Why was HS1 built with so much less fuss than HS2?

[lmsforever]

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

There aren’t really enough towns / passengers in Bucks that could warrant the extra build costs of loops & stations.

 

since the south Bucks towns (Amersham etc) insisted the line be built 30m+ below ground, they really forfeit any opportunity and they have tube and mainline options already.

 

Aylesbury could have have a station as it’s big enough and both routes to London take about an hour. Towns further west such as Thame, Risborough and Wycombe already have fast services into Marylebone of 35-40mins so are reasonably well served.

 

You could perhaps justify a station at Brackley (F1 team hub) and Warwick/Coventry area but the HS2 route was picked to avoid built up areas.

 

all of these come with a capacity impact on HS2 through traffic which is what it’s original core brief was about.

 

That remains the key difference and reason that adding tracks & capacity to the existing mainlines (HS2 was to take off the high speed long distance trains from WCML, MML and ECML) - all of which pass through and have local stations in heavily built up areas. That is a huge amount of disruption to existing railway services, housing, local roads and businesses and would make HS2 look like a cheap and easy job by comparison. 

I am afraid that Aylesbury would not support an HS2 station the population is not interested in going north or going into London attitudes here are now very much looking inwards  a big change over the last forty years.

[DLT]

7 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

I’m not sure what you mean by this but the Javelin service serves most towns in East and Mid Kent and seems to be found useful to the people that fill the trains pretty well in both peak and off peak. I personally find the service very useful indeed.

 

It’s somewhat surprising that on HS2 the likes of Buckinghamshire CC et al haven’t sought something similar to the additional transport network Kent achieved with HS1 - they appear to have been in full objection mode rather than seeking potential economic benefits. Kent appears to have achieved both the domestic transport links, environmental mitigation and additional environmental mitigation along existing routes where planned Channel Tunnel traffic (including freight flows) would operate. 

But the whole point of HS2 is long distance high speed travel, separate from local transport.  Putting stopping services on it would defeat the object.  Wouldn't it?

[phil-b259]

11 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

 

 

It’s somewhat surprising that on HS2 the likes of Buckinghamshire CC et al haven’t sought something similar to the additional transport network Kent achieved with HS1 - they appear to have been in full objection mode rather than seeking potential economic benefits. Kent appears to have achieved both the domestic transport links, environmental mitigation and additional environmental mitigation along existing routes where planned Channel Tunnel traffic (including freight flows) would operate. 

You rather forget that HS2 is designed to relieve the existing WCML of fast trains to the north of England meaning that all train paths can easily be filled by those services alone! Adding additional stops or ‘local’ services into the mix is actively removing seats / trains to / from places where the time saving and high capacity is far more useful.

 

HS1 (or the CTRL as it was originally known as) only had to cater for just TWO express services per hour (1 Eurostar to Paris and one Eurostar to Brussels) thereby leaving huge quantities of spare capacity - capacity which was thus available for use by ‘local’ services to various destinations in Kent.

Edited September 26, 2023 by phil-b259

[DLT]

7 hours ago, MidlandRed said:

I’m not sure what you mean by this but the Javelin service serves most towns in East and Mid Kent and seems to be found useful to the people that fill the trains pretty well in both peak and off peak. I personally find the service very useful indeed.

 

It’s somewhat surprising that on HS2 the likes of Buckinghamshire CC et al haven’t sought something similar to the additional transport network Kent achieved with HS1 - they appear to have been in full objection mode rather than seeking potential economic benefits. Kent appears to have achieved both the domestic transport links, environmental mitigation and additional environmental mitigation along existing routes where planned Channel Tunnel traffic (including freight flows) would operate. 

But the whole point of HS2 is long distance high speed travel, separate from local transport.  Putting stopping services on it would defeat the object.  Wouldn't it?

[Pete the Elaner]

13 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

 

A lot of talk is about easing congestion on the WCML, but this can surely be done far cheaper than HS2 is costing.

 

 

The fact you have asked this means that it was badly publicised/sold, but we can come to that later.

 

You are implying that the planners were too stupid to consider this simple option or were desperate to spend public money? Of course not. This would have been the first set of options they looked at & any large spend of public money is bad publicity 

 

What are the options for increasing capacity?

