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27 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

EM Parkway is hardly comparable, given it has a basically hourly service to London (two trains within ten minutes, then, nothing). The service is just as important as the location.

 

Bristol Parkway and Warwick Parkways both have at least half-hourly services to London.

 

So Parkways can work then? Not sure how the Toton model is disproved, let alone how the addition of HS2 services on to already crowded conventional routes, will serve any business case.

 

 

The point is whether a station works depends on a lot more than where it is on the map! Proximity to large towns or the motorway network are on their own no guarantee of success.

 

Ultimately Toton was picked because it was a brownfield site on the fastest route from Birmingham to Leeds with lots of opportunity to recoup costs by development. It has NEVER been a good site per say for a HS2 East Midlands hub full stop!

 

In this era of climate change its also important to give good onward PT to the places the parkways are intended to serve* - Bristol Parkway and Warrick Parkway both have this this thanks to their location on existing PASSENGER rail routes which means they get served by frequent service into the relevant city centres. As has been made very clear serving Toton by rail would significantly lengthen regional rail services journey times and the tramway would hardly be a quick way of getting to Nottingham.

 

Now had HS2 proposed building their East Midlands hub alongside the current East Midlands Parkway station then most of those objections would disappear because like Bristol Parkway has excellent onward connections to Bristol popper, it would have fast and easy connections to / from Nottingham, Derby, Loughborough, etc. That however would have forced a deviation of HS2 away from the optimum route (thus increasing journey times to Leeds) plus increased costs as more tunnelling would be needed to avoid environmental restrictions.

 

Edited by phil-b259
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3 hours ago, DY444 said:

London St. Pancras - Paris Nord via HS1, ET and LGV Nord is in fact 305 miles

Hmm, just goes to show how unreliable the Web is - but I think I used a Eurostar page!

 

I had to triple check the London - Glasgow distance due to different distances being quoted on different web pages!

 

Yours,  Mike.

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8 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Likewise the insistence that the MML problem will be solved. No, it won't. In fact, the problems will increase if electrification encourages more business. It would have been far better to delay MML improvements until Phase 2b at least got to it. All they will have done is to allow the purchase of electric traction and not have another expensive, uniquely compliant diesel replacement train to buy in the future.

 

 

Given EMR had already commuted to replacing their fleet with Bi-mode class 800 derivatives, electrification makes absolutely no difference to MML rolling stock matters - all it does is move the changeover point as the wires go further north.

 

Once the new trains arrive (next year IIRC) that will be it for 25 odd years before the issue of traction for the MML will need to be reconsidered - by which time full electrification and HS2 will have been finished in the East Midlands.

Edited by phil-b259
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53 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I think I have dealt with most of your responses in my last reply (to Phil), but the continuing insistence that Sheffield is now better served is inaccurate.

 

Likewise the insistence that the MML problem will be solved. No, it won't. In fact, the problems will increase if electrification encourages more business. It would have been far better to delay MML improvements until Phase 2b at least got to it. All they will have done is to allow the purchase of electric traction and not have another expensive, uniquely compliant diesel replacement train to buy in the future.

 

The complete electrification of Trans Pennine is about the only good news in this omnishambles, but that barely scratches the capacity problem. You could not close the main line to Harrogate by the way, for a metro system - it took the good Burghers of Harrogate many years to get their direct trains to London back!! Tram/train might be the solution, but it would mean some big gaps in the service.

 

ECML Upgrades were all planned anyway, just not fully funded, and they still have no apparent solution to the Wakefield route. That suggests they were relying on most Leeds' business to have transferred to HS2. Joined up thinking?......

 

 

I was careful to not cite Sheffield specifically (as opposed to the East Midlands region) precisely because the lack of a HS2 line between it and East Midlands Parkway / Toton will mean any post HS2 reductions in journey time previously expected will be reduced under the plans.

 

However I still reckon that the 200mph run to London via HS2 south of East Midlands Parkway will be a bit better than the MML to London.

 

There is also the little mater of service frequency - we know that St Pancras is maxed out already and the MML south of Bedford is pretty much full too so if the citizens of Sheffield want more frequent trains to London then HS2 can still potentially provide that benefit (depending on available capacity between Derby and Sheffield)

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26 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

The point is whether a station works depends on a lot more than where it is on the map! Proximity to large towns or the motorway network are on their own no guarantee of success.

