HS2

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Indeed, but as we now know steep cuttings / embankments a a recipe for bank slips / failures during heavy / prolonged rain events - which thanks to climate change are increasing with a arming frequency.

 

Therefore engineers these days (be they building roads or railways will always look to have very gentle slopes - thats way on the reinstated borders railway lots of the cuttings / embankments were subjected to works like the installation of Gibon baskets filled with stone and the slopes being re profiled for example.

 

Of course the other advantage of gentle slopes is that they can then be returned to landowners use for agricultural use thus mitigating the extra width originally taken during construction.

 

These days we have far more geotechnical knowledge and more sophisticated design software. We have design standards that add in factors of safety. we will always do detailed geotechnical analysis of the natural soils and also of soils or aggregates imported to the works.
 

You will mostly find cuttings and embankments to target 1in 3 slopes. Poor ground can be 1 in 4 but you’d avoid that in an embankment. Really good ground could go to 1 in 1.5 but it’s rare and you’d generally reinforce the soils now. Budgets mean land take still has to be minimised so it’s always a balance between slope angle / stability / land take and retaining structures. Different land values create different solutions - narrow alignments with retaining walls in urban areas, cuttings etc in rural areas.

 

Cuttings and embankments form critical part of the road / rail infrastructure (and any drainage systems vital to their stability will sit at their extreme edges) so do not get returned to landowners but are adopted as highway or railway land.
 

They will often be used for landscaping - trees, hedges , wildflowers etc

Edited September 28, 2023 by black and decker boy
Typo

[melmerby]

I've just watched the latest "Japan Railway Journal" about an extension to a current Hokuriku Shinkansen from Kanazawa to Tsuruga, the line will gain six new stations.

The communities were falling over themselves to welcome the new service when it opens next year and the local governments have already built supporting facilities around the station sites such as shops, meeting spaces, outdoor green spaces, hotels etc.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/japanrailway/20230928/2049134/

 

Another thing I noticed was the line seems to be mainly on a viaduct, snaking through communties like a white ribbon.

 

How different to the UK, where high speed rail is to be avoided at all cost by many folk.

Edited September 28, 2023 by melmerby

[jjb1970]

We should be careful with the Japan comparison as the story is mixed. The most famous examples are around Narita airport. The airport itself had to make concessions to recalcitrant farmers and the Narita Shinkansen was abandoned after a decade of battling local opposition along the line. The bits that were built were incorporated within the Keisei line to Narita (contrary to perceived wisdom there is quite a  lot of non-shinkansen standard gauge track in Japan) but the failure of the planned shinkansen link had a significant impact on Narita airport.

 

China also suffers from people resisting infrastructure development, their solution is often to leave homeowners in place with a house no sensible person would touch with a bargepole thanks to sitting in the middle partition of a major highway or suchlike. This is despite conventional wisdom that ordinary people have to do as they're told and have zero rights.

[St Enodoc]

10 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

some of the station spacing is quite short given HS2 has resisted intermediate stations.

The platforms are all on loops, though.

 

10 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

my favourites are the Series 100, 300 and E4 trains.

E5 for me.

[Bernard Lamb]

20 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Good oppourtunity for the government as landowner to earn rental income during the dithering decades ?

Which is exactly what happened with the M74.

There was a superb hotel near Lockerbie that was closed after being the subject of compulsory purchase. When the road upgrade was delayed they asked the former owner if he would lke to run it. He agreed, but could not care less about the profitability. as he was getting a set fee and was rather upset at the way he had been treated. He opened the hotel and offered various groups some fantastic bargain offers. 

 

Meanwhile back on the WCML the journey time into Euston yesterday was 27 minutes with a 4 car unit. 10 minutes down on what wasoften being acheived in recent months and also some trains cancelled so very crowded. 

Bernard

 

[jamie92208]

2 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Which is exactly what happened with the M74.

There was a superb hotel near Lockerbie that was closed after being the subject of compulsory purchase. When the road upgrade was delayed they asked the former owner if he would lke to run it. He agreed, but could not care less about the profitability. as he was getting a set fee and was rather upset at the way he had been treated. He opened the hotel and offered various groups some fantastic bargain offers. 

 

Meanwhile back on the WCML the journey time into Euston yesterday was 27 minutes with a 4 car unit. 10 minutes down on what wasoften being acheived in recent months and also some trains cancelled so very crowded. 

Bernard

 

That sort of thi g has been going on for many years.  The Midland Railway bought the right of way across central Bradford in 1899 but for many reasons the line wasn't built.  They kept one building as the estate office and took rent till they finally sold the land to Bradford Council in 1918.

 

Jamie

[melmerby]

12 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

(contrary to perceived wisdom there is quite a  lot of non-shinkansen standard gauge track in Japan)

Apart from subways, suburbans & trams how much is normal trains (i.e. not "Mini -Shinkansen)?

There's a fair bit of dual track 3' 6" gauge that has been converted to two single lines, one of 3' 6" gauge and one of 4' 8½" just to run these 'nearly' Shinkansen trains.

