HS2 under review

[jcredfer]

Many  ...  many years ago, I was very privileged to have a 2 week course on operating railways, at LMR {Longmoor Military Railway}.  One of the lectures was about efficiency of various types of fuel.  The figures at the time, were Steam = 3%, Diesel = 4%, Electrickery = 5%.  HOWEVER, the Army {note, not MoD} were more aware of what was being said.  Steam, coal into the firebox produced 3%, Diesel into thumper produced 4%, Electrickery into electric motor 5%.  Is anyone else up with the false comparison here?  The Army did, way back then, the figures were LOCO efficiency.  Steam, "fuel" to performance, Diesel, "fuel" to performance, Electricity, loco "pick-up" to performance! {Figures at the time suggested that the energy drop, from "fuel" source, along power lines / power rails was such that 7% of it was available at the pick-up contacts.}  I am only too well aware that in the intervening years each of the energy sources has improved efficiency and environmental developments.  I would be interested in seeing what the Fuel to performances add up to now.  I would also be interested in which FUEL produces the least overall environmental impact, for any particular performance.

 

Just a thought.

Regards

 

Julian

 

Edited February 10, 2019 by jcredfer
spelling

[Edwin_m]

I don't recognise those figures.  Electric motors are pretty efficient, about 80% I think, with maybe 10% lost in the transmission.  I saw something many years ago suggesting the overall efficiency of electric traction fuelled by coal-fired power stations was similar to burning diesel fuel directly in the loco.  The steam and diesel figures look very low too. 

 

Except for mechanical movement at source (eg water mill), renewable energy produces electricity, as does nuclear.  Attempting to produce combustion fuels (including hydrogen) by renewable means is going to be much less efficient than transporting the energy via electric wires.

[lmsforever]

 Fewer trains last time I looked at the proposed services we were looking at eighteen per hour they probably will only be half full so not enviromentaly good.,The number of people having to go to London to pick up a train will increase if loadings are anything like is boasted so more surburban trains and bottlenecks at terminuses in London ,now people can go to reasonably close stations and pick up services to all the HS2 destinations so this is not progress only adding to co2 emissions.But what do I know I am just someone who uses the existing network and is satisfied with speed and destinations HS is the future at the expense of the basic idea of rail connectivity, I await the rants.

[lmsforever]

17 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

Nothing has been spent nor committed for the Ox-Bridge link road as yet other than investigations & feasibility studies (a few hundreds of thousands of pounds).

 

it needs planning permission / Development consent order and given how glacial such things are in the U.K., actual £billions on construction are going to be 10 years away. I doubt it will be open to traffic before 2030.

 

 

But the money is readily available for this whereas EWR has been trimmed back at every opportunity not a good policy plus this road will swamp the areas adjacent with thousands of cars adding to the many already there.Sorr this road is going to bring misery to everyone.Also when is the new link road round to Stoke Mandeville going to be started ?

[black and decker boy]

2 hours ago, lmsforever said:

But the money is readily available for this whereas EWR has been trimmed back at every opportunity not a good policy plus this road will swamp the areas adjacent with thousands of cars adding to the many already there.Sorr this road is going to bring misery to everyone.Also when is the new link road round to Stoke Mandeville going to be started ?

Many of the new relief roads around Aylesbury are intrinsically linked to HS2 so if HS2 gets pulled then I would question if they can go ahead in the near term.

 

If HS2 keeps going, then I'd expect to see diggers working on the relief roads next year.

 

I don't disagree that the expressway will change the Aylesbury Vale communities but in terms of funding, its not a committed sum in the Government budget just a future 'probable' given its so far in the future and this government won't exist by then. Never take a politicians word about funding until you see contracts awarded and holes being dug in fields.

 

If the housebuilding industry takes a dive due to recession, brexit etc then all of the third party funding they deliver to both EWR and the Expressway along with some contributions to the new relief roads will go on hold.

Edited February 11, 2019 by black and decker boy

[Mike Storey]

15 hours ago, locoholic said:

1. Historical decreases in the cost to the environment of electricity generation are irrelevant to any discussion of the optimum speed for a new rail service.

2. The source of future energy supplies is also irrelevant, unless you are suggesting that some miraculous free electricity supply will be found.

3. You have not taken account of the greater wear than higher speeds inflict on both trains and track, thus reducing any saving due to the smaller fleet size.

4. The environmental cost of train construction is spread across the lifespan of the train. The longer the train is in service, the better it is for the environment. However, the longer it is in service, the more energy it will use. The faster it goes the more energy it will use, in proportion to the square of its speed, so the initial "saving" in building a smaller, faster fleet becomes less significant over time.

