HS2

[black and decker boy]

6 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

As others have said, HS2 have already started to use electric heavy plant - three huge, electric crawler cranes started work in February, with more to come. I am not sure what can be done for smaller, mobile plant, but bio-fuel is not the only solution. Cheaper hydrogen production is now a part of govt strategy. Electric motors also seem to be adequate for many, given the relatively short mileages per day. It is just a question of how and who will pay for the new or converted equipment.

 

As for stages, as we see, they have already started and are not waiting around for 2030. But you also miss Phase 2B, and of course, whether this ambition will spread to other elements of the IRP, and rail upgrades generally.

 

I guess it is hard to see change at the front end, where you are actually delivering. I remember that. But things are changing, and the need to do so has become even more urgent.

 

 

I know it is changing, I have regular updates from the forward thinking supply chain but the fact is in 2022, little has changed save for using HVO. At this stage, it’s more R& D than mass roll out.

 

I think by 2025, things will be gaining momentum and production spec kit will be rolling out of factories.

 

Dont get me wrong, we need to change and the drivers of that are generally the big public sector clients & projects so HS2, NH, NR and EA plus some of the utility companies. Other client organisations in private sector such as house builders will react once proven kits is available on mass and at discount and mainly when the institutional shareholders demand the change.

[Ron Ron Ron]

More photos of the Colne Valley viaduct, launching girder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

Out on the jetty across the lakes....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[jamie92208]

Good afternoon from a sunny Charente.  We haven't had a tunnelling graph for a while and the last few have got lost in the great outage. I will reload them in due course but am working my way through the over 2000 images that got lost since last June.   Anyway here is todays graph.

 

The Chiltern pair are both past the 3400 metre mark out of 16.  Florence is now just over 30% of the way in the first bore and was building 15 metres per day this week.

 

Jamie

Edited April 11, 2022 by jamie92208

[Ron Ron Ron]

…..and with just over 1000 metres to go, Dorothy should see daylight in something around 100 days or so.

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

Old Oak Common, taken last week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

 

 

 

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

 

 

 

 

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[Ron Ron Ron]

A last look at the disused Calvert Station, before HS2 works sweep the remains away.

 

 

[keefer]

Incidentally, given how much shrieking/protest there is about the environmental 'catastrophe' of the worksites as a valid reason to bin HS2 immediately, I caught a bit of a programme on TV the other night that the doom-mongers would do well to watch.

I forget which programme exactly but Kate Humble was walking along the South Kent coast where the construction base for the Chunnel used to be (Cheriton?). The railway was there under the cliffs as it has ever been but the rest of the area was now an ecologically diverse nature reserve - and was actually quite important as some previously endangered species were now thriving there.

Supposedly intelligent 'activists' seem hell-bent on convincing everyone that HS2 will cover the spine of England in a concrete wasteland, where it's obvious that if done properly and by giving Nature a hand, the landscape will take care of itself soon enough.

[Mike Storey]

20 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

A last look at the disused Calvert Station, before HS2 works sweep the remains away.

 

 

 

Very interesting record of history, but I am not sure what point was trying to be made? His finishing comments, about "why HS2 is costing so much" implied that Victorian builders would not have made such "a mess". Really??????

 

[Fat Controller]

18 hours ago, keefer said:

Incidentally, given how much shrieking/protest there is about the environmental 'catastrophe' of the worksites as a valid reason to bin HS2 immediately, I caught a bit of a programme on TV the other night that the doom-mongers would do well to watch.

I forget which programme exactly but Kate Humble was walking along the South Kent coast where the construction base for the Chunnel used to be (Cheriton?). The railway was there under the cliffs as it has ever been but the rest of the area was now an ecologically diverse nature reserve - and was actually quite important as some previously endangered species were now thriving there.

Supposedly intelligent 'activists' seem hell-bent on convincing everyone that HS2 will cover the spine of England in a concrete wasteland, where it's obvious that if done properly and by giving Nature a hand, the landscape will take care of itself soon enough.

