HS2 under review

[The Stationmaster]

Its is far from correct to say all OLE would need altering, most of it is already well clear of the European loading gauge. It is only an issue where it comes down much lower for bridges and tunnels etc. which are areas which would need rebuilding in any case. 

I do wonder about that - according to data in the Model Rail article (which I am presuming to be accurately researched so saving me from delving the 'net for it) the average contact wire height in Britain is 4,720mm, the lowest permissible height is 4,125mm and the maximum permissible height is 5,600mm.

 

Maximum permissible height for W7 Loading Gauge vehicles is 3965mm (Freightliner Exception gauge) but that is only over a width of 263mm while UIC C gauge is 4650mm - i.e. 70 mm below British average contact wire height.  TGV Duplex is 4320mm high - 400mm below British average contact wire height and well above the UK minimum height.

 

Interestingly the DfT study looked at two alternative heights for double deck vehicles and one option fitted within the existing average 4,700mm contact wire height while the other didn't and thus costs were significantly higher.  Simple answer - it all depends on which size of DD loading gauge you adopt (if any at all), and also which continental gauge you are talking abut as going for UIC C costs more than going for UIC B (something between 40% and 50% more for Paddington - Reading & Oxford according to the DfT study).

[APOLLO]

Not only do we need HS2 (all of it) we really do need to plan for the future - Beyond Petroleum (as BP rebranded itself !!).

 

Outside London the major populated areas need more electrified local railways connecting average sized towns together and to nearby cities. Thinking of Leigh in Lancashire here, largest urban area in UK with no rail service. Nearby it has started with Liverpool - Manchester and Wigan lines, Trans Pennine etc being electrified - but we need more - lots more.

 

Converting railways to Tramways ok in some places, but now Oldham has it's tram no chance of any future rail born freight there. Short term thinking in my opinion. Guided busways are a complete waste of space.

 

The Yanks had it sussed (before the dawn of the automobile) with their electrified Interurban networks, and yes they also carried freight. The car saw the demise of this superb early 20th century network.

 

Brit15

[phil-b259]

Should we spend a minimum of £33b on a railways when we have falling educational standards because schools or worn out and overcrowded, or when our society is slipping out of the top 20 nations for the provision of health-care, when there are a significant number of pensioners who we are told find it necessary to chose between staying warm and eating, when our universities cannot "afford" to train our own science and engineering graduates (who should be our future) because they need more foreign students to generate the fee income necessary to operate the universities? If we choose to do so, will we be happy with the consequences that our currency has to be diluted further (who will lend money cheaply to a country that has soaring debts already and needs to borrow to pay the interest on those debts?) and so yours and my living costs have to rise.

Should the UK be planning to spend far more on replacing our "nuclear deterrent" / the trident submarine in the next decade or so. I would say not, in my opinion its just a w***y waving exercise designed more to justify our seat on the UN security council than anything else.

[cary hill]

I see that the cost of adding a extra kilometre of length to the tunnel under the East Midlands Airport is estimated at £120 million.

 

This is a "price" worth paying, as it may mean the creation of up to 7,000 jobs(pinch of salt maybe?)at Roxhall's planned distribution complex situated immediately to the north of the Airport. These jobs will be mainly "blue-collar" in nature, so not exportable "South", and will presumably help to reinforce East Midlands Airport's position as the U.K.'s the second busiest airfreight handler.

 

For me this will remove a fairly major potential economic disbenefit of HS2's route through the fringes of the East Midlands.

[Glorious NSE]

Within those points, I ask whether we should spend a now estimated figure of £33b (up by 2/3rds from the £20b first mooted) on a route that will take 10 years to get to Birmingham when for a quarter of that, the whole of the route between Birmingham and London could be provided with twice as much capacity (extra track on newly purchased land) and thereby allow faster express working whilst mixing freight with local services. The power to drive the enhanced trains won't be more than that required for HST trains and the infrastructure for supplying that power is less costly to improve than to install new across the HS2 route.