5. You are arguing that a higher line speed (and therefore shorter journey times) can be had without additional cost, either financially or to the environment. This is simply nonsense. There is nothing special about electricity and there is nothing special about trains. They are just machines. I suspect you wouldn't argue that because the car and the motorway have been built, you might as well drive as fast as you can because you won't use any extra petrol and your car won't wear out faster. Exactly the same laws of physics apply to trains.

 

 

I think we will have to agree to disagree - your argument keeps shifting, from environment to cost, this time. Simply stating that my argument is nonsense and yours isn't, gets us nowhere.

 

You completely ignore so many other aspects, it is hard to continue this. I can only point out that the overriding economic ambition of every train operator I have ever worked for, or studied, is to have as small a fleet as possible and run it as intensively as is reasonably possible. That is basic railway 101.

 

[Siberian Snooper]

When heading from Plymouth to the Northeast, I try to go via London as it's usually quicker and more reliable than Crosscountry and if and when HS3 is up and running it will be a lot quicker and easier than at present, even if it means going from  Paddington to  Old Oak,  it'll be easier than the  H&C or the circle line.

 

 

[Mike Storey]

I just watched the Channel 4 prog on HS2. Whilst not as bad as the previous Panorama show a month or two back, it was still utterly imbalanced. If filmed just a year or less ago, he could have shown the same scenes on just about any part of the Southern, South West or other parts of the London commuter area. Would he have then argued that more money should be spent on those (whilst ignoring the many £billions that already have)?

 

He showed the Pacers without mentioning they disappear next year, and even boarded a couple of brand new trains without mentioning them! Or the hundreds of new units arriving over the next few years. He also failed to mention the 500 extra trains per day now being run across the North (compared to 2017), like nothing at all was being done.

 

He paraded Stephen Glaister, ex ORR,  as though he would have any idea about rail strategy - he is a competition lawyer for goodness sake.

 

But the greatest hoax was the comparative "return" shown against HS2 Phases 1 then Phases 1 & 2, against "Northern Powerhouse Rail", supposedly exampling a far superior return on the last-mentioned. Oh yeah? Against what capital cost? From what combination of the many competing (and as yet unagreed versions)? And against what actual return of fares against wider social benefits?

 

There was absolutely no mention of why HS2 is being built, apart from a throwaway "few minutes" being saved.  No mention of current capacity problems on the main radial routes or what problems plague the trans-pennine routes - just about old and crowded trains.

 

Of course both should be built, and that costs should be controlled to a reasonable extent. But this was not a show about to explain the strategic problem and whether or not HS2 was a reasonable part of the solution. It was just pure VoxPop, and bloke down the pub would have been more entertaining.

 

[caradoc]

Thanks for the summary Mike. I considered watching the programme but given its title the result seemed to be a foregone conclusion, as you have indeed explained, so thankfully I did not waste 30 minutes of my life !

[The Stationmaster]

On 10/02/2019 at 18:56, Mike Storey said:

 

It's not. Planned operational speed is 224 mph (250 mph is the top theoretical speed to allow a margin for safety and to some extent for future technical advances). That is slower than Chinese high speed conventional services already operate (249 mph, faster for Maglev) approximately the same speed of existing Italian and Japanese services, and only 10 or 20 mph faster than those existing in Germany, Spain and Korea. The UK version will of course not be operating for about another eight years or so.

 

The case for higher speed is largely in the fact that fewer trains are needed to perform the same service (up to a theoretical design maximum), so environmental costs are neutral, alongside the additional factor that a faster service is demonstrably more attractive, and more likely to generate modal shift from road and air, again giving environmental benefit.

 

The most significant, additional engineering costs for higher speed are largely confined to tunnels, and it is this area that has been suggested as a possibility for cost reduction, should that become a necessity, but that will mean fewer potential train paths. Utilising old roadbeds was a possibility examined and rejected on cost due to the need to tunnel through, or demolish, much greater areas of existing urban development. Much of the highest unit costs of HS2, when reviewing the costs per mile predicted *(although even these are being challenged as too low by a "whistleblower), is through urban areas due to property acquisition, compensation and relocation, plus other stuff like archeological digs. Slapping some track through open countryside is a piece of cake in comparison, and adjustments to radii and gradients are marginal. Foundation is a key cost factor, and certain ground formations have turned out to be more difficult than originally expected, but that would have been true in any alternative, given some of the geology being broached.