 

Ultimately Toton was picked because it was a brownfield site on the fastest route from Birmingham to Leeds with lots of opportunity to recoup costs by development. It has NEVER been a good site per say for a HS2 East Midlands hub full stop!

 

In this era of climate change its also important to give good onward PT to the places the parkways are intended to serve* - Bristol Parkway and Warrick Parkway both have this this thanks to their location on existing PASSENGER rail routes which means they get served by frequent service into the relevant city centres. As has been made very clear serving Toton by rail would significantly lengthen regional rail services journey times and the tramway would hardly be a quick way of getting to Nottingham.

 

Now had HS2 proposed building their East Midlands hub alongside the current East Midlands Parkway station then most of those objections would disappear because like Bristol Parkway has excellent onward connections to Bristol popper, it would have fast and easy connections to / from Nottingham, Derby, Loughborough, etc. That however would have forced a deviation of HS2 away from the optimum route (thus increasing journey times to Leeds) plus increased costs as more tunnelling would be needed to avoid environmental restrictions.

 

 

I think you will find that hardly anyone using a Parkway station to London does so in order to catch a train to/from somewhere else. Thus your assertions are hardly valid.

 

The fact is, Toton was a compromise, I agree and have already stated, but the big loser out of all of this is Leeds/Bradford, the single largest conurbation on the route. Where is the sense in that? Plans to "look at" alternatives to access Leeds for HS2 are not reassuring.

 

You have consistently argued on this thread that HS2 primarily needed to serve the largest cities in order to be viable, and that the rest would be served by other lines, a view with which I concurred. That is the crux of the original design. But now you are arguing that it should serve some other (relative) minnows along the way, partially destroying the capacity argument for both the route itself and for the major users. The plan is clearly just cost-saving, dressed up as something else.

 

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31 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Given EMR had already commuted to replacing their fleet with Bi-mode class 800 derivatives, electrification makes absolutely no difference to MML rolling stock matters - all it does is move the changeover point as the wires go further north.

 

Once the new trains arrive next year IIRC) that will be it for 25 odd years before the issue of traction for the MML will need to be reconsidered - by which time full electrification and HS2 will have been finished in the East Midlands.

 

Fine - I did not know they had placed an order.

 

But the key issue is that electrification serves no purpose, without HS2, other than green issues, as no more trains will fit into St Pancras. So demand may increase, with nowhere to put them for around 15 years (assuming electrification happens over the next few years, HS2 take a year or two to re-design HS2 to get into EM Parkway, the Hybrid Bill takes a few more years to get passed, perhaps with one or more PE's, and the detailed design, new compulsory purchases, construction and commissioning takes about ten years).

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16 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

important to give good onward PT to the places the parkways are intended to serve* - Bristol Parkway and Warrick Parkway

I very much doubt that onward public transport is a huge factor at Bristol Parkway, Warwick Parkway or at Southampton Parkway.

 

The key to these places is private cars and the ease of driving to/from the station, plus parking. 900 parking places @ Southampton and an enormous 1800 places @ Bristol. The stations really serve the suburbs and surrounding towns, since driving to the city centre is painful in these cities. The Bristol P bus services all seem to be targeted to these areas as well, not the city centre.

 

For Bristol P & Southampton P, it does no harm that the journey times to London are shorter than from the city centre stations. Bristol P is also an interchange between the east/west and north/south trains. I remember that in the evening, the best way of getting between Cardiff and Birmingham was to go via Bristol P - these days I think there are more direct B'ham to Cardiff trains.

 

Yours, Mike

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55 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

EM Parkway is hardly comparable, given it has a basically hourly service to London (two trains within ten minutes, then, nothing). The service is just as important as the location.

I never really understood what the point of EM Parkway was.

 

It feels like an idea from the 1980s that was still developed even though the problems it tried to address had already been solved by other schemes (A453 widened and given a park and ride at Clifton with trams every 7 minutes into the city, hourly services to London from Beeston and Long Eaton). 

 

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1 hour ago, Mike Storey said:

 

EM Parkway is hardly comparable, given it has a basically hourly service to London (two trains within ten minutes, then, nothing). The service is just as important as the location.