Upgrade signalling to move trains closer together? This has been done many times & each upgrade only adds a small amount of capacity. Running trains closer together means slowing them down because they absolutely must be able to stop before they hit the next one even if it stops suddenly.

So signalling upgrades only have limited use.

 

Building another pair of lines beside the WCML - There are sections where there is simply no space for this; the inner city cuttings in London, Liverpool, Manchester & Birmingham are enclosed by their surroundings. This is especially true of Birmingham New St. Where exactly could this be expanded to?

Many towns & cities have been built around the railway because it is there so they can use it. This means that adding a couple of extra lines would cause more re-homing than finding somewhere less populated.

Merging more lines into less always causes congestion.

There are areas where tracks could possibly be added to the East & others where there is space on the West, but these would require Ilford style flyovers every few miles. Shuffling the existing lines to the left & right is a theoretical option but how much would this involve? Re-alignment of the existing lines, re-signalling to turn fast lines into slow or the reverse.

The disruption caused by any of these options would be enormous.

But if you are going to build a new pair of lines, the best services to separate are the fastest ones. These only serve a few stations so their routes are flexible, so you could build it elsewhere.

 

HS2 was a bad name for the new line because it created the idea that it aim was to cut journey times. Unfortunately we know what the media is like. They never let go of a lie because bad news sells. Most of the public would not even bother trying to understand why expanding the existing route is not a feasible option.

[Mallard60022]

14 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

Can we not re-open this ‘north versus south nonsense’ again.

 

Yes the south gets more money but it also has more people living there and in general everything from housing to food costs more. It also generates far more in terms of tax receipts and when you crunch the numbers actually receives less spending per person than places in the north of England do.

 

 

 

 

I lived in Horsham for ten years until 2003. Iv'e lived near Worksop since then. Your comment is sadly typical of someone still living in the South. It isn't funny.

Phil

 

[Colin_McLeod]

16 hours ago, adb968008 said:

it was the same farce as HS2. I recall two towns suing each other in the UK to get rid of it, whilst in France two towns sued each other because they wanted their HS line.

 

The difference between EU and Brexitland thinking perhaps. (This is a societal comment, not a political one)

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, lmsforever said:

I am afraid that Aylesbury would not support an HS2 station the population is not interested in going north or going into London attitudes here are now very much looking inwards  a big change over the last forty years.

I live in Aylesbury Vale, loadings into London on Chiltern are very high again (just not on Fridays) with standing room only very common and not just at peak hours. Loadings from Aylesbury via Amersham won’t be helped by the total withdrawal of services on many strike days and with all the HS2 related closures but passengers are still  there just doing things differently.

 

HS2 was never intended to be a commuter railway for the small towns and won’t be going forward. Equally it was never intended to be a stub branch from a west London suburb to Birmingham but sadly that appears likely.

 

what a farce this government is making 

[JohnR]

17 hours ago, woodenhead said:

I don't think it was not without protestations from the residents of Kent.

 

I believe the Javelin service was a sop to the residents so they could see some benefit from a high speed line, likely the same for Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Ashford which Eurostar has jettisoned when it could.

 

Eurostar hasnt jettisoned those because it wants to - it has explicitly said that the additional border checks required have meant it doesnt have the capacity. 

[woodenhead]

10 minutes ago, JohnR said:

 

Eurostar hasnt jettisoned those because it wants to - it has explicitly said that the additional border checks required have meant it doesnt have the capacity. 

It has threatened in the past to cull Ashford services if people did not use them, coronavirus and border checks make for a nice excuse to drop the services and make it harder to ever reinstate them.  Much easier for Eurostar to have just the one station in the UK, the big popular one where most people from abroad wish to travel to and most people in the UK find it sensible to begin from.

[adb968008]

30 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

It has threatened in the past to cull Ashford services if people did not use them, coronavirus and border checks make for a nice excuse to drop the services and make it harder to ever reinstate them.  Much easier for Eurostar to have just the one station in the UK, the big popular one where most people from abroad wish to travel to and most people in the UK find it sensible to begin from.

Except the world has changed since covid.

 

Before covid rail user ship was an accepted norm in the South, hence driving to Ebbsfleet was less popular.

Since covid people have moved wholeheartedly to cars, but London is totally car unfriendly, which could present opportunity for Ebbs-fleet, by the M25 more interesting once more.

 

Ashford and Stratford… white elephants, just like OC.