 

Ergo, a slower service might provide extra capacity elsewhere on the network, but for a marginal decrease in cost, would remove some key attractiveness to potential users, particularly longer journey times and reduced frequency (unless more trains were purchased, which would pretty well negate any construction costs savings and present a much higher whole life cost to ongoing operations.

 

Of the 14 options explored in some detail by HS2 prior to this version being recommended and accepted by Parliament, such issues were discussed at length. You only have to read through the reports, still available via the Gov.UK website, in archives, to see why this one, howsoever imperfect, was chosen. Fact is, most people don't bother, and the same old, same old, gets repeated every week.

 

Quite agree about speed and stock utilisation plus unless the train designers have discovered something which SNCF hasn't been able to discover (and knowing SNCF I don't necessarily discount that possibility) the simple fact is that power consumption increases massively at speeds of =200mph and higher.  TGVs could operate in normal service at speeds a bit in excess of =200mph but SNCF don't run them at that speed because of the massive increase in power consumption which would result (one past SNCF colleague said to me that it is nearer 50% than 25% but he wasn't an egineer and I don't know the source of his information).  

 

I appreciate that the TGV is basically 1960s/70s technology and thus somewhat dated but I  do wonder if efficiency gains reducing power consumption at higher speed have been sufficiently significant to make a major difference to energy costs.

[locoholic]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Quite agree about speed and stock utilisation plus unless the train designers have discovered something which SNCF hasn't been able to discover (and knowing SNCF I don't necessarily discount that possibility) the simple fact is that power consumption increases massively at speeds of =200mph and higher.  TGVs could operate in normal service at speeds a bit in excess of =200mph but SNCF don't run them at that speed because of the massive increase in power consumption which would result (one past SNCF colleague said to me that it is nearer 50% than 25% but he wasn't an egineer and I don't know the source of his information).  

 

I appreciate that the TGV is basically 1960s/70s technology and thus somewhat dated but I  do wonder if efficiency gains reducing power consumption at higher speed have been sufficiently significant to make a major difference to energy costs.

 

Quite agree. As I mentioned previously, the energy requirement is proportional to the square of the speed, so higher speeds require a massive increase in power input. No amount of clever engineering can overcome the basic laws of physics. You can't get something for nothing, the something in this case being shorter journey times.

[Mike Storey]

10 hours ago, locoholic said:

 

Quite agree. As I mentioned previously, the energy requirement is proportional to the square of the speed, so higher speeds require a massive increase in power input. No amount of clever engineering can overcome the basic laws of physics. You can't get something for nothing, the something in this case being shorter journey times.

 

some things - and also fewer trains and fewer crews to staff them all. Rather cheaper I think.

 

The French have never gone for high utilisation of their train fleets, until some recent eureka moment, involving their OuiGo sets. The higher speed trade off does not seem to bother the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Italians and Germans. Distances between major centres in at least three of those are very comparable to the UK.

[locoholic]

50 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

some things - and also fewer trains and fewer crews to staff them all. Rather cheaper I think.

 

The French have never gone for high utilisation of their train fleets, until some recent eureka moment, involving their OuiGo sets. The higher speed trade off does not seem to bother the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Italians and Germans. Distances between major centres in at least three of those are very comparable to the UK.

Seeing as you think that I made an "error" by knowing that trains obey the laws of physics, I am never going to persuade you that there is no way that it is either financially or environmentally cost neutral to operate a very high speed railway compared to a conventional one.

[phil-b259]

On 11/02/2019 at 09:34, lmsforever said:

 Fewer trains last time I looked at the proposed services we were looking at eighteen per hour they probably will only be half full so not enviromentaly good.,The number of people having to go to London to pick up a train will increase if loadings are anything like is boasted so more surburban trains and bottlenecks at terminuses in London ,now people can go to reasonably close stations and pick up services to all the HS2 destinations so this is not progress only adding to co2 emissions.But what do I know I am just someone who uses the existing network and is satisfied with speed and destinations HS is the future at the expense of the basic idea of rail connectivity, I await the rants.

 

You still cite speed and connectivity when it has already been explained multiple times that:-

 

Connectivity:- Grater connectivity does not exclusively mean providing stations or train services to bits of the Chilterns that never had (or lost their train service 60 odd years ago. - it also applies to the existing rail network. HS2 frees up capacity on existing main lines to provide more connectivity between stations on the classic network which have hitherto been impossible to timetable thanks to the need to provide fast express train paths for end to end traffic.

