HS2

[adb968008]

These HS2 videos are interesting, theres 398 now on their channel.

I wonder how much these videos cost to make ?

 

Theres a lot of choreography , planning and access required to each one, and obviously several in progress at a time.
There must be a full time team here.

[corneliuslundie]

From the BBC this morning.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67441085

Has no-one told him the money was to be borrowed?

Is this what one means by the phrase "pouring money down the drain"?

Jonathan

[david.hill64]

Taking money from the capital expenditure (investment) budget to spend on maintenance is a sure sign of a failing company. The same applies at a national level.

[jjb1970]

Just when you think you couldn't get any more pee'd off by it all......diverting money from a major infrastructure construction program to fill potholes.

[adb968008]

Quote

AA president Edmund King said the plan could make a "considerable difference in bringing our roads back to the standards which road users expect, especially if councils use the cash efficiently".

This summer our road was resurfaced.

Great, first time in at least 6 decades.

We are a cul de sac with a few houses.

The old surface was just fine, traffic movements is probably under 40 car movements a day, inc school runs.

odd patch here and there, no ones dug it up in at least a decade.

 

The main road just away from us has several very dangerous pot holes, its a 40mph road, some holes are over 6 inches deep and 18 inches wide (weve measured and complained), cars are swerving dangerously around them… 11 months on and at least one crash.. its still unfilled.

 

This week, less than 3 months since resurfacing the gas company is coming to replace out our apparently life expired 80 odd year old pipes to dig up our brand new road surface…

All this despite us being encouraged to give up gas for electric too.

Theres no way this was suddenly just planned in the last 3 months…

 

I suspect the water pipes are just as old as the gas pipes… who knows the age of the electric, internet, sewage etc…

 

 

especially if councils use the cash efficiently

 

I would love to see this, but ive no confidence.

We’ll see cycle lanes, green ways, flower beds, reduced parking spots, traffic calming, 20mph zones, all with neat little black squares of tarmac in the road and the millions dissapear in a council pork fest.

 

We should open a thread for the best use of pot hole funding… I bet we see at least one arts project, festival, cultural centre, human experience, outreach project, overseas investment oppourtunity, duck island, ipad roaming charge, second home allowance all funded by a pot hole one way or another.

 

its as if Hippy Rishi is related to the Marples construction company all over again.

 

Then winter will come and the cracks reappear…

 

Pot holes filled with tory butter.

Edited November 17, 2023 by adb968008

[billbedford]

I know a song about such things:

 

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Just when you think you couldn't get any more pee'd off by it all......diverting money from a major infrastructure construction program to fill potholes.

JJB you missed something out.  Money which hasn't yet been borrowed (so doesn't actually exist) to fund  major infractstructure construction programme is somehow going to be created out of thin air to fill potholes.

 

You might of course very reasonably ask where road maintenance funding was being spent while all these potholes were forming?

[corneliuslundie]

I know that I posted the news item but perhaps we had better keep off politics. We don't want to upset Andy again.

Jonathan

[62613]

19 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

JJB you missed something out.  Money which hasn't yet been borrowed (so doesn't actually exist) to fund  major infractstructure construction programme is somehow going to be created out of thin air to fill potholes.

 

You might of course very reasonably ask where road maintenance funding was being spent while all these potholes were forming?

It wasn't there either. All local authorities have been subjected to massive cuts in their central government grant.

[icn]

 

On 12/11/2023 at 19:52, Pacific231G said:

The design principle of LGVs seems to have been to use curvatures allowing trains to run at full speed but to allow fairly steep gradients that the TGV sets have enough power to take without reducing speed. It gives some of them a real switchback appearance.  I don't though know whether that came after the decision to go for electrically powered TGVs fed by France's new fleet of nuclear power stations. With electric locos, power optimisation is far less of an issue than when the loco carries its own power station.

Germany also uses steep gradients on some of its high speed routes (e.g. Wendlingen Ulm), but the price seems to be that freight usage (happens during the night) is more restricted - and some people claim that the ICE 4 ended up being more expensive than it should've been just to handle these steeper routes. I don't suppose freight is a big concern for HS2 though given that it's more about freeing up capacity for freight elsewhere.

Edited November 18, 2023 by icn

[Ron Ron Ron]

Too much repetition in this video, but it does give an up-to-date glimpse of the HS2 / E-W Rail crossing.

 

Note the adjacent road to the new path of HS2, has now been diverted under the new bridge, under E-W Rail.