[AndrueC]

4 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

You could perhaps justify a station at Brackley (F1 team hub) and Warwick/Coventry area but the HS2 route was picked to avoid built up areas.

They did suggest a station here originally. They made up some guff about trains stopping here now and again. It was viewed as a sop to try and appease us for blighting the north of the town. In a way it's a shame because they were proposing to re-instate the old viaduct which at the northern end would have had the viaduct going over a road bridge going over the A43 which could have looked quite cool.

 

But no-one here believed them about the passenger service. Frankly most of us reckoned the station would be quietly cancelled before construction started on it. Someone actually dug up an old protest leaflet from the residents of Farthinghoe just up the road who had been offered the same 'deal' a hundred years earlier. It was quite interesting to read. The poster bemoaned the fact that the station was over a mile from the village at the bottom of a steep hill. It blamed greedy business owners and a government that didn't care about local interests.

 

Plus ça change, eh?

[GordonC]

One thing that stands out with HS2 is how few station stops there are and how its all very well to blast between London and Birmingham as fast as it can, but how useful is that going to be for anyone travelling to somewhere along the route - Birmingham International, Coventry, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Watford - all places that you'd expect would generate reasonable levels of passengers on existing WCML services, but wont on HS2.

 

I was on the fence between whether HS2 was worthwhile or not, but if it doesn't go north of Birmingham then it's completely pointless and a waste of money. As ever, money is spent in the south and the north gets crumbs

[woodenhead]

10 minutes ago, GordonC said:

One thing that stands out with HS2 is how few station stops there are and how its all very well to blast between London and Birmingham as fast as it can, but how useful is that going to be for anyone travelling to somewhere along the route - Birmingham International, Coventry, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Watford - all places that you'd expect would generate reasonable levels of passengers on existing WCML services, but wont on HS2.

 

I was on the fence between whether HS2 was worthwhile or not, but if it doesn't go north of Birmingham then it's completely pointless and a waste of money. As ever, money is spent in the south and the north gets crumbs

All of those places will benefit from semi fast trains no longer blighted by Pendolinos from Euston - Birmingham.

 

However, if HS2 goes all the way to Manchester then places like Milton Keynes may no longer have direct links to Manchester or points further north without going to Crewe or Birmingham International first and picking up a HS2 service there.  In some respects a completed HS2 may result in worse travel experiences for some as they lose the Intercity trains for commuter type services once the Pendolinos go.  You can imagine a scenario where there is HS2 and then there is still a regular InterCity service south of Crewe using the WCML because that is where the demand is.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

2 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

The fact you have asked this means that it was badly publicised/sold, but we can come to that later.

 

You are implying that the planners were too stupid to consider this simple option or were desperate to spend public money? Of course not. This would have been the first set of options they looked at & any large spend of public money is bad publicity 

 

What are the options for increasing capacity?

Upgrade signalling to move trains closer together? This has been done many times & each upgrade only adds a small amount of capacity. Running trains closer together means slowing them down because they absolutely must be able to stop before they hit the next one even if it stops suddenly.

So signalling upgrades only have limited use.

 

Building another pair of lines beside the WCML - There are sections where there is simply no space for this; the inner city cuttings in London, Liverpool, Manchester & Birmingham are enclosed by their surroundings. This is especially true of Birmingham New St. Where exactly could this be expanded to?

Many towns & cities have been built around the railway because it is there so they can use it. This means that adding a couple of extra lines would cause more re-homing than finding somewhere less populated.

Merging more lines into less always causes congestion.

There are areas where tracks could possibly be added to the East & others where there is space on the West, but these would require Ilford style flyovers every few miles. Shuffling the existing lines to the left & right is a theoretical option but how much would this involve? Re-alignment of the existing lines, re-signalling to turn fast lines into slow or the reverse.

The disruption caused by any of these options would be enormous.

But if you are going to build a new pair of lines, the best services to separate are the fastest ones. These only serve a few stations so their routes are flexible, so you could build it elsewhere.

 

HS2 was a bad name for the new line because it created the idea that it aim was to cut journey times. Unfortunately we know what the media is like. They never let go of a lie because bad news sells. Most of the public would not even bother trying to understand why expanding the existing route is not a feasible option.

I largely agree with what you say, but if the issue is capacity, then who is being/will be affected by this? I don't hear people from Manchester, Birmingham or Leeds complain that there aren't enough trains to London.