 

Where are you getting the figures that you could 8 track the WCML for less than 33bn out of interest?

[DavidH]

This is a "price" worth paying, as it may mean the creation of up to 7,000 jobs(pinch of salt maybe?)at Roxhall's planned distribution complex 

 

Aye, I take such projections with a pinch of salt too. How much of that "creation" is "relocation", I wonder?

[jjb1970]

I am not against HS2 but do think that there are legitimate arguments that the money could deliver more benefit to the UK and railways by extending electrification of existing routes and capacity improvements and train control upgrades. In the greater scheme of things I don't think the reductions in journey time are such a big deal (although I'm not denying that shorter journeys are an improvement)over the distances London - Birmingham, London - Leeds etc. Good but not a game changer. And I found it quite interesting that a BBC blog suggested the affect will be to suck more into London rather than the claimed benefits of bringing stuff from London to the North. Whether or not that is true I've no idea but it is certainly an interesting argument and not a silly one. If this sounds negative I will counter by saying that I have generally supported HS2 and still think it is a good infrastructure improvement but I do think some of the railway press are a bit overly zealous in pushing the arguments and dismissing any criticism as just nimbyism.

[cary hill]

And I found it quite interesting that a BBC blog suggested the affect will be to suck more into London rather than the claimed benefits of bringing stuff from London to the North. Whether or not that is true I've no idea but it is certainly an interesting argument and not a silly one.

 

I think you will be hard pressed to find many (modern) examples where a megapolis develops better and quicker transport links with it's "satellite" cities, and it doesn't result in a "bow wave" of talent and resources flowing towards the megapolis and corresponding "trickle" only from the metropolis towards the satellites.

 

Does it bother me? - not really, because the much vaunted regional economic benefits suggested as part of the justification for HS2 are only a "fig leaf" for the general public and not much to do with why HS2 really is needed.

Edited May 18, 2013 by cary hill

[jjb1970]

Does it bother me? - not really, because the much vaunted regional economic benefits suggested as part of the justification for HS2 are only a "fig leaf" for the general public and not much to do with why HS2 really is needed.

I think that is part of the problem for HS2 in terms of opposition to it, some of the stuff thrown around in support of it doesn't really sound particularly convincing. I do support building new railways, I think if we do build a new railway we may as well build it to the most modern standards and make it fast and so on balance I support HS2. However some of the economic arguments used to support it are not too clever to me and the government should sell it on the basis of improving national infrastructure and strategic investment rather than some of the arguments being thrown around.

[Titan]

The way I see it there is more of a capacity problem than a speed problem. Any new line would help, it does not have to be high speed. It would make much more sense to me to build a new line that pendolinois could run on at 140mph. You would end up with 80% of the benifit of HS2 for a fraction of the cost.

 

As an aside, altering an existing line to a larger loading gauge is likely to cost much more than building a new line, because there is much more work involved than altering overbridges and platforms (and OLE come to that!) Why? Because along the entire route the tracks will have to be slewed outwards so that trains don't hit each other when they pass. This means widening of cuttings, embankmants, rebuilding or widening of viaducts etc. just about every single piece of railway infrastructure would have to be moved or rebuilt. With a new railway at least you don't have the cost of demolishing the old one first, let alone before you factor the disruption in!

[frobisher]

The way I see it there is more of a capacity problem than a speed problem. Any new line would help, it does not have to be high speed. It would make much more sense to me to build a new line that pendolinois could run on at 140mph. You would end up with 80% of the benifit of HS2 for a fraction of the cost.

How do you figure that? The same land needs to be purchased, the same environmental considerations need to be addressed and the build will take the same length of time pretty much. Those are the biggest components of the build cost and I don't think you'll save as much as you're thinking. When building a new mainline not laying track and catenary to the same standard (or at least easily upgradable to that) of at least HS1 could be viewed as penny pinching and short sighted.

