High Speed 2 Update - likely route revealed

[bmthtrains - David]

The report HS2 has produced for the DfT defines the proposed route of section 1 (London to Brum) to within 25 metres, and once this is released, I can use this data to help formulate my long term plans for a model of the proposed railway.

 

Today, however, the Guardian reported a 'leak' which gives the rough path out of London. Hardly a surprising route, but its an interesting one, which (if built), will provide some fascinating new places to watch trains go by (from the mix of traffic visible!).

 

The route will come out of Euston until Queens Park, then presumably cut underground to meet the Great Western line (by then electrified) to an interchange station at Old Oak Common - to meet Heathrow Express and Crossrail, and then curve back up to follow the Chiltern line until its cleared London.

 

Now I'm not that familar with the Marylebone line, but following it on Google Earth, it looks like its a 4 track formation only using 2 lines? If so, this is an ideal spare route out of the city.

 

No details have been released about how the line crosses the countryside to get to Birmingham (not wanting to upset the National Trust where the line churns up Badsley Clinton gardens to get from the Chilten route to get to Bhm International!), but whats been said so far is almost identical to the Greengauge route - with the exception of not actually going via Heathrow.

 

Always a contentious topic to post on, I realise, as it brings out political opinions, and all the 'spend the money elsewhere' views, but just as a currently theoretical proposal, it certainly makes for a fascinating change to the rail map!

 

David

[Trog]

 

The route will come out of Euston until Queens Park, then presumably cut underground to meet the Great Western line (by then electrified) to an interchange station at Old Oak Common.

 

David

 

 

There is nothing new under the sun, that is just about what the GWR was supposed to do until Brunel got the distance between the rails wrong and diverted it to Paddington. The land bought to give room for GWR trains running into Euston, is one of the reasons there is room for so many tracks up Camden Bank.

[298]

The bit that I find interesting is the "motorway hogging" route instead of using the existing GC route - common sense may say the latter is being retained to build a wide gauge route from London to the north via the Chiltern suburban lines/HS2, reopened GC to Rugby, new alignment to Leicester, then the MML. Or maybe the enviromental impact is reduced through having the railway paralleling the M40/M42, and there seems to be enough green space alongside to do this to Birmingham Airport without impacting sensitive areas including Baddesley Clinton.

[pwr]

There was talk of HS2 being a 4 track main line - would this fit in the space proposed?

 

Paul R

[samkiller42]

I think the reasoning to a "motorway hogging' route is because motorways follow a more direct A to B approach, over conventional lines, that zig zag about the country. Take LGV Nord in France for example, practically the entire route between Paris and Lille is in stones throw of the A1, means faster trains (300kph) and shorter journey times.

 

Sam

[Edwin_m]

Motorway routes were chosen (in theory at least) to respect environmental sensitivities and stay away from populated areas as far as possible. Choosing the route for a new railway a few decades later would probably result in a similar route, assuming it met curvature and gradient restrictions which are more severe for a high speed railway. Furthermore once there is a motorway there, the corridor is effectively blighted and adding a railway alongside it makes little difference to the total noise and other impact. Though people living nearby will no doubt argue otherwise...

[damian]

I think the reasoning to a "motorway hogging' route is because motorways follow a more direct A to B approach, over conventional lines, that zig zag about the country. Take LGV Nord in France for example, practically the entire route between Paris and Lille is in stones throw of the A1, means faster trains (300kph) and shorter journey times.

 

Sam

 

Its actually so you can race the Eurostars and Javalins down the A2/M2 and the M20. Mind you only i only have a couple of vehicles that can keep up...

[Fat Controller]

Its actually so you can race the Eurostars and Javalins down the A2/M2 and the M20. Mind you only i only have a couple of vehicles that can keep up...

On the A1 in Picardie, there are signs telling drivers not to try and keep up with the trains- of course, some (mainly the Belgians, I'm told) try to. The CRS (who police the autoroutes) were not impressed when they had to call out a second helicopter in pursuit of one car, travelling at around 250 kph, as the first ran out of fuel.

[Southernman46]

I'd heard the the route is going out of London via Aylesbury, Quainton Road, Rugby, Leicester, Loughborough, Sheffield, Manchester - hang on, now where else have I seen that ??

[bmthtrains - David]

The route is London to Birmingham only at present. One line will go direct to a new city centre station, while the other will go to Birmingham International/NEC and join the WCML in the trent valley.

 

David

[Hammer]

If I may have a small grouse for a minute: oh for 2030, when I'll be able to take the train to London from Edinburgh/Glasgow in 2 hours

 

I know there is a recession on and spending cuts are the political flavour of the day, but why isn't work progressing on all sections of HS2? Surely it would provide much needed employment, contracts for civil engineers, designers and so on and achieve the job in less time (because two decades to build a railway is taking the p*** a bit - it didn't take us that long to build the majority of the motorways).

[Glorious NSE]

Now I'm not that familar with the Marylebone line, but following it on Google Earth, it looks like its a 4 track formation only using 2 lines? If so, this is an ideal spare route out of the city.

 

It's a mixture, there are places where the formation (ignoring the adjacent central line) is 2 tracks and has 2 tracks on it, so it's not all plain sailing, but it seems to be a corridor where mostly you could fit the route in by shuffling the existing uses to squeeze it in - tight bits look to be Old Oak to Greenford which was a double track line now mostly with a single track in place which will need to be retained - fitting 2 more tracks in will be tight, Hanger Lane in particular looks to be a pinch-point with a modern bridge that has less spare space than the older structures. There's a siding for stone trains at Park Royal which you would need to retain somehow as well.