 

Bristol Parkway and Warwick Parkways both have at least half-hourly services to London.

 

So Parkways can work then? Not sure how the Toton model is disproved, let alone how the addition of HS2 services on to already crowded conventional routes, will serve any business case.

 

 

 

You don't need to build Toton Parkway. East Midlands Parkway will do the job, and much better, because it acts as a traffic junction where HS2 can connect readily with MML trains from London.

 

The start and completion dates of HS2 East have not changed. Therefore there is no delay whatsoever to the benefits of HS2 trains to the East Midlands - that was never going to happen until at least 2040.

 

You appear to be arguing that nothing whatsoever should be done to improve services on the MML for 20 years - because if you do , people might want to use the trains. ....  Perhaps we should bring bak {eaks and Mk1s to decelate the service and reduce demand???

 

My point is that under the original proposal there was no effective HS2 service to Derby or Nottingham and Sheffield was not well served because it was on a long conventional loop off the rourte. Ineveitably only a limited number of services would run to Sheffield - most HS2 East trains would have bypassed Sheffield. Now, clewarly , almost everything on HS2 East will reach Sheffield Midland.  The transit time to Sheffield will be the same; the frequency higher - that, to me is a better overall service

 

 

 

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I find it troubling that all these arguments about HS2B onwards and NPR for that matter are so far into the future there is a good chance I and many of us on RMWeb will never live to see them.   Back in the old days of the last great railway building epoch, people with much shorter lifespans than us got to see steam trains.

 

They dug out the Manchester Ship Canal in 6 years, it took 5 years to build the London Extension from Nottingham to Marylebone.

 

Phase one is taking between 12 and 16 years to complete 140 miles of railway, phase two B is somewhere up to 2040, I'll be in my 70s if I live long enough to see the HS2 station in all it's glory.

 

We are almost onto Bachmann delivery schedules here :lol:

Edited by woodenhead
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2 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Oakervee very clearly stated that HS2's business case was suspect without the full extent of Phases 1 and 2. The fact is that Leeds has a combined catchment (800,000 plus Bradford 600,000 plus surrounding towns) far in excess of Derby and Nottingham (600,000 plus surrounding towns), and Sheffield was to be served by a spur using the existing formation, so it is pointless to include that as new benefit in the revised proposals. The new plan does not even specifically electrify beyond Sheffield to Leeds (unless I have read it wrongly?) so I just wonder why they have ignored Oakervee, along with the vast bulk of HS2 and DfT data over the past ten years.

 

.......

 

As there will be nothing for Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby passengers to use on HS2 for about 15 years plus after electrification (and that assumes the curtailed Phase 2b does actually happen), one can only presume they intend to squeeze even more quarts into the pint pot that is St Pancras. Leeds will still be stuck with an increasingly full ECML, if the ambition is to run more trains north of Donny to Newcastle etc. and there are apparently no firm plans to increase capacity via Wakefield. Thus the case being made by HMG that these plans allow faster improvements is twaddle. They will be minor increments at best, barely noticed by many users.

 

What these plans do achieve is a saving in capital and operational costs, which is clearly their main intent, where a large dollop of lipstick has been used on the proverbial pig.

 

 

 

It is worth quoting what Oakervee actually said:

 

Quote

- the government should recommit to the principle of the full Yshaped network, serving both sides of the Pennines (conclusion 10 in secton 6)  the full network is needed to realise the highest value for money economic return on the investment of HS2. Phase One as a standalone scheme does not represent value for money, nor does building Phase Two without building Phase One (conclusion 54 in secton 11) 

 

- it is hard now to stop Phase One and start HS2 in the North of England. The quickest way to deliver long-distance inter-city connectvity to the Midlands and the North of England is to contnue with Phase One, and to fully commit to subsequent phases (conclusion 61 in secton 12) 

 

- the government should deliver service improvements in the Midlands and the North of England as soon as possible – before HS2 Ltd’s view of opening Phase 2b as currently designed in 2035-40 (conclusion 11 in secton 6)

 

 

That is rather different from your take "remove any element and the whole thing collapses" 

 

Stopping HS2 at Birmingham is rejected  as undermining the economics of building it. Building HS2 north of Birmingham with no new line south (ie cancel Phase 1 but build Phase 2) is also rejected.  