Edited September 29, 2023 by melmerby

[jjb1970]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Apart from subways, suburbans & trams how much is normal trains (i.e. not "Mini -Shinkansen)?

There's a fair bit of dual track 3' 6" gauge that has been converted to two single lines, one of 3' 6" gauge and one of 4' 8½" just to run these 'nearly' Shinkansen trains.

 

In terms of track mileage not a high percentage of total, but the lines that are standard gauge are intensively used and include limited express (similar to what we'd call inter-city) services. They're 'private' railways, a term still used despite the various JR companies having been privatized decades ago, examples include the Kintetsu, Keisei, Keihan, Hanshin and Keikyu railways. 

 

The mini-shinkansen services are different, an economical way to extend the shinkansen network without building new high speed lines. However, while running on shinkansen track they are shinkansen trains. Other than the different colour scheme I suspect most would find it easy to confuse the E6 with E5 (if they carried the same livery), the E6 operates in multiple with E5 sets and is a 320kmh train.

[Bernard Lamb]

Just nattering at tea time with a few neighbours and I thought this was interesting.

Ther are 14 houses in the road and there are people working on HS2 from three of them.

Bernard

[adb968008]

22 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

China also suffers from people resisting infrastructure development, their solution is often to leave homeowners in place with a house no sensible person would touch with a bargepole thanks to sitting in the middle partition of a major highway or suchlike. This is despite conventional wisdom that ordinary people have to do as they're told and have zero rights.

Nail houses..

some are almost comical.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development

[woodenhead]

Found the answer on HS2 buying up houses for later stages

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/29/600m-of-public-money-spent-buying-up-property-in-north-of-england-for-hs2?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[jjb1970]

On 29/09/2023 at 09:19, St Enodoc said:

E5 for me.

 

I know this is diverting the thread, but given the subject has been raised, and given all the political hand wringing and negativity (of which I am guilty too) something for St Enodoc and something we can maybe enjoy and be happy about for a change (in the context of this thread), a JR East E5 Hayabusa in N by Kato. I posted this a while ago in a thread to show some of the evolution of Shinkansen trains. I should really add to that thread with a few more, when I rotate the trains I haven't pictured yet for running duty. Looking online the current going rate for a full 10 car set (6 + 4 car expansion book sets) is about 30000JPY, which works out at about £165, which is a bit of a bargain.

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by jjb1970

[APOLLO]

Interesting article below explaining where a lot of HS2 money is going (rightly or wrongly I don't know but certainly not into land, infrastructure, track or rolling stock. Sign of the times.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12576983/GUY-ADAMS-HS2-costs-diversity.html

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

[Siberian Snooper]

Whilst I was on the Canadian, Vancouver to Toronto. I got chatting to an American businessman whose company produces the software for various countries tax collection, including ours. I mentioned the state of HS2 and it being put on a back burner, he said in the States when such financial dilemmas occur they just print more money to cover it, the idea being to keep people employed and paying taxes and thus keep tax revenues rolling in, not going out in state handouts.

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Interesting article below explaining where a lot of HS2 money is going (rightly or wrongly I don't know but certainly not into land, infrastructure, track or rolling stock. Sign of the times.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12576983/GUY-ADAMS-HS2-costs-diversity.html

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

As the article itself says, HS2 is legally bound to produce the document. I know consultants are supposed to charge high fees, but I don’t think anyone is suggesting that HS2 have spent £90bn on an Equality Impact Asssessment. There are plenty of photographs on this thread showing where the money is being spent and this article says that £600m has been spent on buying properties of those affected by the new line https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/29/600m-of-public-money-spent-buying-up-property-in-north-of-england-for-hs2?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

[black and decker boy]

4 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Interesting article below explaining where a lot of HS2 money is going (rightly or wrongly I don't know but certainly not into land, infrastructure, track or rolling stock. Sign of the times.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12576983/GUY-ADAMS-HS2-costs-diversity.html

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

You can’t blame HS2 for complying with rules imposed on it, as a public sector organisation, by the very government that then bemoans spending of money on reports such as this.

 

Such reports & rules are not unique to HS2 but imposed on all manner of public sector organisations, projects etc including National Highways and their major projects and local councils when they are lucky enough to win the central government grant lottery.

 

they even include requirements for suppliers & contractors to prove how their policies align with EDI, Modern Slavery, active travel for staff and such like and have quite heavy demands for data collection and monthly reporting on these matters. The amount spent on superfluous data (meaning people to collate, manage and report) that isn’t actually funding or building stuff is immense and can be highly frustrating to circumnavigate.

[Northmoor]

8 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

You can’t blame HS2 for complying with rules imposed on it, as a public sector organisation, by the very government that then bemoans spending of money on reports such as this.

 

Such reports & rules are not unique to HS2 but imposed on all manner of public sector organisations, projects etc including National Highways and their major projects and local councils when they are lucky enough to win the central government grant lottery.

 

they even include requirements for suppliers & contractors to prove how their policies align with EDI, Modern Slavery, active travel for staff and such like and have quite heavy demands for data collection and monthly reporting on these matters. The amount spent on superfluous data (meaning people to collate, manage and report) that isn’t actually funding or building stuff is immense and can be highly frustrating to circumnavigate.