The old road bridge, that crossed over the old trackbed, appears to have been demolished, with the E-W Rail embankment finally joined up across the entire Calvert section of the new line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Ron Ron Ron

[Pacific231G]

On 17/11/2023 at 17:30, The Stationmaster said:

JJB you missed something out.  Money which hasn't yet been borrowed (so doesn't actually exist) to fund  major infractstructure construction programme is somehow going to be created out of thin air to fill potholes.

 

You might of course very reasonably ask where road maintenance funding was being spent while all these potholes were forming?

Surely Mike you're not suggesting that our beloved government could be in any way economical with the truth.  Given this government's attitude to major long term (i.e. beyond the next election) infrastructure programmes, filling one pothole probably IS nowadays a major infrastructure programme.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Pacific231G

[jamie92208]

Despite the shenanigans at Weestminster the tunnellers are still hard at work and two of the 6 teams are even updating the progress website.  Florence has now got past 14,500m and that tunnel is over 90% complete with 1450m to go.   Cecilia is 300 metres behind,  At this rate Florence should emerge into the light of day sometime in January.   Poor Lydia is still AWOL and there has been no news from Sushila and Caroline for nearly a month.

 

Jamie

[Ron Ron Ron]

Last month saw the lowering of the first sections of TBM "Emily" into the ventilation and access shaft, at Victoria Road, near Old Oak Common.

"Emily" will bore the Down tunnel, heading westwards towards Greenford.

 

The 2nd TBM that will bore the parallel Up tunnel, named "Anne", is now being lowered in sections into the adjacent Victoria Rd. crossover box.

Here are a couple of photos of the 336 tonne middle shield being lifted.

 

(Note Wembley Stadium in the background.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Ron Ron Ron

[Siberian Snooper]

Looks like something from a SciFi movie.

 

 

[2750Papyrus]

2 hours ago, Siberian Snooper said:

Looks like something from a SciFi movie.

 

 

About sums HS2 up!

[lmsforever]

Had to go to Thame today and went past all the work that took place at weekend ,all you can see are two filled trenches in the road .They are very well filled in and about 3ft wide and put to shame others seen around town.Work is being carried out on the road formations and you can see route of the approaches to the bridge and I am looking forward to driving over the new route /

[david.hill64]

Roger Ford has just published his monthly newsletter. His analysis of likely London-Manchester journey times shows a likely saving of 10 minutes by using HS2. DfT think 30 minutes. Who will be correct?

[jamie92208]

6 hours ago, david.hill64 said:

Roger Ford has just published his monthly newsletter. His analysis of likely London-Manchester journey times shows a likely saving of 10 minutes by using HS2. DfT think 30 minutes. Who will be correct?

I suspect Uncle Roger wilbe right.  Especially if they select the cheapo design at Handsacre and feed onto the slow rather than the fast lines. 

 

Jamie

[Ron Ron Ron]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

I suspect Uncle Roger wilbe right.  Especially if they select the cheapo design at Handsacre and feed onto the slow rather than the fast lines. 

 

Jamie

This idea of saving money by changing the design so that HS2 connects to the slow lines, rather than the fasts, is just compounding the insanity of decisions that have already been made.

What next, descope the HS2 train fleet, so they only run at 75 mph ???

 

 

.

[corneliuslundie]

Don't whisper it or one of the politicos will hear it.

Jonathan

[APOLLO]

On 17/11/2023 at 16:47, adb968008 said:

This summer our road was resurfaced.

Great, first time in at least 6 decades.

We are a cul de sac with a few houses.

The old surface was just fine, traffic movements is probably under 40 car movements a day, inc school runs.

odd patch here and there, no ones dug it up in at least a decade.

 

The main road just away from us has several very dangerous pot holes, its a 40mph road, some holes are over 6 inches deep and 18 inches wide (weve measured and complained), cars are swerving dangerously around them… 11 months on and at least one crash.. its still unfilled.

 

This week, less than 3 months since resurfacing the gas company is coming to replace out our apparently life expired 80 odd year old pipes to dig up our brand new road surface…

All this despite us being encouraged to give up gas for electric too.

Theres no way this was suddenly just planned in the last 3 months…

 

I suspect the water pipes are just as old as the gas pipes… who knows the age of the electric, internet, sewage etc…

 

 

especially if councils use the cash efficiently

 

I would love to see this, but ive no confidence.

