Moor St. Station.

The tram and bus stations are located half way down by the other entrances.

 

 

HS2_200114_Birmingham-Curzon-Street-stat

Edited by Ron Ron Ron
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5 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

Also, in order to point out a flaw in an argument it is not necessary to propose an alternative. If the flaw exists, it exists.

 

Only true if the alternative of doing nothing is viable.

 

In the case of HS2, not finding some way to increase capacity for the southern WCML is itself a flaw and will have an economic cost on the economy of the UK.

 

So if all your options, from do nothing to HS2 to widening existing lines, all have flaws then it is a matter of finding the solution with as few flaws as possible.

 

Hence HS2.  Not a perfect option, but the best of the available choices.

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1 hour ago, Flittersnoop said:

If there's no more room for trains at King's Cross, why are they restoring the extra pair of tracks through Gasworks Tunnel?

 

And you regard a new viaduct at Welwyn as "improbably expensive", yet apparently regard £100 billion for HS2 as good value for money? A large measure of inconsistency there, I fear!

Restoring extra capacity into/out of the station at Kings Cross will have the incredibly simple effect of making it easier for trains to enter and leave the station by reducing the number of potential conflicts at the south end of Gasworks Tunnel.  That in turn means that arrivals and departures are not additionally constrained by conflicts there - they can be spread outwards from the throat of the terminus and depending on Perway design it can also create the opportunity for higher speeds for departures in particular which in turn reduces platform reoccupation time.  Thus you can make better use of the platforms you have so, for example trains don't have to sit in platforms for longer than is necessary for the simple reason that there isn't a path available to get them out of the platform.

 

Exactly the same sort of thing was done at Paddington in the 1967 layout renewal and resignalling and further improvements were achieved in the changes of the early 1990s which in turn allowed Heathrow Express the luxury f a dedicated platform island and two platform faces as part of achieving its target frequency.  And of course it has been done at numerous places on the European mainland over past decades.

 

All of this is fairly basic capacity planning stuff especially where you have a constrained station site which you can do little about without massive and expensive inroads into the surrounding area.  But eventually you will reach a limit where there is no alternative but to somehow add platforms, which is of course what has to be done at Euston.  Additionally there the new layout will offer maximum flexibility and minimised conflicts in the  throat which will give  maximum flexibility and minimised headways, a sensible approach when starting from scratch.

 

As I have explained before one of the biggest constraints on the capacity of any railway route is the ability to turnround trains at the ends of the route.  If you get that right you can fully exploit the line capacity - which is what is being done in the HS2 design.  Thus if you build a new railway with a sensible level of capacity (i.e. at least 20 paths per hour) using modern and currently emerging signalling technology you need the necessary design of terminal stations to fully exploit that capacity.  For various reasons - but mainly cost - it was not done in the CTRL/HS1 design and its capacity to handle trains is in some respects constrained by the number of platform faces available at St Pancras International - and subsequently further constrained by a decision to increase Eurostar turnround times which I suspect is partly down to the station design. (That was very firmly the view when the plans were first tabled but it was almost impossible to extend the footprint of the station to the degree necessary due to numerous constraints.).  There was a proposal to add an extra international platform at St Pancras by making one available for dual international and MML use but as the latter was already short of platform capacity and dual use for international trains would have involved various security problems that proposal was dropped as part of the 'trimming' which was done to help get CTRL in on budget.

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4 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

 

Extra tracks from Coventry to Brum is doable with some demolition (& if demolition is acceptable on the way into Eustion, why not in the West Midlands?) - just look out of the window when you're next on that route.

 

 

He may have something of a point about quadrifying the Rugby - Birmingham line a lot of it is in open country, and at the Birmingham end where things get more built up there are stretches where the boundary on the north side of the line is set back from the track or there is a double line of fencing suggesting that at one time land was bought to allow extra tracks but never used.

 

But while this would help with congestion between Rugby and Birmingham it does not help with the lack of capacity on the WCML south of Rugby, which brings us back to needing HS2.

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4 hours ago, 62613 said:

Given the amount of demolition/building that has already taken place, will we able to see any "Progress" photos?

