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27 minutes ago, 62613 said:

Why is there this hostility these days in the UK, to any infrastructure project, no matter if it would actually have benefits all round?

What do you mean "these days"? It's been a problem for the last 20+ years at least, with successive governments of both Left and Right complaining about the time it takes, and the resultant expense.

 

There will always be "losers" in any project, be it infrastructure, housing, or commercial development, specifically those in the direct path of it and those in sight and sound of it. The question is "How much can the disadvantages to those folks be ranked ahead of the benefits to everyone else."  

 

But I find the enviromentalists opposition to HS2 very strange when rail is less intrusive than road and less polluting even in the post internal combustion/fossil fuels world to which we seem to be heading. I suppose for them it is a matter of consistency, if you oppose airport expansion and motorway building it would look a bit two-faced if they didn't oppose new rail routes as well.

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15 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

 

Using HS2 would resolve the gauge problem, if there was also a European gauge HS2-HS1 link, not planned currently. 

 

Its not a case of a HS2 - HS1being 'not currently planned' the fundamental design of HS2 has been tweaked and there is now no room for the proposed link to emerge at Old Oak Common!

 

Effectively the closest any new HS1 - HS2 link can connect to the latter has now been shifted to the surface section out near Ruslip where its just about possible to build a flying junction without too much disruption.

 

However if a short tunnel and a bit of disruption in Camden was viewed as 'not worth the cost', Pigs are going to fly before a longer tunnel out to Ruslip is going to happen.

Edited by phil-b259
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Never mind. They can all have "non-polluting" electric bikes to get on.

Interestingly, a new electric bike shop has just opened in my town. It was busy yesterday. I hope they have enough juice to cope with the hills.

Sorry, off piste.

I do wonder though how the protesters expect people to travel. Presumable they don't (expect, not travel as they certainly do that from event to event).

Anyway, surely in a "representative democratic" country the time for such actions is before Parliament approves something, not after. You have had your say and too many people disagreed with you.

Not that representative democracy is a very good system; its just that we haven't yet found a better one.

But back to the actual project, I am a little confused as to the status and degree of progress with Phase 2B. It seems to me that its north end  is like a tree in a high wind, bending this way and that.

Jonathan

Edited by corneliuslundie
typo
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38 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

European Sleeper services are currently undergoing a renaissance with new services being introduced partly as a way to reduce the emissions from aviation. It will be worth watching their progress.

 

Yes, Edwin mentioned it earlier; but there needs to be some context.

That renaissance is actually tiny in the big scheme of things.

It's received a lot of chat and PR, but it doesn't really add up to much and even with much expansion (if it happens), it'll still be a relatively tiny, niche transport activity.

 

.

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37 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

I do wonder though how the protesters expect people to travel. Presumable they don't (expect, not travel as they certainly do that from event to event).

 

That is exactly what they do expect ! As quoted in this month's (June 2021) Railway Magazine, anti-HS2 protester 'Goldi' says 'why do people need to travel so much ?.... People should embrace slower lifestyles..... and should become more local.....'. Good luck to him on convincing everyone to return to a medieval lifestyle with most people rarely, if ever, travelling far from home, and even more luck to any Government that attempts to enforce that. 

 

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31 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

.....I do wonder though how the protesters expect people to travel. Presumable they don't ......

 

It appears to be a confused, mixed bag of opinions.

 

Mostly, as in the case of many of the young people who've been "hooked" by this quasi cult idealism, they simply haven't joined up the dots with their thinking.

HS2 bad. Public transport good ???????

HS2 evil. Put the money into local railways ????

But ironically, they all want to have the freedom to travel around themselves and attend festivals and whatnot.

 

Others think we need to completely change our lifestyles and the whole basis of economic activity.

Therefore the need to travel should diminish significantly, as we shouldn't be making these journeys, either for work or leisure.

 

As always, those that seek to profit ideologically and politically from such a disparate and confused spectrum of opposition, are there in the background, stoking the fires of discontent.

 

 

.

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2 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Yes, Edwin mentioned it earlier; but there needs to be some context.

That renaissance is actually tiny in the big scheme of things.

It's received a lot of chat and PR, but it doesn't really add up to much and even with much expansion (if it happens), it'll still be a relatively tiny, niche transport activity..

I think you're being too defensive. The new services may be a drop in the ocean, but the fact that they're being considered at all shows that change just might be coming, and needs to be seen in the context of the more climate change aware travellers starting to favour rail over air. 