 

The "passenger" bit further out will need a lot of rebuilding as well, it was a 4 track formation, but to get a "segragated" right of way I suspect you'll want to be shuffling the lines around to paired by usage rather than the old "paired by direction" setup.

 

Beyond Ruislip it looks to drop to double track formation, but widening the embankment till you can swing across to the M40 alignment doesn't look too hard.

 

Not sure whether they will join the M40 in the vicinity of the M25, or follow the rail line through Gerrards Cross (they will all have pitchforks ready in the boot of their BMW's to repel any chance of progress i'm sure ) and pick up the motorway at Loudwater - that could be the site of a nice big viaduct either way.

[Simon_R]

So then north of Brum, parallel the M6Toll, de-restrict that section and lets all have some fun

[Hammer]

It's a mixture, there are places where the formation (ignoring the adjacent central line) is 2 tracks and has 2 tracks on it, so it's not all plain sailing, but it seems to be a corridor where mostly you could fit the route in by shuffling the existing uses to squeeze it in - tight bits look to be Old Oak to Greenford which was a double track line now mostly with a single track in place which will need to be retained - fitting 2 more tracks in will be tight, Hanger Lane in particular looks to be a pinch-point with a modern bridge that has less spare space than the older structures. There's a siding for stone trains at Park Royal which you would need to retain somehow as well.

 

A pinch indeed - HS2 is meant to use a slightly wider loading gauge then is normal in the UK, to allow bigger inter-model freight containers to be used.

[Glorious NSE]

I doubt the overall width of the loading gauge will be affected by containers - there aren't any "normal" intermodal containers that regularly visit this country that can't be coped with inside the width of the standard UK loading gauge.

 

It's the top corners where there is normally a problem over here as loading gauges tend to have round tops and containers tend to have square tops.

 

There's some good logic for the future in trying to build it compatible with continental systems, but i'd have thought in practical terms the advantage of that would be the ability to use kit similar to the TGV duplex, or through trains from Europe via HS1 to Northern destinations rather than it's superior freight capability.

 

If this is a double track line (and I can't see it can be more than that really) then i'd doubt there would be much spare capacity for freight anyway to be honest, maybe at night, but you'd have to assume that they would want to be using that for maintainence windows.

 

There should be more freight capacity on the bottom end of the WCML once you move a big chunk of the fast trains off the old route, that's already cleared for high-cube boxes .

[brushman47544]

There's some good logic for the future in trying to build it compatible with continental systems, but i'd have thought in practical terms the advantage of that would be the ability to use kit similar to the TGV duplex, or through trains from Europe via HS1 to Northern destinations rather than it's superior freight capability.

It does make sense, and I think there are EU laws on railway interoperability that require new high speed lines anywhere in the EU to be built to what we call the continental loading gauge - can't remember if it's UIC B or C though that the TSI (technical specification) requires.

[The Stationmaster]

All new railways, and infrastructure changes, in the EU are supposed to be built to allow interoperability however it is possible to apply a derogation for lines which are not going to be used for international traffic (which is just as well because WCML upgrade would stil not be complete and the GWML works now getting underway would involve some very interesting changes ).

 

However there is some sense in making HS2 compliant as this would offer considerable future advantages if/when it has suitable through links to HS1.

[Ron Ron Ron]

Whether or not UIC B, C or whatever is used, the track separations required are wider for HS. Therefore I would have thought "Squeezing" a twin track formation onto existing track beds on the outer London approaches will not be possible without a significant speed restriction?

 

As for freight, forget it.

I'm sure HS2 will largely be a segregated line and fully utilised by HS services at the Southern end. HS routes are not conventional lines with faster trains on them.

 

 

.

[Claude_Dreyfus]

The Government has made an annoucement on the planned HS2 line.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8561286.stm

 

Just something else in the run up to the general election, or is this something tangiable we can look forward to?

[Dudley Dodger]

I suppose it'll be supported by people because it's eco friendly. ish.

[Mike Bellamy]

Many thanks to member sto243 on the ModelRailForum for the following which gives links to the documents etc

 

Statement http://www.dft.gov.uk/press/speechesstatements/statements/adonis20100311

 

Documents http://www.dft.gov.uk/results?view=Filter&h=m&m=4552&pg=1

 

Mike

[JohnR]

Well, although all parties have said they want High Speed Rail, one of the main parties has refused to agree with these plans, as they feel the route may need to be changed. However, I think they'll find that any new rail line from London to Birmingham will have to go through their Buckinhamshire consituencies. They also seem fixated on the idea of diverting it via Heathrow!

[Bruciethefish]

Most interesting, particularly the proposal to use part of the old great central route, though I couldn't get the maps to load...

[brushman47544]

Interesting news. Euston is a sensible choice, but I'm not sure about the Birmingham station - presumably the site of the old Curzon Street parcels depot. A lot of people will want easy connections to ther destinations. How easy will it be to get connections at New Street and Snow Hill? It's quite a long way to walk!

 

More interesting - well fun anyway - is the video on the BBC webpage. 4mins 59 secs from Euston to Glasgow Central, with station stops at Crewe, Warrington BQ, Wigan NW, Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme and Carlisle and only two heavy signal checks, approaching Preston and Motherwell. Don't suppose that happens very often!

[Waverley West]

 

More interesting - well fun anyway - is the video on the BBC webpage. 4mins 59 secs from Euston to Glasgow Central, with station stops at Crewe, Warrington BQ, Wigan NW, Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme and Carlisle and only two heavy signal checks, approaching Preston and Motherwell. Don't suppose that happens very often!

 

 

I can't honestly see the case for HS2 if it only takes 4 min 59 secs from Euston to Glasgow at the moment.

 

OK, I'm going...