 

 

There's evidence of activity at various points all along the phase 1 part of the route.

Most of it consists of individual small projects, such as preparing work sites, compounds and bases; projects to divert services (water, gas, electricity etc,); diverting or protecting water courses; and environmental mitigation projects, such as creating nature habitats, planting trees etc. 

There are some larger jobs underway, such as building the rail bridge across the M42, near the NEC.

 

Hopefully the amateur "snappers" will be out there recording developments as the project ramps up.

 

 

 

Great Missenden, Bucks.

 

stream_img.jpg

 

cover_desktop_for-the-sake-of-the-englis

 

Gt Missenden Haul Road

 

 

 

Colne Valley, Chilterns.

 

It seems that they are building roads before they can build HS2

 

 

Balsall Common

 

1_HS2-tour.jpg

 

 

0_HS2-tour.jpg

 

 

Birmingham

 

construction-site-for-the-hs2-mainline-s

 

construction-site-for-the-hs2-mainline-s

Edited by Ron Ron Ron
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22 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

 

 

As I have explained before one of the biggest constraints on the capacity of any railway route is the ability to turnround trains at the ends of the route.  If you get that right you can fully exploit the line capacity - which is what is being done in the HS2 design.  Thus if you build a new railway with a sensible level of capacity (i.e. at least 20 paths per hour) using modern and currently emerging signalling technology you need the necessary design of terminal stations to fully exploit that capacity.  For various reasons - but mainly cost - it was not done in the CTRL/HS1 design and its capacity to handle trains is in some respects constrained by the number of platform faces available at St Pancras International - and subsequently further constrained by a decision to increase Eurostar turnround times which I suspect is partly down to the station design. (That was very firmly the view when the plans were first tabled but it was almost impossible to extend the footprint of the station to the degree necessary due to numerous constraints.).  There was a proposal to add an extra international platform at St Pancras by making one available for dual international and MML use but as the latter was already short of platform capacity and dual use for international trains would have involved various security problems that proposal was dropped as part of the 'trimming' which was done to help get CTRL in on budget.

The constraints on CTRL capacity at St Pancras were clearly predictable and could have easily been avoided by the simple expedient of making the facility there additional to Waterloo International (already paid for) rather than superseding it.

 

Too late to do anything about that now though...

 

John

Edited by Dunsignalling
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I'd argue that there was adequate space at both St. Pancras and KGX to add significant extra platform capacity, by using the ex-railway land made available between the 2 stations.

Radical thinking?

It would have required a lot of expensive work to bring lines into this area (tunnels, flyovers etc,), but there was plenty of space.

 

Unfortunately, the whole area was earmarked for regeneration and commercial development and has all been built on.

 

 

.

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8 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

The constraints on CTRL capacity at St Pancras were clearly predictable and could have easily been avoided by the simple expedient of making the facility there additional to Waterloo International (already paid for) rather than superseding it.

 

Too late to do anything about that now though...

 

John

There were good reasons for not retaining Waterloo international. And now it's finally in use for SWR services which would otherwise require some kind of expensive expansion at Waterloo (or a major change to crossrail) if the international terminal wasn't available.

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3 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

There's no debate on here, Phil.

 

Just a bunch of people who "know" they're right. Enjoy your virtue-signalling (in-cab, of course, to maximise capacity).

 

Erm, In cab signalling is the future for the classic network - not just HS2

 

Within the first half of the current decade the existing ECML will see ALL of its signals removed in favour of ECTS.

Meanwhile ECTS is already in use for the Thameslink core and the Cumbrian lines. It is also superposed to be fitted to the GWML to allow a modest increase in speed above 125mph and even the Pendalinos have a crude version of it to enable tilt.

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3 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

If there's no more room for trains at King's Cross, why are they restoring the extra pair of tracks through Gasworks Tunnel?

 

And you regard a new viaduct at Welwyn as "improbably expensive", yet apparently regard £100 billion for HS2 as good value for money? A large measure of inconsistency there, I fear!

 

Jamie is spot on with his observation that putting back the tracks in the 3rd gasworks bore will do nothing to increase platform capacity at Kings Cross.