 

Of course aircraft using hydrogen as their fuel whether burning it in lieu of kerosene, or in fuel cells to power electric motors, may ultimately choke off medium distance rail travel and the new sleeper services.

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58 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

What do you mean "these days"? It's been a problem for the last 20+ years at least, with successive governments of both Left and Right complaining about the time it takes, and the resultant expense.

 

There will always be "losers" in any project, be it infrastructure, housing, or commercial development, specifically those in the direct path of it and those in sight and sound of it. The question is "How much can the disadvantages to those folks be ranked ahead of the benefits to everyone else."  

 

But I find the enviromentalists opposition to HS2 very strange when rail is less intrusive than road and less polluting even in the post internal combustion/fossil fuels world to which we seem to be heading. I suppose for them it is a matter of consistency, if you oppose airport expansion and motorway building it would look a bit two-faced if they didn't oppose new rail routes as well.

First paragraph: by "these days", I actually meant the last forty or fifty years, since environmentalism really took off. While that has had some positive benefits, it's awakened in some people the idea that all development, whether it improves our lives or not, is wrong and must be opposed, rather than that the alternative might be even worse

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2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Please point me to a major railway construction project which was completed on time and on budget!

At the very least, most histories have a paragraph saying something along the lines of "The project is now six months in arrears owning to the unusually wet winter"

Can you please point me to evidence that major delays and increases in costs have been caused other than by delays caused by enquiries into progress by various parties (including government) or changes forced on HS2 by objectors of various types.

I am not claiming that HS2 management is perfect. Far from it. But I prefer evidence to suggestion.

And a genuine question, having read Byng's report. Is he confusing cost predictions for Phase 1 with cost predictions for the whole project in some places? Since no approval had been given when that report was written for more than phase 1 I cannot see how any detailed costs can have been determined for phases 2A and 2B or the whole project, since the details of what was to be built (such as the route) had not been finalised.

Jonathan

The ECML electrification project was on time and in budget,  the project team was considered so capable, the electrification to Kings Lynn was added on to avoid disbanding the team.

#the Ribblehead viaduct refurbishment was also completed on a very downsized budget from  original figures. The major civil engineering projects for water supply in the Pennines were also on time and in budget in spite of disruption by WW2.

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Thanks. Of course completing a project on time doesn't make the news.

I have to admit that I too think that we shall have to consider our current lifestyles carefully, though I am not sure what the outcome should be. Such things as single use plastics for food wrapping (which often seems to end up in the hedge), for example. And as we see more and more what the greater effects of discarded plastic are we really do have to think carefully.

It has happened so many times before

Asbestos was the wonder insulating material (but now we know it has problems, though I sometimes feel that they are overstated)

Coal was the fuel to solve all our problems (but now we know different).

Antibiotics would solve our problems with diseases, but antibiotics fed to animals are feeding through in the food chain with bad effects.

Artificial fertilisers were wonderful (but now are ruining our rivers with excess nitrate levels).

Insecticides would solve all sorts of problems - but when farmers put them on their land they destroy the insects they need to pollinate their crops.

I could go on.

Throughout history there have been wonder inventions which have turned out not to be so wonderful.

Have we got it right with railways? Should we aim to be more local (not just local travel but home grown food etc)?

I don't know. All I know is that no-one knows.

And an interesting piece of information I came across recently. Only a very small proportion of carbon emissions are from human activity, So to make any significant difference to the total we need to make enormous reductions in our own output - even that will be small compared with the changes which take place over centuries without human intervention.

So where do we go from here?

Jonathan

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11 minutes ago, Pandora said:

The ECML electrification project was on time and in budget,  the project team was considered so capable, the electrification to Kings Lynn was added on to avoid disbanding the team.

#the Ribblehead viaduct refurbishment was also completed on a very downsized budget from  original figures. The major civil engineering projects for water supply in the Pennines were also on time and in budget in spite of disruption by WW2.

The ECML was completed about 10% under budget, although some of the attempts to reduce costs have created the need for longer term expenditure.  I understand mast spacing is at the absolute maximum permitted; increase the spacing and you need fewer masts, obviously, but which causes issues maintaining tension for high speed operations.  To reduce the track miles electrified, sections such as Huntingdon-Peterborough were "de-quadrified" and the masts placed on the vacant formation which has created a capacity restriction ever since.