 

Yes, but a good quality outcome costs and the customer (rightly) cannot delegate responsibility for ensuring the law is being adhered to.  The alternative (worst case) is that a project HS2 hires remarkably cheap contractors who complete the build but it's later learned they were using slave labour.  Would we be comfortable that happening in the UK?

 

I agree the data collection and reporting often costs too much but like enforcing H&S regulation, the organisations who complain loudest about how much it costs are generally those that don't really know what they're doing.

[black and decker boy]

24 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

 

Yes, but a good quality outcome costs and the customer (rightly) cannot delegate responsibility for ensuring the law is being adhered to.  The alternative (worst case) is that a project HS2 hires remarkably cheap contractors who complete the build but it's later learned they were using slave labour.  Would we be comfortable that happening in the UK?

 

I agree the data collection and reporting often costs too much but like enforcing H&S regulation, the organisations who complain loudest about how much it costs are generally those that don't really know what they're doing.

I didn’t say it wasn’t worthwhile as a principle but alot of our civil service bureaucracy gold plate and add layers to what could be simple things but then it generates jobs at their end so they have no incentive to be more efficient (that’s a whole other team employed to make things look more efficient).  And don’t forget, as a public sector customer, they’ll employ an external consultant to validate & verify our data and benchmark against similar projects & organisations so that they have ‘independent ’ auditable outputs.
 

as a contractor, I’ll gather & process any data a paying customer demands but find it galling when that same customer then complains about the cost of all the none construction / core project stuff and associated staff.

[rockershovel]

I would remark that HS2 has a great reputation amongst the construction workforce for paying high rates for jobs like drivers and slingers accompanied by at times, very low rates of utilisation or production with long periods of standby. Contractors are happy to do this if the Client is footing the bill, it is part of the structure of the project or whatever. 

 

There is also a strong Tendency to hire foreign labour without undue scrutiny if the rates are low enough. "Keep cutting till profits appear" is alive and well in the UK construction sector. 

Edited September 30, 2023 by rockershovel

[jjb1970]

Meanwhile in China:

 

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-09-28/China-opens-its-fastest-cross-sea-high-speed-railway-1nsye3UVDHy/index.html

 

Now I know we shouldn't compare the challenges of building a short 277km railway with large stretches over water with the incomparably greater challenges of building a railway from London to Birmingham, but even so I just can't help thinking China is better at this than we are.

[rockershovel]

5 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Meanwhile in China:

 

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-09-28/China-opens-its-fastest-cross-sea-high-speed-railway-1nsye3UVDHy/index.html

 

Now I know we shouldn't compare the challenges of building a short 277km railway with large stretches over water with the incomparably greater challenges of building a railway from London to Birmingham, but even so I just can't help thinking China is better at this than we are.

If you think it's easy  building anything, any distance in the UK against the massed ranks of water voles, obstreperous landowners (ably supported by the NFU), crested newts, utility cable and transmission line owners, housing speculators, bats, oyster catchers , Guardian reading activists of assorted stripes and the sheer difficulty of mustering a workforce against the machinations of HMRC, come and try it! 

 

It would probably be easier to learn Chinese .... come to that, probably easier than deciphering the EDI gobbledygook flooding my inbox these days...

Edited October 1, 2023 by rockershovel

[jjb1970]

Another high speed railway development, it's interesting (or funny) to read some of the international media articles having a go over budget over runs and delays, if HS2 had only suffered equivalent delays and overruns we'd all be as happy as pigs in muck compared to how things are going:

 

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231001/p2g/00m/0in/031000c

[62613]

22 hours ago, Gatesheadgeek said:

As the article itself says, HS2 is legally bound to produce the document. I know consultants are supposed to charge high fees, but I don’t think anyone is suggesting that HS2 have spent £90bn on an Equality Impact Asssessment. There are plenty of photographs on this thread showing where the money is being spent and this article says that £600m has been spent on buying properties of those affected by the new line https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/29/600m-of-public-money-spent-buying-up-property-in-north-of-england-for-hs2?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

I doubt very much that they have spent that much money on anything yet, no? That's the guess at the final cost of the project, which has somehow been conflated with total spend so far. 

[62613]

8 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Meanwhile in China:

 

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-09-28/China-opens-its-fastest-cross-sea-high-speed-railway-1nsye3UVDHy/index.html

 

Now I know we shouldn't compare the challenges of building a short 277km railway with large stretches over water with the incomparably greater challenges of building a railway from London to Birmingham, but even so I just can't help thinking China is better at this than we are.

Bit of an unfortunate name for the train, IMHO!

[jamie92208]

It would be interesting to see how much has actually been spent so far. Obviously a lot of the costs come in early such as Land acquisition,desigfees,the EDI that has been mentioned, parliamentary process a d

Resumablya, ot of legal fees.  

 

Obviously the longer we get into the ptoject tbe more accurate the estimates should become. 

 

Jamie