 

What it will do is allow trains to clear the station throat quicker meaning less conflicts and reducing platform reoccupation time. Yes this in turn might mean an extra platform can be made available occasionally - but in the grander scheme its insignificant in bosting capacity

 

Building a second Welwyn viaduct would indeed add extra paths by taking out the trains which call at Welwyn North out of the equation - but on its own it would do little to boost the overall ECML capacity which is governed by a whole host of things including platform capacity at Kings Cross, pathing constants at Grantham, Newark and Doncaster with slower services, etc.

 

Improving the ECML alone also does sod all to help the WCML or MML, the former being the line with the most pressing need and the later being in a far worse position than the ECML thanks to the situation at St Pancras.

 

This is why you need to understand that HS2 is a package of measures - each individual element of HS2 on its own may seem to be poor value for money - but taken as a complete high speed network (with through running onto the classic network) the overall package makes considerable engineering and monetary sense.

Edited by phil-b259
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22 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

There were good reasons for not retaining Waterloo international. And now it's finally in use for SWR services which would otherwise require some kind of expensive expansion at Waterloo (or a major change to crossrail) if the international terminal wasn't available.

Agreed, but not doing so meant accepting the inevitable constraints of St Pancras international.

 

I'd further suggest that if the needs of SWR and its predecessor had been so pressing, the platforms wouldn't have lain idle for as long as they did.  

 

John

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33 minutes ago, Trog said:

 

He may have something of a point about quadrifying the Rugby - Birmingham line a lot of it is in open country, and at the Birmingham end where things get more built up there are stretches where the boundary on the north side of the line is set back from the track or there is a double line of fencing suggesting that at one time land was bought to allow extra tracks but never used.

 

But while this would help with congestion between Rugby and Birmingham it does not help with the lack of capacity on the WCML south of Rugby, which brings us back to needing HS2.

It certainly is "do-able" however there are significant points along the route where difficulties would be encountered.

It is an undulating route with many cuttings and embankments between Coventry and Birmingham as well as the previously mentioned tunnel

These would need to be widened to accomodate the extra tracks and would almost invariably need more land take than the two extra tracks to enable the slopes to be less severe to meet modern specifications.

inevitably that would lead to linear demolitions along quite a few stretches (or could lead to some houses with no back gardens!)

The stretch from Stechford to Adderley park is particularly deep cutting and a short 4 track tunnel might be a better option:

https://goo.gl/maps/Qrp1xveWJPDHxeQJ8

 

Do-able - Yes

Expensive - Yes

Disruptive - Certainly

Practical - No

Strategically desirable - No

 

 

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44 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

The constraints on CTRL capacity at St Pancras were clearly predictable and could have easily been avoided by the simple expedient of making the facility there additional to Waterloo International (already paid for) rather than superseding it.

 

Too late to do anything about that now though...

 

John

 

33 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

I'd argue that there was adequate space at both St. Pancras and KGX to add significant extra platform capacity, by using the ex-railway land made available between the 2 stations.

Radical thinking?

It would have required a lot of expensive work to bring lines into this area (tunnels, flyovers etc,), but there was plenty of space.

 

Unfortunately, the whole area was earmarked for regeneration and commercial development and has all been built on.

 

.

 

 

Both of which highlight the problem of not doing a proper job at the outset.

 

Money could have been saved from the HS2 project for example by going for shorter, UK length, single deck trains - but once you find all trains are full and standing in the peaks what then?

 

Money could have been saved by reducing the number of platforms at Euston - but what happens when you then want to boast the frequency?

 

Residents of the Chilterns could have been placated by having a local station / service on HS2 - but what do you do when there is no more space for any express trains as HS2 expands?

 

Railways are long term things - the Liverpool and Manchester railway infrastructure still being in everyday use 200 years on being a good example. if you don't build in enough redundancy initially, it becomes very hard to expand provision later on....

 

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Can we change the subject onto why the American Apollo space mission should have taken men to Mars and not to the Moon ?

 

All talk of alternatives to HS2 and what should have been done instead, are purely academic, backward looking and a complete and utter waste of time.

The bl**dy thing is being built !

 

 

 

.

 

 

.