 

The mistake was not following the ECML with a rolling programme of fill-ins; how useful electrification East of Leeds to York and to link up with the Selby Avoiding Line, would be.  I'll also bet BR could have completed Trans-Pennine electrification for a fraction per mile of what it now seems to cost NR.

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25 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

I'll also bet BR could have completed Trans-Pennine electrification for a fraction per mile of what it now seems to cost NR.

Some of that is due to changing laws and design specifications. I'm not sure how much of it would be BR vs NR and how much of it is 1987 vs 2015 requirements.

 

Of course, NR set some of the requirements itself, and experience of the compromises caused by doing the ECML and other contemporary projects so economically will have been a factor in that.

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On 12/06/2021 at 12:36, GoingUnderground said:

I think you're being too defensive. The new services may be a drop in the ocean, but the fact that they're being considered at all shows that change just might be coming, and needs to be seen in the context of the more climate change aware travellers starting to favour rail over air. 

 

Of course aircraft using hydrogen as their fuel whether burning it in lieu of kerosene, or in fuel cells to power electric motors, may ultimately choke off medium distance rail travel and the new sleeper services.

I can imagine Ryan Air having a pond slot machine for passengers so as to power the aircraft!

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1 hour ago, lmsforever said:

I can imagine Ryan Air having a pond slot machine for passengers so as to power the aircraft!

If wee round up all our politicians and put them in one place there'll be enough hot air to get several aircraft off the ground let alone one.

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On 12/06/2021 at 13:25, corneliuslundie said:

Artificial fertilisers were wonderful (but now are ruining our rivers with excess nitrate levels).

A recent issue of Chemistry World included an article on artificaial fertilisers, the comment was made that without them agricultural production would support only half the current global population. And even before the use of the Haber-Bosch process to fix atmospheric nitrogen, huge quantities of nitrates were imported from Chile for agricultural use British nitrate companies built railways in the Atacama desert for the prurpose). In mediaeval times population was tiny and food security precarious, one wet summer and starvation loomed.

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On 12/06/2021 at 12:33, caradoc said:

...

Good luck to him on convincing everyone to return to a medieval lifestyle with most people rarely, if ever, travelling far from home

...

 

On a point of pedantry, many people living in the Medieval period were more widely-travelled than you appear to be assuming: by some estimates, at the maximum extent of its popularity at any one time some 20% of the population of western Europe was engaged in either travelling on a pilgrimage or providing economic services (inns, food, stabling, souvenirs, etc) to pilgrims.

 

The Canterbury Tales wasn't describing an incredibly rare activity.

 

Paul

 

 

 

Edited by Fenman
A bit missing...
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As I said, there are no easy answers, and often unpredicted consequences which we don't find out about until many years later. Yes, fertilisers increased productivity greatly, though I have read that in recent years it has dropped despite the use of fertilisers. But if rivers get too much nitrate what will be the wider consequences? I don't know.

You have put your finger on it: too many people. But not an easy problem to solve (except in Europe where population is predicted to start dropping in the near future because of the low birth rate and life expectancy having peaked (I think the same is true of North America).

Of course, our politicians have all the answers.

Jonathan

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1 hour ago, Fenman said:

 

On a point of pedantry, many people living in the Medieval period were more widely-travelled than you appear to be assuming: by some estimates, at the maximum extent of its popularity at any one time some 20% of the population of western Europe was engaged in either travelling on a pilgrimage or providing economic services (inns, food, stabling, souvenirs, etc) to pilgrims........

 

True.

Examples of Medieval English ale houses can be found as far afield as Benidorm.........

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOqNb00be2T-jvFEP8vSY    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRkCVFJ-hUseCGYYFOoVH0

 

 

.

....

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Blue sky thinking. . Electric cars + Electric trains  = Motorail ? Double deck coach, cars CHARGING in bottom passengers in top deck ? Maybe overnight services to spread use through the 24 hours ? Wouldnt need to be all coaches. Helps mitigate electric car range issues

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Charging your car would be a paid extra so of your Hypothetical 50 cars maybe only 10 or 15 would need/pay for charging, the rest may still be nearly fully charged anyway as they would only be doing a short journey from home to board the train OR you get a discount by letting the train use YOUR spare power :biggrin_mini2:

 

Anyway its blue sky thinking innit ? So stop being all practical :pardon_mini:

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