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

[BachelorBoy]

3 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

My spiel to visitors to the Col Stephens Rly Museum at Tenterden usually mentions that the Colonel became known as an expert in building cheap railways for places missed by the main lines, and in recent months many visitors have remarked that it's a pity he's not around for HS2...

 

"Cheap railways for places missed by the main lines"?

 

I'd have thought the Colonel he would be more valuable working for Network North. 

 

[black and decker boy]

On 09/10/2023 at 14:54, Ron Ron Ron said:

Maybe the running of HS2 and the stations, should be handed over to a Japanese operator, with the experience and corporate discipline to run a high frequency service efficiently and effectively.

 

They could bring their teams of cleaners and train staff too.

 

 

.

Given all the cutbacks, how intensive is HS2 actually going to be? Suggestions elsewhere are as low as 11tph (and even that requires Euston I think). 

 

Chiltern manage a pretty reliable 12tph out of the 6 platforms of Marylebone in the evening peak (with slower accelerating DMUs).

 

OOC isn’t designed as a terminal station so will throttle the capacity unless redesigned (perhaps a challenge as the box is being dug I think).

 

They could perhaps save money building shorter platforms, the classic compatible services north of Curzon st will be limited to single 200m sets as none of the existing stations can handle 400m sets. If you make everything 200m (or 240m) you can reduce all 3 captive stations and perhaps add the odd extra Curzon St turn.

[lmsforever]

Chiltern provide a very good service on all its lines and no one round here is going to go into London  to use HS2 ,  the passenger numbers on HS1 don't seem to be as great as proposed and  you wonder if it were not the Chunnell car and lorry services only the surburban services would be running. As usual in the UK the idea was good but in practice it does not work the cost rose as each mile was built  and no one seemed to be in control of the budget, thats repeating itself with HS2 a sad time for GB and the powers that be cant control projects any time.

[Hobby]

Especially, it seems, government run and funded projects. 

[The Stationmaster]

On 10/10/2023 at 09:24, Ron Ron Ron said:

 
Nissan is another, if slightly different, successful adoption of Japanese methodology in a British environment.

 

 

.

Although the 'electronic brain' in my Qashqai sometimes seem to have a mind of its own which is neither Japanese nor 'Geordie' (sorry I know they aren't but it's a more widely understood term)/. However at times there could well be a trace of French logic present in its behaviour so maybe they designed that bit?

[Ron Ron Ron]

49 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Although the 'electronic brain' in my Qashqai sometimes seem to have a mind of its own which is neither Japanese nor 'Geordie' (sorry I know they aren't but it's a more widely understood term)/. However at times there could well be a trace of French logic present in its behaviour so maybe they designed that bit?

 

Lots of French made Renault bits in Sunderland built Nissans.

 

.

[rogerzilla]

According to the HS1 chief, the reasons HS1 was under budget and on time were:

 

- Using proven TGV Nord infrastructure design, unchanged

- Lower design speed, makes a huge difference to curve radius, noise abatement, etc

- They never revealed the total budget during the project to avoid a feeding frenzy from contractors.

 

HS2 forgot all these lessons.

[APOLLO]

On 10/10/2023 at 02:57, david.hill64 said:

I was one of them. At the time - 20 years ago - my flights to and from Taiwan were mostly with EVA air. Pilots were inevitably western. China Air (the Taiwan national carrier) used ex military pilots and had a rather poor safety record. EVA management understood that they needed to instil a different culture in the cockpit crew and that would take time. These days most of the EVA flight crew are Taiwanese.

 

 

I flew EVA back in 1993/4 a few times, Gatwick to Bangkok. A new airline back then with new 747/400's. Very pleasant flights. One or two flights were on a 747 "Combi", half freight half passenger. To see the amount of freight containers being loaded at Gatwick was quite enlightening  !!!!