 

Oakervees' "the full network is needed to realise the highest [my emphasis] value for money economic return on the investment of HS2."  is rather different from your claim that none of it is viable at all unless every single bit is built

 

Oakervee does not state, as you claim, that building Phase 1 , Phase 2a, and at least 2/3rds of Phase 2b would be not viable. That does retain a Y -shaped network both sides of the Pennines

 

There is a further review now underway into "how to get HS2 to Leeds". The pre-publication leaks indicated a high speed route to be constructed from north of Sheffield to Leeds, and I believe that will be the outcome of the W Yorks review. It is being signalled that a new stand-alone HS2 station at Leeds is not the favoured option, so relief of Leeds City is desirable in parallel, and the Wet Yorkshire Mass Transit project is seen as the way to do this . I'm sceptical that a metro /light-rail type system is inherently and always unviable in Leeds, given that it's now the largest city in Western Europe without one

 

 I think HS2 East can now be summarised as 1. rerouting MML longer distance services in to Euston via HS2 , as a second phase of MML route development , at that point replacing the congested route out of St Pancras (incl the restrictions at the terminus itself and 2. reversing the Beeching decision to focus London -West Yorkshire services on Kings Cross, and cut the Midland route back to Sheffield. This looks to me like extending the Midland back into a London /W Yorks route, in the form of HS2 East

 

 

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47 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Fine - I did not know they had placed an order.

 

But the key issue is that electrification serves no purpose, without HS2, other than green issues, as no more trains will fit into St Pancras. So demand may increase, with nowhere to put them for around 15 years (assuming electrification happens over the next few years, HS2 take a year or two to re-design HS2 to get into EM Parkway, the Hybrid Bill takes a few more years to get passed, perhaps with one or more PE's, and the detailed design, new compulsory purchases, construction and commissioning takes about ten years).

 

 

Electrification was authorised a few years back, for the whole MML, so an economic case existed . The scheme collapsed when it because clear that Network Rail did not have enough resources to do it as well as the GW electrification, Crossrail and HS2 Phase One. Kettering and Corby was salvaged and is now live and Kettering /Market Harborough is now back on 

 

Further north, things were on hold , because the question was being asked , "why electrify this railway if you are going to replace it in 15-20 years time with HS2?". Now we know that the existing MML from E Midlands Parkway north will be required as part of the HS2 East route network, that question is resolved

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1 minute ago, woodenhead said:

A high speed line north of Sheffield to Leeds?  Do I hear cries of reopen Woodhead to Penistone and then an alignment to a triangular junction with the HS2 line to Leeds somewhere near to Silkstone in order to fulfil a true high speed element of Liverpool to Leeds

 

The Woodhead Route was a sinuous line restricted to 60-70mph. 

 

The Class 77s never got chance to use their 90 mph capability. A route that was ultimately too slow for EM2s to be justified is not a basis for a 21st century high-speed main line (even if high speed only means 140 mph)

 

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1 minute ago, Ravenser said:

 

 

Electrification was authorised a few years back, for the whole MML, so an economic case existed . The scheme collapsed when it because clear that Network Rail did not have enough resources to do it as well as the GW electrification, Crossrail and HS2 Phase One. Kettering and Corby was salvaged and is now live and Kettering /Market Harborough is now back on 

 

 

Don't forget they were also having difficulties delivering the Northwest electrification projects - Manchester to Preston via Bolton, Preston to Liverpool and Liverpool to Wigan.

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6 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

 

The Woodhead Route was a sinuous line restricted to 60-70mph. 

 

The Class 77s never got chance to use their 90 mph capability. A route that was ultimately too slow for EM2s to be justified is not a basis for a 21st century high-speed main line (even if high speed only means 140 mph)

 

Not so much between Manchester and Penistone and civil engineering could resolve that - it's not about opening it all up, just re-use the trackbed through the Peak district.  I am thinking about the alignment that the exact route as was.

 

It would require a new tunnel and some viaducts around Mottram and Dinting to replace the lovely but ancient lash ups that currently exist.  Probably a tunnel under Penistone as well.