[ess1uk]

But without proper investment in the power supply there will be no electricity for these trains to run on anyway and all these other arguments become irrelevant.

[Titan]

A slower line can have sharper curves, substantially reducing the amount of tunneling and earthworks required as obstacles can now be avoided rather than tunneled through. this also includes being able to use cheaper land that the original alignment would not have been able to.I certrainly am not advocating building anything near what is required for HS1, only a top speed of 140mph. Indeed utilising the pendolinos ability to tilt could make the curves sharper still.  And in this current climate I think so called 'penny pinching' would be welcomed judging by the reaction to the current proposed costs. You might even get away with less 'enviromental' tunnelling on the grounds of reduced noise from slower trains,  and being able to route the line further from sensitive areas, although somehow I think the NIMBYS will still have something to say about that.

 

As far as electricity is concerned, there is such a significant future shortfall in future provision  for the entire country that a lot of new power genertion will need to be built anyway. Tagging on the comparitavely small extra requirement for a new railway line will add a hardly noticable, if indeed any extra cost at all, on to that program.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Titan

[Suzie]

I can see that new railway build will have to factor in the cost of building a new dedicated power station for the electricity supply soon, like in the olden days before the national grid. The inability to get adequate power on sensible terms has scuppered North American electrification projects.

[jjb1970]

I don't think it is that bad, trains are a pretty small load, OK I'd not want to pay the electricity bill or power it but large power stations talk about GW output, medium ones are in the 100's of MW and even smaller CHP type plants are often in tens of MW which is still a large output compared to a train.The problems of the powering grid are real and a ticking time bomb, but if it is rail demand that tips it over the edge then things are already long past the point of a collapse. The real problem for NGC is the investment is all going into renewables most of which is intermittent and not particularly reliable and the new nukes that were meant to provide the base load capacity may end up never being built. Expect another dash for gas as after the Kingsnorth 5 & 6 debacle it is unlikely anybody is going to try and build new coal any time soon.

[The Stationmaster]

The way I see it there is more of a capacity problem than a speed problem. Any new line would help, it does not have to be high speed. It would make much more sense to me to build a new line that pendolinois could run on at 140mph. You would end up with 80% of the benifit of HS2 for a fraction of the cost.

 

As an aside, altering an existing line to a larger loading gauge is likely to cost much more than building a new line, because there is much more work involved than altering overbridges and platforms (and OLE come to that!) Why? Because along the entire route the tracks will have to be slewed outwards so that trains don't hit each other when they pass. This means widening of cuttings, embankmants, rebuilding or widening of viaducts etc. just about every single piece of railway infrastructure would have to be moved or rebuilt. With a new railway at least you don't have the cost of demolishing the old one first, let alone before you factor the disruption in!

Speed is very relevant, and can become critical, in two ways.  Firstly - and less critically - is the commercial impact and the way in which traffic is attracted to a mode of transport; shorter journey times are an important element in attracting custom and making a rail journey more attractive than the alternatives.

 

However speed, and journey times, become critically important in deciding the economics of a railway - higher speed = shorter journey times = potential resource savings = either lower capital and maintenance expenditure and/or lower operating costs.  But in there somewhere is a point of balance between all these different elements of a total package.  What we do know from overseas experience is that a speed of around 200mph, possibly a bit lower is achievable with relatively steep gradients and noticeable - SNCF's LGV's area a long way from arrow straight routes with billiard table gradient profiles.  Equally it is known from SNCF experience that with their TGV design of train running onlya  little bit faster than their current 186mph maximum increases energy consumption exponentially.

 

On the other hand when it comes to running at very high speeds alongside existing railways we know that very fast running - probably 125-140mph plus - introduces considerable additional risks into on-track and lineside safety; it simply isn't on to run at very high speeds on infrastructure which is not subject to far greater standards of lineside fencing and restrictions on lineside access and maintenance access.  these two are factors which drive costs and need to be taken into account.