Samphire Hoe is the site between Dover and Folkestone which was where the majority of the spoil from the UK side was tipped. Cheriton, on the western edge of Folkestone, is where the terminal is to be found.

My wife worked on Eurotunnel, and then on HS1; at the latter, she spent a while based at Beechbrook Farm, on the A20, which was the railhead. If you didn't know where this had been, you'd be pushed to find it.

[APOLLO]

Building Calvert station GC

 

 

Brit15

[KingEdwardII]

On 18/04/2022 at 23:22, keefer said:

shrieking/protest there is about the environmental 'catastrophe'

It's the standard M.O. of environmentalists.

 

I remember all the fuss about the M3 route east of Winchester - frankly, the situation there now is much better than what went before, with the site of the old Winchester bypass now a green hillside overlooking the River Itchen. Much was made of the impact of the new cutting for the M3 - a "blinding white gash visible for miles". There, nature has taken over, as so often in chalk cuttings, with trees and brush growing over most of it, just as it has over the similar Victorian constructions along the railways.

 

I suspect that HS2 will rapidly blend in to the countryside once construction is completed.

 

Yours, Mike.

[woodenhead]

17 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Very interesting record of history, but I am not sure what point was trying to be made? His finishing comments, about "why HS2 is costing so much" implied that Victorian builders would not have made such "a mess". Really??????

 

Possibly based on the image of the railway being built in a linear fashion with materials brought in by temporary workmens rails / trains that would extend as the railway infrastrucure extended.

 

They also forget the Navvy towns that sprung up along the way and the impact those had not least in health terms and the poor conditions generally.

 

And we mustn't forget that a lot of effort these days goes into the health and safety of the workers and the surrounding ecology, something that was not really a concern of the sponsors of the Victorian railways unless the death rates were impacting progress.

[jamie92208]

19 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Possibly based on the image of the railway being built in a linear fashion with materials brought in by temporary workmens rails / trains that would extend as the railway infrastrucure extended.

 

They also forget the Navvy towns that sprung up along the way and the impact those had not least in health terms and the poor conditions generally.

 

And we mustn't forget that a lot of effort these days goes into the health and safety of the workers and the surrounding ecology, something that was not really a concern of the sponsors of the Victorian railways unless the death rates were impacting progress.

Indeed.  The coming of the Navvy's actually led to new Acts of Parliament to control their unruly behaviour on pay day.  the Huddersfield Improvement Act of, IIRC 1871 was just one.  This was brought in when the 2nd pair of tunnels just west of the station were being constructed.   A graveyard extension at Chapel le dale was needed for IIRC some 400 burials from the building of Ribblehead viaduct and Blea Moor Tunnel.  The extension was lost for many years but I believe that the location has been found recently.

 

Jamie

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

 

 

I remember all the fuss about the M3 route east of Winchester - frankly, the situation there now is much better than what went before, with the site of the old Winchester bypass now a green hillside overlooking the River Itchen. Much was made of the impact of the new cutting for the M3 - a "blinding white gash visible for miles". There, nature has taken over, as so often in chalk cuttings, with trees and brush growing over most of it, just as it has over the similar Victorian constructions along the railways.

 

I agree totally.

I remember the outcry and frothing at the mouths of the antis at such desecration.

e.g.

 

 

I have seen on various TV programmes an overlay of Then & Now as the rumbling traffic is faded out and the new vista unfolds.

It's so much better.

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

19 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

the building of Ribblehead viaduct

Yes, it is all too easy to forget the living conditions for the navvies and their families, having to survive winters in one of the most remote and inhospitable areas in England in a series of shanty towns built near the construction sites. As many died from disease as from construction accidents.  A grim story that HS2 thankfully will not repeat.

 

Yours, Mike.

[phil-b259]

4 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

It's the standard M.O. of environmentalists.

 

I remember all the fuss about the M3 route east of Winchester - frankly, the situation there now is much better than what went before, with the site of the old Winchester bypass now a green hillside overlooking the River Itchen.