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1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Not so much between Manchester and Penistone and civil engineering could resolve that - it's not about opening it all up, just re-use the trackbed through the Peak district.  I am thinking about the alignment that the exact route as was.

 

It would require a new tunnel and some viaducts around Mottram and Dinting to replace the lovely but ancient lash ups that currently exist.  Probably a tunnel under Penistone as well.

 

 

If you build the top end of HS2 East from east of Leeds to north of Rotherham, a bonus is that any Transpennine train can simply turn right and head for Sheffield when it comes out of the east side of leeds.

 

NPR can then "borrow" HS2 East between Leeds and Sheffield just as it "borrows" HS2 West to get into Manchester Piccadilly. A Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds/Sheffield service largely on dedicated high(ish) speed tracks looks a better cheaper option than trying to raise the ghost of the Woodhead Route. (It would also help to boost frequencies on the core Liverpool/Manchester /Leeds section of the route, and boost the economics of HS2 East in Yorkshire)

 

Sheffield- Penistone is pretty straight - it's precisely Manchester-Penistone that was severely restricted 

 

The idea of a seperate high speed route to Sheffield from Manchester was explicitly rejected in the Integrated Rail Plan. The numbers don't even begin to stack up, apparently

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5 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Given EMR had already commuted to replacing their fleet with Bi-mode class 800 derivatives, electrification makes absolutely no difference to MML rolling stock matters - all it does is move the changeover point as the wires go further north.

 

Once the new trains arrive next year IIRC) that will be it for 25 odd years before the issue of traction for the MML will need to be reconsidered - by which time full electrification and HS2 will have been finished in the East Midlands.

The bi-modes could be cascaded to somewhere like Cross Country which has a lot of mileage under wires but many of its routes extend beyond.  

5 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I think you will find that hardly anyone using a Parkway station to London does so in order to catch a train to/from somewhere else. Thus your assertions are hardly valid.

Indeed, most people would be driving there.  And therein lies the problem. 

 

It's all very well for affluent locals who want to go to London, but much less attractive for visitors to the area who end up being dropped off several miles from where most of them want to be.  And it's probably the inward visitors who bring in prosperity instead of sucking it out.   

5 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

I never really understood what the point of EM Parkway was.

 

It feels like an idea from the 1980s that was still developed even though the problems it tried to address had already been solved by other schemes (A453 widened and given a park and ride at Clifton with trams every 7 minutes into the city, hourly services to London from Beeston and Long Eaton). 

 

A lot of people in the Nottingham area drive to Grantham to get trains to London, and I imagine those further west would drive to a WCML station.  They are somewhat easier to drive to and the train is faster.  EM Parkway was primarily intended to capture some of those London travellers - the airport access was always some sort of sideshow and P&R into Nottingham was never going to happen with only a couple of trains every hour.  

4 hours ago, woodenhead said:

A high speed line north of Sheffield to Leeds?  Do I hear cries of reopen Woodhead to Penistone and then an alignment to a triangular junction with the HS2 line to Leeds somewhere near to Silkstone in order to fulfil a true high speed element of Liverpool to Leeds

I did the math on that at the time.  Even when HS2 was going to be not far east of Barnsley, Manchester to Leeds via a triangle in that area would have taken longer than via Diggle.  

4 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

 

Electrification was authorised a few years back, for the whole MML, so an economic case existed . The scheme collapsed when it because clear that Network Rail did not have enough resources to do it as well as the GW electrification, Crossrail and HS2 Phase One. Kettering and Corby was salvaged and is now live and Kettering /Market Harborough is now back on 

 

Further north, things were on hold , because the question was being asked , "why electrify this railway if you are going to replace it in 15-20 years time with HS2?". Now we know that the existing MML from E Midlands Parkway north will be required as part of the HS2 East route network, that question is resolved

It actually collapsed because it was costing too much, although part of the reason for that was to do with lack of experienced people.  

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6 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I think you will find that hardly anyone using a Parkway station to London does so in order to catch a train to/from somewhere else. Thus your assertions are hardly valid.

 

The fact is, Toton was a compromise, I agree and have already stated, but the big loser out of all of this is Leeds/Bradford, the single largest conurbation on the route. Where is the sense in that? Plans to "look at" alternatives to access Leeds for HS2 are not reassuring.