[tetsudofan]

When HS1 was built and they announced that domestic high-speed services will be provided into St. Pancras International my thought was that I would never use it as most of the places in London that I visited were within striking distance of Charing Cross. However, once it started running I gave it a try - from Folkestone West (within easy walking distance) there is an hourly service which takes 54 minutes to St. Pancras (as opposed to about 100 minutes on the classic train). I got converted the first time I used it....and have never again used a classic train to Charing Cross.

 

Tomorrow, for instance, I'm visiting friends on the outskirts of Brixton. Will be leaving their place at 6.15pm, bus to Brixton tube station, Victoria Line to Kings Cross St. Pancras, pop into Starbucks for a frappachino, catch the 7.10pm High-Speed, arrive Folkestone West at 8.04pm, home by 8.15pm. Fantastic.

 

Would be even better if the High-Speed ran at Eurostar speed - but maybe that would not give the train manager enough time to check tickets between St. Pancras and Ashford or vice versa!!

 

For nearly 20 years I lived in Japan and was a regular traveller on the Shinkansen. When the first line was built in the mid-60s some of the stations, like Shin-Yokohama and Shin-Osaka ("shin" meaning "new" - so similar to "parkway" being proposed for HS2) were built out in the boondocks. Go back now  and they are now part of the built-up city!!

 

Having seen how high-speed works, think I'm classed as a supporter........

[Joseph_Pestell]

The way I see it there is more of a capacity problem than a speed problem. Any new line would help, it does not have to be high speed. It would make much more sense to me to build a new line that pendolinois could run on at 140mph. You would end up with 80% of the benifit of HS2 for a fraction of the cost.

 

As an aside, altering an existing line to a larger loading gauge is likely to cost much more than building a new line, because there is much more work involved than altering overbridges and platforms (and OLE come to that!) Why? Because along the entire route the tracks will have to be slewed outwards so that trains don't hit each other when they pass. This means widening of cuttings, embankmants, rebuilding or widening of viaducts etc. just about every single piece of railway infrastructure would have to be moved or rebuilt. With a new railway at least you don't have the cost of demolishing the old one first, let alone before you factor the disruption in!

 

Totally agree with this.

 

Not only are the reduced travel times not greatly changed by the speeds above 140mph (especially to Birmingham where it saves about 9 minutes), but higher speeds also preclude a stop to serve Buckinghamshire. No surprise that everyone there is opposed to it when they get all the pain and no benefit.

 

And let's cut the cost by stopping this nonsense of a tunnel to Euston with expensive rebuilding there. It's simply not jjustified when most passengers will find it more convenient to get off at Old Oak and get into Central London by Crossrail. 

[Glorious NSE]

The other downside to building it at present speeds is that it would remove any point to phase 2, as that would then be slower than the existing routes!

 

It needs to be a new line to get the capacity on the WCML on phase 1.

It needs to be high speed to beat present times on phase 2.

Phase 2 is what starts extending the capacity gains to other routes than the WCML.

[Richard E]

I don't think it is that bad, trains are a pretty small load, OK I'd not want to pay the electricity bill or power it but large power stations talk about GW output, medium ones are in the 100's of MW and even smaller CHP type plants are often in tens of MW which is still a large output compared to a train.The problems of the powering grid are real and a ticking time bomb, but if it is rail demand that tips it over the edge then things are already long past the point of a collapse. The real problem for NGC is the investment is all going into renewables most of which is intermittent and not particularly reliable and the new nukes that were meant to provide the base load capacity may end up never being built. Expect another dash for gas as after the Kingsnorth 5 & 6 debacle it is unlikely anybody is going to try and build new coal any time soon.