 

Furthermore, if the capacity issues are primarily close to London, then isn't terminating the line at Birmingham (with a link to the Trent Valley line) the most cost-effective solution? Trains to Manchester and Glasgow will use the new line to alleviate pressure on the southern end of the WCML.

[woodenhead]

7 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I largely agree with what you say, but if the issue is capacity, then who is being/will be affected by this? I don't hear people from Manchester, Birmingham or Leeds complain that there aren't enough trains to London.

 

Furthermore, if the capacity issues are primarily close to London, then isn't terminating the line at Birmingham (with a link to the Trent Valley line) the most cost-effective solution? Trains to Manchester and Glasgow will use the new line to alleviate pressure on the southern end of the WCML.

The southern end is the problem, it's not that there aren't enough trains for the north, but that they cannot add more at the southern end, be it more trains to Holyhead or Blackpool, more non passenger or more commuter services.

 

Extending HS2 beyond Birmingham adds capacity and then allows places like Manchester to develop it's own commuter network by removing a lot of InterCity off the classic lines as we know from the Ordsall curve, Deansgate to Ardwick is already rammed full of trains.  There is something to be said for faster trains, but perhaps the rhetoric from government about HS2 has been too much about the speed and not enough about developing a sustainable future and getting people out of cars.  HS3 is potentially suffering a similar speed focus over connectivity.  Simply seperating the faster trains between Liverpool and Leeds will make for a much smoother InterCity service between the three big cities and allow the commuter networks within each city region to also develop.  Like HS2 (Live Birmingham, Work Manchester, play London), with HS3 it is about the development of a linear nothern city that combines Liverpool, Manchester & Leeds with towns inbetween subsumed into the mass of one long connected city.

[black and decker boy]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I largely agree with what you say, but if the issue is capacity, then who is being/will be affected by this? I don't hear people from Manchester, Birmingham or Leeds complain that there aren't enough trains to London.

 

Furthermore, if the capacity issues are primarily close to London, then isn't terminating the line at Birmingham (with a link to the Trent Valley line) the most cost-effective solution? Trains to Manchester and Glasgow will use the new line to alleviate pressure on the southern end of the WCML.

It’s not just about passengers.

 

the capacity released by HS2 on all 3 mainlines would have allowed more semi-fast journeys, more freight and more logistics services to be created. At present freight growth is impacted by lack of direct paths and reliance on long slow journeys around a myriad of diversionary routes - not always what customers want it will pay for.

 

Whilst the southern sections of the 3 mainlines are the worst for congestion / capacity, many other areas are the same, Birmingham, Manchester & Leeds all sugffer the same way. 
 

cutting HS2 back to phase 1 only compounds the problem as you can’t remove the long distance expresses (eg 1st stop york / Warrington etc) or the semi-fast ( eg London-Birmingham -Glasgow) and the risk is passenger levels on a Curzon St to OOC stub are pitiful and lose a fortune.

[Dungrange]

3 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

HS2 was a bad name for the new line because it created the idea that it aim was to cut journey times. Unfortunately we know what the media is like. They never let go of a lie because bad news sells. Most of the public would not even bother trying to understand why expanding the existing route is not a feasible option.

 

I agree that HS2 is a very poor name for the project.  It's created the idea among the public (because of stories in the media, probably because of appraisal methods) that all that matters is high speed and therefore if a settlement between Birmingham and London doesn't have a convenient stop on the new line, then the residents are missing out.  The same is true for those of us who live in Scotland, who tend to moan that it's not coming all the way to the Scottish Central Belt.  However, the primary reason for the scheme is to create additional capacity on the southern part of the West Coast Mainline (WCML).  A new route alignment should be cheaper than an on-line upgrade of the WCML due to the constrained environment around through urban areas.

 

45 minutes ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I largely agree with what you say, but if the issue is capacity, then who is being/will be affected by this? I don't hear people from Manchester, Birmingham or Leeds complain that there aren't enough trains to London.

 

The driver of the project is capacity and you're right, there is no great clamour for extra trains between Birmingham / Manchester / Leeds and London.  The extra capacity is needed for slower moving trains (both freight and stopping passenger services) between London and the English Midlands.  How do you create additional capacity on the southern part of the WCML?  The most appropriate answer is to separate the faster and slower moving services (because you maximise capacity when all trains travel at the same speed).  The WCML remains as 'the slow lines' and the new HS2 alignment becomes 'the fast lines'.  By getting all the long distance trips / higher speed limited stop trains off the WCML, you free up capacity on the WCML to introduce more stopping local trains, benefitting all of the local communities along the southern section of the WCML.