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10 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

 

I'd further suggest that if the needs of SWR and its predecessor had been so pressing, the platforms wouldn't have lain idle for as long as they did.  

 

 

Actually it was the dead hand of HM Treasury which held things up and not the operator (SWT). HM Treasury were pushing hard for the site to be cleared and sold off to developers as part of the 'getting maximum (monetary) value for the taxpayer - citing the costs incurred in getting HS1 built.

 

Until they gave up on their sell off ambitions, NR couldn't start work on the rebuilding - plus you need to remember that the whole franchise system actively discourages operators from providing more services without permission from the DfT lest it affect subsidy / profit sharing arrangements (and thus HM Treasury expenditure / income).

 

Consequentially the rebuilding had to wait until a new franchise agreement took effect...

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40 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

I'd argue that there was adequate space at both St. Pancras and KGX to add significant extra platform capacity, by using the ex-railway land made available between the 2 stations.

Radical thinking?

It would have required a lot of expensive work to bring lines into this area (tunnels, flyovers etc,), but there was plenty of space.

 

Unfortunately, the whole area was earmarked for regeneration and commercial development and has all been built on.

 

 

.

And that regeneration project was one reason why it wasn't available and couldn't even be considered.  The St Pancras International design had to be shoehorned into a fairly restricted space which despite pleas for various additional facilities and, particularly, space from those who knew what was needed to both improve capacity but even more importantly to make the station work efficiently.   The latter is as much of a constraint as the lack of platform faces and to get things to work better (i.e. as per Waterloo International) it would have required considerably more difficult and expensive work below platform level.      As ever the use of a brownfield site - which of course helped save a significant building - proved to be more awkward than starting from scratch on a cleared site as had been the case at Waterloo.

 

47 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

There were good reasons for not retaining Waterloo international. And now it's finally in use for SWR services which would otherwise require some kind of expensive expansion at Waterloo (or a major change to crossrail) if the international terminal wasn't available.

Getting rid of Waterloo International - which had been included in CTRL and Thameslink 2000 (sic) trainplans up to quite a late stage - produced financial savings and ongoing savings which were massively out of proportion to the benefits (and disadvantages) its retention would have meant.  and some of the numbers involved were very considerable - for example the Shepherds Bush reversing siding, needed for empty trains between North Pole and St Pancras, was going to involve some major civil engineering work and cost a lot of money; adapting Three Capitals Eurostar sets to run from St Pancras to North Pole via the NLL would have required modifications to every set; running from Waterloo would have meant retaining 3rd rail capability (and its problems) on all Eurostar sets; anfd obviously the business would have had to carry the costs of staffing and running two terminals in London.

 

In sheer mathematical terms dropping Waterloo at the time it was dropped made the best sense, particularly when set against the level of ridership and its slow growth until then.   And it no doubt paid those making the financial decisions to ignore the warnings they were given about the problems which would exist at StPancras

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41 minutes ago, melmerby said:

It certainly is "do-able" however there are significant points along the route where difficulties would be encountered.

It is an undulating route with many cuttings and embankments between Coventry and Birmingham as well as the previously mentioned tunnel

These would need to be widened to accomodate the extra tracks and would almost invariably need more land take than the two extra tracks to enable the slopes to be less severe to meet modern specifications.

inevitably that would lead to linear demolitions along quite a few stretches (or could lead to some houses with no back gardens!)

The stretch from Stechford to Adderley park is particularly deep cutting and a short 4 track tunnel might be a better option:

https://goo.gl/maps/Qrp1xveWJPDHxeQJ8

 

Do-able - Yes

Expensive - Yes

Disruptive - Certainly

Practical - No

Strategically desirable - No

 

 

Plus what is HS2 if not a pair of extra tracks between London and Birmingham? It's even largely 4 tracking an existing route into the city, just not the one via Coventry (it's going to run parallel to the Derby lines).

 

It just does loads of other things as well (once the whole thing is built at least).