We’ll see cycle lanes, green ways, flower beds, reduced parking spots, traffic calming, 20mph zones, all with neat little black squares of tarmac in the road and the millions dissapear in a council pork fest.

 

We should open a thread for the best use of pot hole funding… I bet we see at least one arts project, festival, cultural centre, human experience, outreach project, overseas investment oppourtunity, duck island, ipad roaming charge, second home allowance all funded by a pot hole one way or another.

 

its as if Hippy Rishi is related to the Marples construction company all over again.

 

Then winter will come and the cracks reappear…

 

Pot holes filled with tory butter.

 

In the later days of my lifelong career with the gas industry I was planning replacement gas mains in the NW. One of my duties was to attend, monthly, several local council "Street Works co-ordination" meetings where the statutory authorities (Water, Gas, Electric, Council etc) TRIED to co-ordinate renewals before council resurfacing amongst other things. Quite simply it was difficult sometimes bordering on impossible, but at least we tried. Occasionally we had success. Some councils were better than others also, as were the "Stats" - Water was ALLWAYS the worst in this respect, their rep was only interested in the tea and biscuits (and stole all the Jammy Dodgers)  !!

 

Brit15

[adb968008]

24 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

 

In the later days of my lifelong career with the gas industry I was planning replacement gas mains in the NW. One of my duties was to attend, monthly, several local council "Street Works co-ordination" meetings where the statutory authorities (Water, Gas, Electric, Council etc) TRIED to co-ordinate renewals before council resurfacing amongst other things. Quite simply it was difficult sometimes bordering on impossible, but at least we tried. Occasionally we had success. Some councils were better than others also, as were the "Stats" - Water was ALLWAYS the worst in this respect, their rep was only interested in the tea and biscuits (and stole all the Jammy Dodgers)  !!

 

Brit15

I have learned our 30 or so house street cost £45k for that 2 day reskimming of the surface this summer. One machine which scraped the top 1-2 inch off surface and conveyed the waste into a lorry that rolled together down the street, taking around an hour, with some cleaning up, and day two where they put down a new surface and rolled it 6 guys maybe half a day.

 

£40 a ton of road tarmac, covers 11m2, each house is inregion of 5m wide and the road is max 6 metre wide, so thats maybe 2.5 tons per house width, x15 house (1 eitherside) puts it at around 40 tons max.. (£1600) So  perhaps this job cost maybe £5-6k in actual time, materials and resources all in.

 

I also understand potholes get c£600 each to fill, with contractors on per job rates.

 

I understand it was the construction company who proposed the works to our street, and got it signed off… they just looked and saw an oppourtunity.

 

Now we will get a fresh round of pot holes in the next few weeks as they dig it up again.

 

Councils are naive, they are just being taken for a ride imo. Further if councils really want savings, taking road maintenance in house would look to be a vast saving….

 

HS2 money being spent on pot holes.. Oh yeah.. thats a fiesta for the construction industry, at least those at street level will have a job, but the profits off this will be a massive lottery win. Taxpayers are being mugged.

Edited November 21, 2023 by adb968008

[APOLLO]

Councils are just plain unskilled and to busy with "woke" agendas.

 

All the capable and skilled staff left years ago.

 

Brit15

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

…..Councils are naive, they are just being taken for a ride imo. Further if councils really want savings, taking road maintenance in house would look to be a vast saving….

Going back in time to the mid 1980’s, when I lived in a nice town on the banks of the River Thames, Berkshire……

The local paper ( when we had seriously proper local papers with proper news stories) reported that the council had approved the budget for 3 new lamp post mounted signs, pointing towards the local citizen’s advice bureau.

The figure given was £4,000+ iirc.

 

At the time, I served on the maintenance team, for the management committee of the private housing development, where I lived.

The residents of this development, jointly owned the freehold of the enclosed development and we looked after all the communal maintenance issues.

 

We began to be plagued with some people visiting shops and local businesses, coming into the private road and parking in residents and visitors parking spaces, so I was tasked with acquiring a whole new set of signs, of different sizes, to be installed at either side of the entrance and next to each of the parking bays.

A couple of these ended up being the same metal types used by the local council on lamp posts (but without the pointy bit), such as those being put up for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

The local sign making company duly delivered 5 signs, if I remember correctly , for a grand total of something like £400, or thereabouts.

The council made their own.

Note, that was nearly 40 years ago, so a lot will have changed since then.

 

 

.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Ron Ron Ron