 

High Speed:- Nobody builds low tech, low speed main lines between their major cities anymore. While the actual top speeds do vary (mainly depending on when the line was built) and the general concession is that going faster than 200mph is inefficient due to significantly increased aerodynamic factors, the principle of not crippling its potential by sticking to 125mph is sound. In any case regardless of whether the line was designed for 125, 140 , 180, 200 or 250mph the actual routing would not vary very much at all as its desirable from an engineering perspective to maximise the radi of the curves and have straight track as much as possible regardless of the design speed.

 

Finally as regards passenger loadings - obviously initially the trains will not be full - added to which the line itself will only be half finished (i.e. The leg through the East Midlands and on to Yorkshire not being completed for a further decade after the initial phase). However a historical study of transport infrastructure, be it road or rail shows that its very much a 'build it and they will come syndrome'. Many rail reopening on the classic network show this trend with actual ridership on the borders rail line far exceeding the 'projected' numbers being bandied around before it was built (and you should note that there were a reasonable number of MSPs* who actively campaigned against it saying it was a 'vanity project for the Scottish Parliament and would never live up to the projections....)

 

*https://www.hawick-news.co.uk/news/msp-s-fears-over-cost-of-galashiels-railway-1-1897278

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/fears-for-borders-rail-link-as-msp-accused-of-sabotage-1-988536

['CHARD]

Spoiler and anti-climax alert!!!

 

Sorry to be an ar$e and add little of substance to this topic, however, the laws of physics as applied to HS2 operation are under protracted scrutiny at present; it will come as little surprise to m'learned colleagues that specialists in this arena have been retained to advise HS2's fleet engineering/ Ops team on the whole speed question, as one element of the lifecycle cost equation.  

 

The other related aspects of aerodynamics, noise, pressure and their impact on the construction design of tunnels, sound attenuation measures and trackform are similarly occupying the working days of a small army of specialists.  Commercial confidentiality prevents me from going into detail, but the organisation of which I'm part has a good number of engineers embedded in the project, and the outcomes are not settled just yet.

[frobisher]

13 hours ago, locoholic said:

 

Quite agree. As I mentioned previously, the energy requirement is proportional to the square of the speed, so higher speeds require a massive increase in power input. No amount of clever engineering can overcome the basic laws of physics. You can't get something for nothing, the something in this case being shorter journey times. 

 

If you're thinking 1/2 mv^2 then go and sit at the back of the class... That's the equation for kinetic energy (for twice the speed, this quadruples).  This is NOT a continuous energy input, but merely the potential energy of the object due to it's velocity relative to a stationary object.

 

In simple terms, it takes quadruple the energy to get to the top speed.  If it does so over 4 times as long as the similar massed train does to get to half the speed then the average instantaneous power consumed (i.e. the draw from the OHLE) is in fact the same over the acceleration.  When at speed you're "just" looking at factors such as rolling resistance (which is proportional to velocity), air resistance (which is mostly proportional to velocity,  etc for the power inputs (these are of course non trivial in reality) .  So probably nearer double than quadruple.

 

[caradoc]

Surely once we have left the EU we can rewrite the laws of physics to our own specification ?

 

(Sorry for diverting into politics !)

[Dava]

The  C4 programme equated the benefits of HS2 with  sorting the Northern Rail management & timetable fiasco and the need to resolve the Deansgate bottleneck. It is an indictment of Network Rail, DFT & the regional/city authorities that this has not been sorted long ago and recent changes have just made it much worse. You can be on a train and see a container freight being routed through knowing there will be a 10-15 minute delay as a result. Oxford Rd and Piccadilly platforms 14-15 are gross safety hazards due to crowding at peak periods.

 

As with East Midlands electrification [EMT having just been given a franchise extension] this investment is needed anyway, now, irrespective of HS2 & 'Northern Power Rail' which will take another 10-15 years to deliver, if ever.

 

The worrying bit of the C4 program was the repeated surmise that  Govt are considering cancelling HS2 as too expensive, unpopular & long term, i.e. The British disease. If so, Grayling's last comi-tragic act?

 

Dava

[pete_mcfarlane]

1 hour ago, Dava said:

The worrying bit of the C4 program was the repeated surmise that  Govt are considering cancelling HS2 as too expensive, unpopular & long term, i.e. The British disease. If so, Grayling's last comi-tragic act?

 

What worries me is that they made a subjective TV show telling everyone that HS2 is a disaster, and then claimed it was 'unpopular'. Well yes, it's unpopular because that's what the TV told people to think. 

[Mike Storey]

10 hours ago, locoholic said:

Seeing as you think that I made an "error" by knowing that trains obey the laws of physics, I am never going to persuade you that there is no way that it is either financially or environmentally cost neutral to operate a very high speed railway compared to a conventional one.