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9 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

 

If the problem is congestion on the southern part of the WCML, so I would have built a new railway from the Rugby area to London, as well as four-tracking the section from Coventry to Birmingham and building a link to Leicester to link up with the MML, and also four-track the Welwyn bottleneck on the ECML. The new railway would have been four tracks in places to enable a local service south of Rugby, an area due for big housing developments that currently and after HS2 has no train service to London. The new railway would not have had a signalling system and loading gauge that means ordinary trains can't use it. Brunel tried that kind of "future-proofing" on the GWR. It didn't "end well" to use a phrase popular on here.

 

But that isn't the point. The point is that one group of people on here shout down and belittle anyone who doesn't conform to their thinking. I meet plenty of railway enthusiasts who think HS2 is wrong, but they're not on here because they don't want to be the target of derisive comments. 

 

Ok.  Open google maps satellite view.  Start at Kings Cross or Marylebone or St Pancras.  Follow the lines from each and tell us how you add two tracks as far as say the M25 without knocking down thousands of buildings and widening embankments, cuttings and adding additional bores to the tunnels that are rife on the northern exits from London.  Explain how the cost, disruption, timescales and scale of the engineering required to do that is a lesser evil than HS2.  Then tell us how you find the space to add additional platforms at any of those terminus stations to service the two extra tracks.  If it helps my view is that knocking down the British Library is likely to be considered unacceptable.

 

You may find as most people have that the only north facing station with space to add enough platforms is Euston so realistically they have to go there.  So trace the WCML out again to the M25 and you'll find again that once you get to Primrose Hill tunnels there is no way to add two more tracks without knocking down thousands of buildings and widening embankments, cuttings and adding additional bores to the tunnels. Again think about the cost, disruption, timescales and scale of the engineering.  If, as seems highly probable, that is not cheaper and easier than HS2 then there are only two alternatives - do nothing or find a way out of Euston using new tunnels and using the space between the station and Primrose Hill to site the portals.  Which is what HS2 is doing. 

 

If there were a cheaper and/or better practical way of providing equivalent capacity out of London than HS2 then nobody who knows what they are talking about has been able to find it.  Once you get into more open country north of the M25 then widening might start to become viable but even then a feature of our classic lines is that they go through centres of population either those that were there when they were built or those that have coalesced around them subsequently.  Either way getting through the built up are of Greater London through widening is a non-starter in any practical or economic sense.   It's either a new route tunnelled through or nothing.

Edited by DY444
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13 minutes ago, DY444 said:

Either way getting through the built up are of Greater London through widening is a non-starter in any practical or economic sense.   It's either a new route tunnelled through or nothing.

HS2 did look at the only credible surface route, the "New North Main Line" from Old Oak to Northolt, which hasn't really had a purpose since Paddington-Birmingham services ended.  But they found it was cheaper to tunnel underneath it than to upgrade it to high speed standards which would have involved disruption by raising bridges etc.  And it now looks likely that the line will be used to run a Chiltern service into the Old Oak interchange, allowing passengers from that line to connect easily to HS2 but probably more importantly to the Thames Valley and Heathrow.  

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And the discussion about whether it is possible to widen between Coventry and Birmingham NS has not touched on the fact - previously frequently mentioned - that Birmingham NS is full and impossible to expand. I asked elsewhere about the possibility of double decking the station either above or below. but that is ruled out by the canals and roads in the area, So if Birmingham is to be on the new line it needs a new station., unfortunately.

Bring back Snow Hill as the GWR built it!!! Unfortunately even that is not now possible,

Jonathan

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34 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

And the discussion about whether it is possible to widen between Coventry and Birmingham NS has not touched on the fact - previously frequently mentioned - that Birmingham NS is full and impossible to expand. I asked elsewhere about the possibility of double decking the station either above or below. but that is ruled out by the canals and roads in the area, So if Birmingham is to be on the new line it needs a new station., unfortunately.

Bring back Snow Hill as the GWR built it!!! Unfortunately even that is not now possible,

Jonathan

 

There is an obvious answer to that, Curzon St! But that would complicate even further the alignments at Proof House, and the 1990s proposed interchange at Washwood Heath wouldn't be tolerated today as journey destinations have radically changed from New St being primarily an interchange to an actual City Centre destination.

 

As they say, if any of it was easy it would have been done already. 

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