 

Brit15

 

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On 08/10/2023 at 12:59, The Stationmaster said:

So I truly, and regrettably, think that we're unlikely to ever see any sort of 'beyond London' regularly timetabled train service into mainland Europe.

I am about to jaunt off to Amsterdam (home town on my Pa's side) for the first time on Eurostar. I so wanted to do this while working but the timetable was completely useless. Now at liberty, no problem with getting there at noon.

 

On 10/10/2023 at 08:13, Hobby said:

the two cultures can and have worked together extremely well

I spent most of my career in a large American multinational, which during the 1970s woke up to the fact that the Japanese were about to eat their (extremely plentiful) lunch. The board picked up the Total Quality Management technique, guided by the work of Drs Deming, Juran and Feigenbaum (US citizens) who had been sent to Japan as expert consultants, as part of the US led recovery programme to restore Japanese industries 'the American way'. 

 

What perhaps wasn't anticipated was that with a few rare exceptions, most major US businesses hadn't bothered with all this management discipline and the iea of reliable data gathering and statistical analysis as a guide to decision making . (Read Deming's 'Out of the Crisis' if in any doubt.) In 1962 the American motor manufacturers association annual conference in Detroit were addressed by Dr Juran, who told them that Japanese manufacturers were about to pull their cosy house down. They laughed him off stage...

 

We spent a lot of time on this technique, and by the 1980s our manufacturing units were matching the Japanese. Doing it right works wherever you are in the world. There was no cultural barrier of any sort: we learned quite early on that much of thinking behind the technique was based on statistical methods originating in - the UK. What further emerged was that a few British businesses had taken this on board from the 1920s , and quietly made it work. When we encountered them and asked why they hadn't been able to propagate this successfully in the UK, they were unanimous: if your board are all obsessed with 'maximum profit, preferable yesterday', it's a non-starter.

Edited November 2, 2023 by 34theletterbetweenB&D
missed a sentence out

[TheSignalEngineer]

On 26/09/2023 at 09:18, DY444 said:

From there you're talking about demolishing thousands of buildings to get you out to the M25.  Then thousands more between Coventry and Birmingham. 

For most of Coventry to Birmingham the railway still owned enough land to to four-track when I was based on that area. Even in the 1970s we looked at the possibility of having a reversible 3rd line between Stechford and Berkswell. At that time new road bridges were built to four-track clearances in the area. 

[rogerzilla]

4 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

I am about to jaunt off to Amsterdam (home town on my Pa's side) for the first time on Eurostar. I so wanted to do this while working but the timetable was completely useless. Now at liberty, no problem with getting there at noon.

 

I spent most of my career in a large American multinational, which during the 1970s woke up to the fact that the Japanese were about to eat their (extremely plentiful) lunch. The board picked up the Total Quality Management technique, guided by the work of Drs Deming, Juran and Feigenbaum (US citizens) who had been sent to Japan as expert consultants, as part of the US led recovery programme to restore Japanese industries 'the American way'. 

 

What perhaps wasn't anticipated was that with a few rare exceptions, most major US businesses hadn't bothered with all this management discipline and the iea of reliable data gathering and statistical analysis as a guide to decision making . (Read Deming's 'Out of the Crisis' if in any doubt.) In 1962 the American motor manufacturers association annual conference in Detroit were addressed by Dr Juran, who told them that Japanese manufacturers were about to pull their cosy house down. They laughed him off stage...

 

We spent a lot of time on this technique, and by the 1980s our manufacturing units were matching the Japanese. Doing it right works wherever you are in the world. There was no cultural barrier of any sort: we learned quite early on that much of thinking behind the technique was based on statistical methods originating in - the UK. What further emerged was that a few British businesses had taken this on board from the 1920s , and quietly made it work. When we encountered them and asked why they hadn't been able to propagate this successfully in the UK, they were unanimous: if your board are all obsessed with 'maximum profit, preferable yesterday', it's a non-starter.