 

1 hour ago, GordonC said:

One thing that stands out with HS2 is how few station stops there are and how its all very well to blast between London and Birmingham as fast as it can, but how useful is that going to be for anyone travelling to somewhere along the route - Birmingham International, Coventry, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Watford - all places that you'd expect would generate reasonable levels of passengers on existing WCML services, but wont on HS2.

 

But that is the whole point of HS2.  Get the long distance limited stop trains off of the WCML and you free up capacity to run more stopping services on the WCML to provide enhanced service provision for those using Birmingham International, Coventry, Northampton, Milton Keynes, Watford etc.  All of these settlements will be served as they currently are, but with the possibility of running enhanced stopping services on the WCML.  If you add too many stops along the line of HS2, then it no longer becomes the new WCML fast tracks.

 

1 hour ago, GordonC said:

I was on the fence between whether HS2 was worthwhile or not, but if it doesn't go north of Birmingham then it's completely pointless and a waste of money. As ever, money is spent in the south and the north gets crumbs.

 

Again, another moan from those in the north of the country.  The reality is that if HS2 reduces journey times between London and Birmingham by X minutes, passengers travelling onwards to Crewe, Manchester, Preston, Carlisle, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen will all get a similar journey time saving.  The basis of the complains from the northern parts of the county are due to the fact that in percentage terms, that journey time saving becomes less significant the further you travel.  Cutting 20 minutes from a two hour journey (a 17% reduction) seems more significant than cutting the same 20 minutes from a five hour journey.  The notion among the public is that what is important is high speed and therefore if those in Central Scotland aren't getting the same 17% reduction in journey time to London as someone travelling from Birmingham, then all they've got is 'crumbs'.  However, the reality is that even if the line is truncated at Birmingham, everyone in the north will still benefit from a faster journeys between Birmingham and London.

[phil-b259]

3 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

 It isn't funny.

 

 

 

And neither is the 'whinging northerner' style comments.

 

There is an interesting debate to be had about the whole north south divide (and yes I accept it is a 'thing') and if you want to discuss it in a reasoned way then feel free to open a thread in it. However to blithely pretend its as simple as the north not getting enough Government cash is total rubbish! 

 

To give one example, because of the higher unemployment rates in many northern areas (thus the grater number of people needing financial support) following the decline of heavy industry what each person there gets on a £ per person basis is actually grater than happens in the south where less financial assistance is needed.

 

[GordonC]

1 minute ago, Dungrange said:

Again, another moan from those in the north of the country.  The reality is that if HS2 reduces journey times between London and Birmingham by X minutes, passengers travelling onwards to Crewe, Manchester, Preston, Carlisle, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen will all get a similar journey time saving.  The basis of the complains from the northern parts of the county are due to the fact that in percentage terms, that journey time saving becomes less significant the further you travel.  Cutting 20 minutes from a two hour journey (a 17% reduction) seems more significant than cutting the same 20 minutes from a five hour journey.  The notion among the public is that what is important is high speed and therefore if those in Central Scotland aren't getting the same 17% reduction in journey time to London as someone travelling from Birmingham, then all they've got is 'crumbs'.  However, the reality is that even if the line is truncated at Birmingham, everyone in the north will still benefit from a faster journeys between Birmingham and London.

 

But how many people are bothered about a 20 minute reduction on trains to London for the cost of HS2 - On extremely rare occasions when I travel to London I couldn't care less whether it takes 2 hours or 2 hours 20 mins. But I'd certainly prefer more investment in local services and could easily save more than 20 minutes in journeys if the service was more frequent than largely once an hour. HS2 only seems to serve city centre to city centre so any time saving could easily be lost in having to get to a station where it stops first.

[woodenhead]

10 minutes ago, GordonC said:

 

But how many people are bothered about a 20 minute reduction on trains to London for the cost of HS2 - On extremely rare occasions when I travel to London I couldn't care less whether it takes 2 hours or 2 hours 20 mins. But I'd certainly prefer more investment in local services and could easily save more than 20 minutes in journeys if the service was more frequent than largely once an hour. HS2 only seems to serve city centre to city centre so any time saving could easily be lost in having to get to a station where it stops first.