 

 

But nowhere near as it could have been had a tunnel been built!

 

It should be noted that not only is HS2 having lots of extra tunnelling precisely to avoid such eyesores being created!

 

At Winchester, a A505 Baldock by-pass (which saw a cut and cover tunnel being built to maintain the ridge line) or the A27 Southwick bored tunnel under a chalk spur solution would have been infinitely better than what was built at Winchester - and would arguably not have galvanised anti-road protesters (from whom anti HS2 protesters are taking much inspiration) anything near as much.

 

And although the chalk sides of the M3 cutting may have dulled over the years their sheer steepness preclude any sort of large scale planting to soften the impact while the steep gradient of the road (done to 'minimise the cutting width' with its entry slip road at the very bottom of the climb (and no lane gain) is a prime example of how not to design a road!

Edited April 20, 2022 by phil-b259

[Dunsignalling]

20 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Very interesting record of history, but I am not sure what point was trying to be made? His finishing comments, about "why HS2 is costing so much" implied that Victorian builders would not have made such "a mess". Really??????

 

I sort of get what he was driving at. The GCR alignment is pretty wide already, but the breadth being cleared for HS2 looks absolutely colossal.

 

How many tracks wide will it be at Calvert?

 

John

[woodenhead]

They are building loops I think for infrastructure trains - there is a link to the East & West line there too to allow infrastructure trains on and off HS2 and on to classic lines.

 

Cuttings will also be shallower than Victorian built lines which now cause problems with movement elsewhere on the network.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

And although the chalk sides of the M3 cutting may have dulled over the years their sheer steepness preclude any sort of large scale planting to soften the impact while the steep gradient of the road (done to 'minimise the cutting width' with its entry slip road at the very bottom of the climb (and no lane gain) is a prime example of how not to design a road!

I would argue that steep-sided chalk cuttings are extremely good because you don't need to do any large scale planting.  Shallow slopes will quickly be covered with grasses which will require lots of maintenance/mowing and will choke anything else that tries to establish itself.  On steep sides, wild flowers have much less to compete with (and just like on railways, the tunnel effect helps distribute seeds) so these places can become real havens for wildlife.

[woodenhead]

Something else to consider when building cuttings - the train being able to communicate it's position / receive data - there have been studies on the impacts of cuttings on High Speed Railways - shallow cuttings clearly retain the Line of Sight required for receiving and sending packets of information.

 

Clearly there are ways around it, otherwise how would any train communicate whilst in a tunnel - or in the case of HS2 very long tunnels but it's another thing to consider when building a railway.

[Fat Controller]

2 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

I sort of get what he was driving at. The GCR alignment is pretty wide already, but the breadth being cleared for HS2 looks absolutely colossal.

 

How many tracks wide will it be at Calvert?

 

John

One reason for the width of the formation on most high-speed lines is so they can have haulage roads alongside, rather than having heavy dump-trucks driving on the track-bed.

[phil-b259]

7 hours ago, Northmoor said:

I would argue that steep-sided chalk cuttings are extremely good because you don't need to do any large scale planting.  Shallow slopes will quickly be covered with grasses which will require lots of maintenance/mowing and will choke anything else that tries to establish itself.  On steep sides, wild flowers have much less to compete with (and just like on railways, the tunnel effect helps distribute seeds) so these places can become real havens for wildlife.

 

But bare chalk is inherently unstable!

 

The composition of chalk is its full of cracks which lets water in and through freeze - thaw causes pieces to become dislodged.

 

Yes you can apply netting and fences to catch larger debris, but as a material chalk is not something you want exposed to the weather if you can help it.

 

Grass is thus the best medium for stable cutting an embankments - and if kept clear of trees / bushes it can easily also host wild flowers in its midst

 

Make the slope gentler and you can cover the chalk with a soil and grass layer, helping to insulate it and prevent freeze thaw action. While also making it less of a scar on the landscape.