Apparently a Class 91 draws around 5MW at full power so it won't take that much to put a strain on a smallish CHP plant. A Eurostar draws 12.2MW whilst a TGV set is around 9MW. Scale that up to cope with the size of electrical section used (I don't know how big they are but Stationmaster might know, or know someone who does) combined with the number of traction units in section and I suspect you will find that the power requirements at peak times is rather large.

 

This will also show why the Eurostar sets werre restricted by the infrastructure on the ECML when used some time ago.

 

Also our power stations are almost all privately owned. National Grid Transmission Group merely buy and distribute power (both electricity and gas), they do not generate it. Generation is in the hands of 60+ private and Government owned companies. Even National Grid is a private company as opposed to a Government owned company.

 

Kingsnorth is/was owned by Eon. It is no longer in service having been decommissioned on 17th December last.

 

There is 45GW of spare capacity in the UK at present between production and consumption - we desperately need new build power stations to take over from the life expired or soon to be life expired stations. The critical point falls in 2016 ...

Edited May 20, 2013 by Richard E

[The Stationmaster]

Apparently a Class 91 draws around 5MW at full power so it won't take that much to put a strain on a smallish CHP plant. A Eurostar draws 12.2MW whilst a TGV set is around 9MW. Scale that up to cope with the size of electrical section used (I don't know how big they are but Stationmaster might know, or know someone who does) combined with the number of traction units in section and I suspect you will find that the power requirements at peak times is rather large.

 

This will also show why the Eurostar sets werre restricted by the infrastructure on the ECML when used some time ago.

 

Also our power stations are almost all privately owned. National Grid Transmission Group merely buy and distribute power (both electricity and gas), they do not generate it. Generation is in the hands of 60+ private and Government owned companies. Even National Grid is a private company as opposed to a Government owned company.

 

Kingsnorth is/was owned by Eon. It is no longer in service having been decommissioned on 17th December last.

 

There is 45GW of spare capacity in the UK at present between production and consumption - we desperately need new build power stations to take over from the life expired or soon to be life expired stations. The critical point falls in 2016 ...

Sorry i can't answer that one but what I can add is that Eurostars were no more restricted on grounds of power draw on the ECMl than anything else - in fact the extremely poor original state of supply north of Newcastle which had always restricted the number of Class 91s allowed in any particular electrical section was resolved (at least in part on the back of the Eurostar project.

 

The big problem with Eurostars on the ECML was the cheap and far from cheerful BR Mk3 catenary which could not take the uplift forces of Eurostar pantographs until they were suitably redesigned and even then speeds had to be restricted.  In fact the best catenary by far on BR for high speed pantograph operation was that originally installed on the Styal Loop, shame about the low linespeeds.

[phil-b259]

Totally agree with this.

 

Not only are the reduced travel times not greatly changed by the speeds above 140mph (especially to Birmingham where it saves about 9 minutes), but higher speeds also preclude a stop to serve Buckinghamshire. No surprise that everyone there is opposed to it when they get all the pain and no benefit.

 

And let's cut the cost by stopping this nonsense of a tunnel to Euston with expensive rebuilding there. It's simply not jjustified when most passengers will find it more convenient to get off at Old Oak and get into Central London by Crossrail. 

 

Tunnelling to Euston is not 'nonsense' as you put it - it is being proposed for sound reasons. Dumping the large number of passengers on what are expected to be reasonably well filled Crossrail trains and using them as the sole link to central London is a recipie for disaster. Going to a rebuilt Euston adds the Northern, Victoria and Circle (Euston Square) tube lines to help take the strain while the  bus routes are also far more suitable in terms of getting people where they want to go. In addition crossrail 2 is proposed to go via Euston providing further connectivity to places south of the river and no doubt some people will find the walk from Euston manageable not to mention St Pancras  just being a short walk away.