I actually once spent longer stuck in traffic trying to get from Piccadilly to Trafford via the A57 than on the train home from London.

 

Good local connections would need to go hand in hand with HS2, but having HS2 should improve capacity for those local trains (provided in Manchester they sort out the Deansgate corridor at the same time).

[Phil Parker]

12 minutes ago, GordonC said:

 

But how many people are bothered about a 20 minute reduction on trains to London for the cost of HS2 - On extremely rare occasions when I travel to London I couldn't care less whether it takes 2 hours or 2 hours 20 mins. But I'd certainly prefer more investment in local services and could easily save more than 20 minutes in journeys if the service was more frequent than largely once an hour. HS2 only seems to serve city centre to city centre so any time saving could easily be lost in having to get to a station where it stops first.

 

You might want to read some of the HS2 thread where it is repeatedly pointed out that HS2 is NOT about 20-minute journey time, but about providing extra capacity for the WCML which is full. Or at least the people I know whose job it is to get trains on it tell me it is.

[AndrueC]

There is another benefit to HS2 that's rarely mentioned: The jobs it's helping to create and maintain. I don't see it as a major justification but it's worth remembering that it's not just money poured into the ground. A lot of the money being spent is spreading out into the wider economy. Even the money going to foreign owned companies will end up back in the economy at some point.

 

If a Japanese company is given £10m it's no use to them at home and the most effective thing to do with it is re-invest it in the UK rather than wait for favourable exchange rates.

 

Still - this applies to everything the government spends its money. I have never been in favour of HS2 and as time goes on my opinion only continues to harden against it.

Edited September 26, 2023 by AndrueC

[Dungrange]

23 minutes ago, GordonC said:

But how many people are bothered about a 20 minute reduction on trains to London for the cost of HS2 - On extremely rare occasions when I travel to London I couldn't care less whether it takes 2 hours or 2 hours 20 mins. But I'd certainly prefer more investment in local services and could easily save more than 20 minutes in journeys if the service was more frequent than largely once an hour. HS2 only seems to serve city centre to city centre so any time saving could easily be lost in having to get to a station where it stops first.

 

And that is why the name "High Speed 2" is misleading: it implies that the railway is being built for speed, whereas in actual fact, it is being built to create additional capacity on the southern sections of the West Coast Mainline (WCML).   Taking an existing four track section and expanding that to six tracks to create capacity for additional local and freight services isn't feasible in many locations (unless demolishing thousands of homes) so the solution is to take the new fast tracks and put them somewhere else.  Those new tracks are being called HS2.  If the people using the trains that will travel on these new fast tracks are making long distance limited stop journeys then they don't really care about the route that they take, so the alignment of HS2 can follow whatever route is cheapest to build / least environmentally destructive between A an B without having to route between smaller settlements to pick up passengers, which is what the WCML does.

 

Improving local services is the ultimate aim of HS2, but you can't increase the frequency of a local service from hourly to half hourly unless you can find train paths for the additional train that you want to run every hour.  The way to do that is to reroute some of your existing services, which in this case is onto a new line.

[adb968008]

7 hours ago, Dava said:

Last time I looked, HS1 was mainly owned by the Canadian Teachers Pension Fund.

 

Eventually, when HS2 is completed in whatever limited form, it will also probably be sold to an international owner, such as Dubai, India, China. But it’s viability is very much in question from the constraints being made on the route. 
 

Dava

Not really, the govt will chuck everything down hs2 to ensure its a success.

The owners of HS2 will have a monopoly on intercity services that today represent Avanti.

Pendolinos will be scrapped, and not replaced.
 

 

Those saying the alternative to wcml capacity is only HS2, there was no other option…. Well actually there was…

 

build a freight only line instead of a HS line… take the freight off wcml frees up the lines to simply slow and fast passenger lines…. However how would you get that idea approved ?

 

of course banning freight during daylight on the wcml is too easy…

 

funny thing whenever I try to watch wcml freight, theres precious little of it… the class 86,90’s are all stood down.. theres more UK AC freight locos in Bulgaria than the UK.

 

where exactly is this capacity constraint ?.. i’d like to go see it.

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by adb968008