AIUI the Deming Cycle and all the other TQM stuff came out of wartime "Operational Research", which is still a discipline, if a rather dry one for non-statisticians.  I used to sit next to a massive OR fan who was a member of the OR Society and everything.

[TheSignalEngineer]

4 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

For most of Coventry to Birmingham the railway still owned enough land to to four-track when I was based on that area. Even in the 1970s we looked at the possibility of having a reversible 3rd line between Stechford and Berkswell. At that time new road bridges were built to four-track clearances in the area. 

This is a footbridge across the line near Bickenhill. Never been a four-track railway at this point.

[Stoke West]

16 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

This is a footbridge across the line near Bickenhill. Never been a four-track railway at this point.

Much the same on the GC&GW joint from Ashenden jn to West Ruislip

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

12 hours ago, rogerzilla said:

AIUI the Deming Cycle and all the other TQM stuff came out of wartime "Operational Research", which is still a discipline, if a rather dry one for non-statisticians...

Likewise I believe that's when it got 'bundled' under this title. There were many strands that led into it, and the OR piece begins way earlier than most recognise; the Royal Navy didn't keep Napoleon out of the UK by luck. The block making production line at Portsmouth a good indicator of what had been understood as a necessity to keep the fleet at sea year round; with standardised spars and masts, not necessarily optimal for every ship in the fleet, but readily available for repairs, and much else.

 

The most striking such 'early standardisation' that I have had a chance to look at (and use in lectures while on the eastern end of Europe) is the Athenian Trireme. In the Piraeus the Trireme sheds were excavated about forty years past, and this revealed that the patterns for the timbers had been carved into the stone floor, enabling a replica of this oared war galley to be reconstructed. And it performed as the classical Athenians claimed - which historians were very sceptical of - fastest ship design until the clippers; because it had a beam to length ratio that led to optimal cancellation of the bow wake by the stern wake. Some very smart shipwights recognised what they had, and 'nailed down' the way to do it. 

 

I don't remotely find this dry as dust, but with most conventionally educated folk it's like pushing jelly up hill with a stick...

[Fat Controller]

44 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Likewise I believe that's when it got 'bundled' under this title. There were many strands that led into it, and the OR piece begins way earlier than most recognise; the Royal Navy didn't keep Napoleon out of the UK by luck. The block making production line at Portsmouth a good indicator of what had been understood as a necessity to keep the fleet at sea year round; with standardised spars and masts, not necessarily optimal for every ship in the fleet, but readily available for repairs, and much else.

 

The most striking such 'early standardisation' that I have had a chance to look at (and use in lectures while on the eastern end of Europe) is the Athenian Trireme. In the Piraeus the Trireme sheds were excavated about forty years past, and this revealed that the patterns for the timbers had been carved into the stone floor, enabling a replica of this oared war galley to be reconstructed. And it performed as the classical Athenians claimed - which historians were very sceptical of - fastest ship design until the clippers; because it had a beam to length ratio that led to optimal cancellation of the bow wake by the stern wake. Some very smart shipwights recognised what they had, and 'nailed down' the way to do it. 

 

I don't remotely find this dry as dust, but with most conventionally educated folk it's like pushing jelly up hill with a stick...

Didn't Marc Brunel have quite a lot to do with 'industrialising' the block-making process?

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

1 minute ago, Fat Controller said:

Didn't Marc Brunel have quite a lot to do with 'industrialising' the block-making process?

And you can see why he might have been 'motivated' to deploy his considerable knowhow in merrie olde England. This happens to a pattern, things go awry in Europe, UK often gets the benefit: BAe setting up shop in The Ukraine...

[roythebus1]

Speaking to a friend at the local railway club who is a eurostar engineer at Stratford, he says the "all stations trams" between STP and Ashford keep delaying his trains as they are so well used. 

 

Mind you, with the very high winds we've had this week the all-stations trams suffered considerable delays and cancellation because of overhead line problems. Wrong sort of electrification for the south? You really can't win.