 

You have consistently argued on this thread that HS2 primarily needed to serve the largest cities in order to be viable, and that the rest would be served by other lines, a view with which I concurred. That is the crux of the original design. But now you are arguing that it should serve some other (relative) minnows along the way, partially destroying the capacity argument for both the route itself and for the major users. The plan is clearly just cost-saving, dressed up as something else.

 

 

I don't dispute Leeds and Bradford lose out - but as far as I am concerned it was a STUPID idea to try and serve them with HS2 in the first place! It resulted in an over specified line (250mph instead of 200mph) and completely failed to do anything significant for the East Midlands area or the MML capacity problems.

 

If 186mph operation is considered perfectly adequate in a country where population centres are more spread out (i.e. France) then its good enough for here - except if you do that to Leeds going via HS2 it is no faster than the current ECML!

 

However the abysmal attitudes by successive UK Governments towards high speed rail - despite its success in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Germany and Spain is such that a flawed project is better than nothing - and as the WCML / MML are in serious need of capacity uplifts so I chose to support the project, hoping that the eastern leg could be bashed into something more suitable at a later stage.

 

Yes, Yorkshire / Leeds / Bradford / Newcastle all deserve a better rail service south towards London - but that in my view should be provided by a second new high speed line (or sections thereof) along the A1 / ECML corridor and NOT HS2.

 

Edited by phil-b259
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5 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

I think you will find that hardly anyone using a Parkway station to London does so in order to catch a train to/from somewhere else. Thus your assertions are hardly valid.

 

 

 

Depends where the Parkway station is - Bristol Parkway was built with minimal facilities as it was assumed that everybody would simply use to to swap from car to train. What actually happened was it became something of a large interchange hub due to the large number of services running through it prompting it to be rebuilt several times to provide better facilities for persons lingering on the platforms.

 

If (in absence of direct HS2 services to the East Midlands) interchange with HS2 was at the current East Midlands site then its quite possible you would see similar things develop as rail passengers from Derby / Nottingham / Loughborough use it to interchange with HS2.

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4 hours ago, woodenhead said:

 

They dug out the Manchester Ship Canal in 6 years, it took 5 years to build the London Extension from Nottingham to Marylebone.

 

 

They did - but they also didn't have to pay that much attention to H&S of the workforce, take much care of the environment it passed through, nor did they have to dig lots of tunnels just to keep the natives happy as it were.

 

Things are rather different these days - as I highlighted on another thread the grade separation at Werrington would never have been done as a dive-under 100 years ago, that decision has been forced by modern planning laws rather than it being the quickest, cheapest or easiest solution!

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19 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

With thanks to ess1UK - most of the elected and/or appointed people of the North don't seem to agree with any of you.

 

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/transport-for-the-north-demands-to-see-dfts-technical-work-underpinning-rail-cuts-30-11-2021/

 

 

 

And you expect me to be somehow surprised by that!

 

Its hardly rocket science to work out that If I were promised a new Ferrari but then got told I would get a Ford focus or just given a free service on my current motor I think I might be stomping my feet demanding to know why and shouting loudly about betrayal.

 

So yes, TfN are understandably angry, and with considerable justification as what has been promised so far is very much lacking on what was talked about before - particularly on the east side of the Pennines. 

 

Does that in itself mean the previous plans were sensible, affordable and really the perfect solution to the areas woes? No it does not!

 

From what I can see the key problem with the Governments plans is the lack of detail east of the Pennines - the Liverpool - Warrington - Manchester airport - Piccadilly (Reverse) then out towards Guide Bridge with a new  line across to Marsden is perfectly logical and will still provide most of the benefits of previous schemes.

 

Simply re-joining the classic network at Marsden is a mistake however - as is the ditching of the Leeds HS2 station and associated links towards Sheffield / York  (and the potential for a link top the ECML near Doncaster). The situation with Bradford is admittedly a tough one - going via the city imposes huge extra costs because of the topography, yet it undoubtedly suffers in rail terms from being out on  a limb as it were. 

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I have only used Bristol Parkway once and then it was a destination not to change trains. There is a lot of employment within walking distance because there has been considerable commercial development. There is also a lot of housing near the station.

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Jonathan

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