 

Besides terminating at Old Oak wouldn't actually save much because for any long distance terminal to function effectively it needs lots of platforms - St Pancras being a case in point. HS1 and the MML have the capacity for many more trains than St Pancras can handle and with the nearest stabling at Cricklewood / Temple Mills it is platform occupancy that proves the limiting factor. Unlike suburban ENUs you need more than the 6 minutes allowed at Charing Cross to prep the train for its return working - especially if a premium fare is going to be charged. In the case of Old Oak common increasing the footprint of the HS2 site so it is able to cope with the 9 or so terminating platforms necessary would entail the demolition of the current HEX and planned Crossrail depot which would then need replacing somewhere else at significant cost (Not to mention lots of political oposition - there is a reqason why Old Oak was chosen over a greenfield site near Romford). Then there is the issue of connecting to HS1, if you are going to build such a connection - it has to be tunnelled to Camden anyway.

 

Tunnelling itself is also not particularly expensive as things go, what makes them expensive is adding underground stations with the extra excavation required to provide platforms emergency exits , escalators, cross passages surface buildings & entrances, etc.. Hence the tendency on later tube lines to go for the maximum station spacings possible.

[jjb1970]

Apparently a Class 91 draws around 5MW at full power so it won't take that much to put a strain on a smallish CHP plant. A Eurostar draws 12.2MW whilst a TGV set is around 9MW. Scale that up to cope with the size of electrical section used (I don't know how big they are but Stationmaster might know, or know someone who does) combined with the number of traction units in section and I suspect you will find that the power requirements at peak times is rather large.

 

This will also show why the Eurostar sets werre restricted by the infrastructure on the ECML when used some time ago.

 

Also our power stations are almost all privately owned. National Grid Transmission Group merely buy and distribute power (both electricity and gas), they do not generate it. Generation is in the hands of 60+ private and Government owned companies. Even National Grid is a private company as opposed to a Government owned company.

 

Kingsnorth is/was owned by Eon. It is no longer in service having been decommissioned on 17th December last.

 

There is 45GW of spare capacity in the UK at present between production and consumption - we desperately need new build power stations to take over from the life expired or soon to be life expired stations. The critical point falls in 2016 ...

 

NGC is the body primarily responsible for regulating the transmission system which is what we draw power from, the generating companies feed into it and have to balance their in day generation performance against declared input. NGC is facing a problem as more and more capacity is intermittent and unreliable and the generation companies are bringing old coal plants off line due to environmenta regulations. E.ON closed Kingsnorth because the proposed new units 5 & 6 which were planned super critical coal units were too politically troublesome and more trouble than they were worth. And with the 2008 implosion the financial case and funding costs went pear shaped as the political climate was more trouble than it was worth. The current grid demand of the UK is 30-40GW varying in day, in winter it can be up to 60-65GW, the problem is that with the intermittency of wind and problems with thermal and nuclear plants grid margins can already get down to <5GW in Winter. 5MW is peak demand, class 91's will (or should) rarely draw that. If HS2 was to run say 20 trains at 12MW at any one time (10 in each direction) just for argument (no idea what they'll run) and assuming they always drew max power (which they won't) then that is 240MW or between roughly 0.4 and 0.8% of grid demand. If a load of that magnitude crashes the grid then it is already pretty well wrecked. That is less than half of a large coal unit at a plant like Ratcliffe or Drax. The UK does desperately need new power plants, unfortunately if the new nukes are not going to generate until the mid 2020's at the earliest (assuming they're built) and coal is political suicide then that leaves gas and ever greater reliance on gas supplies to prop up wind, bits of biomass and a fleet of ever older nukes soldiering on and a few coalers fitted with the necessary emissions abatement.

[Suzie]

240MW is a whole Magnox nuclear power station's normal output.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Suzie

[Richard E]

Kingsnorth 5/6 was canned, according to web sources, due to insistence on Carbon Capture but the technology wasn't developed at the time and the sought government support was refused. BUT that is getting into politics so perhaps we should agree that for various reasons the proposals were not viable for the company and leave it at that.