 

No, you won't, not least because someone has pointed out that your knowledge of applied physics may not actually be correct in this case. Most long distance trains spend a large proportion of their journey coasting anyway, once top speed has been achieved, but you were not to know that either. But, whatever, when you continue to only count energy consumption as the primary cost, then you will never persuade anyone who has any knowledge of the real, total costs of running a railway. Full Stop.

[locoholic]

7 hours ago, frobisher said:

 

If you're thinking 1/2 mv^2 then go and sit at the back of the class... That's the equation for kinetic energy (for twice the speed, this quadruples).  This is NOT a continuous energy input, but merely the potential energy of the object due to it's velocity relative to a stationary object.

 

In simple terms, it takes quadruple the energy to get to the top speed.  If it does so over 4 times as long as the similar massed train does to get to half the speed then the average instantaneous power consumed (i.e. the draw from the OHLE) is in fact the same over the acceleration.  When at speed you're "just" looking at factors such as rolling resistance (which is proportional to velocity), air resistance (which is mostly proportional to velocity,  etc for the power inputs (these are of course non trivial in reality) .  So probably nearer double than quadruple.

 

Yes, I know, although the wind resistance is proportional to the square of the speed.

 

Not sure what your point is about power consumption. If the train has a higher operating speed, it uses a lot more energy to reach that speed.

[locoholic]

44 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

No, you won't, not least because someone has pointed out that your knowledge of applied physics may not actually be correct in this case. Most long distance trains spend a large proportion of their journey coasting anyway, once top speed has been achieved, but you were not to know that either. But, whatever, when you continue to only count energy consumption as the primary cost, then you will never persuade anyone who has any knowledge of the real, total costs of running a railway. Full Stop.

Your argument relies totally on the fact that higher line speeds mean that a slightly smaller fleet of trains is needed to transport the same number of passengers. You think that saving cancels out the fact that faster trains and lines are significantly more expensive to build, operate and maintain. It does not. Full stop.

[Mike Storey]

13 hours ago, locoholic said:

Your argument relies totally on the fact that higher line speeds mean that a slightly smaller fleet of trains is needed to transport the same number of passengers. You think that saving cancels out the fact that faster trains and lines are significantly more expensive to build, operate and maintain. It does not. Full stop.

 

So the argument shifts yet again. Brand new faster trains, without tilt, and lines, are not significantly more expensive to build or operate. What makes them expensive is having to cope with more than one electrification and signalling system, which would be the case at any speed. There is a case that tunnels and deep cutting profiles for high speed present additional design costs, and foundations in certain geology, but the Japanese have rapidly progressed knowledge about this in the last decade, which is where I am sure HS2's consultants will be looking to for help. Alstom are now building double deck TGV sets for SNCF that are half the cost (in real terms) than their forefathers. You really need to check what is happening elsewhere, and what the conclusions of the original studies between various line profiles showed cost-wise, before making grand assumptions resulting in false conclusions.

 

I do not challenge the fact that extra energy will be necessary for higher speeds. But if there is no economic case for so doing, why is everyone else doing it??

 

[locoholic]

1 hour ago, Mike Storey said:

 

So the argument shifts yet again. Brand new faster trains, without tilt, and lines, are not significantly more expensive to build or operate. What makes them expensive is having to cope with more than one electrification and signalling system, which would be the case at any speed. There is a case that tunnels and deep cutting profiles for high speed present additional design costs, and foundations in certain geology, but the Japanese have rapidly progressed knowledge about this in the last decade, which is where I am sure HS2's consultants will be looking to for help. Alstom are now building double deck TGV sets for SNCF that are half the cost (in real terms) than their forefathers. You really need to check what is happening elsewhere, and what the conclusions of the original studies between various line profiles showed cost-wise, before making grand assumptions resulting in false conclusions.

 

I do not challenge the fact that extra energy will be necessary for higher speeds. But if there is no economic case for so doing, why is everyone else doing it??

 

Just read back through your comments and see how many times you have introduced irrelevancies and "shifted" the argument. Why is everyone else doing it? That's another question entirely, but you can be sure that they appreciate that the costs escalate exponentially as the design speed increases.

[lmsforever]

Trains without tilt are no good north of Wigan because of the twisty route plus Scotland is never going to finance a HS route they spend their money on projects that benefit their people ie. more electrification and improved intercity services.The  time gains will be lost by the time you arrive in Glasgow but I seem to remember reading a long time ago that signalling on the EC route was set up for 140mph running or was it all canned to save money.If it is still in the system maybe then these trains could go to Edinborough vi this route.