Mike Storey

When the French were building TGV routes, people were proud if it went by their house.  When we lived in Ashford there were years of protest against the building of the missing part of the M20.  I had to chuckle when some 'protesters' were then hemmed in by the CT route.

 

What happened to the 'good of the country' ethos

Attitude is quickly changing here - many Cantons are seriously objecting to new LGV's because of the resulting detriment to existing services to Paris and elsewhere. An example - the (now deferred) LGV link to Limoges has very little support in the region around Limoges, because places like La Souterraine, a popular railhead for many people in Haute Vienne and Creuse, will probably lose many of its daily direct services to Paris and Limoges, which currently exist because of the Limoges - Paris service. If the TGV service denudes these of Limoges demand, then economics dictate that most of the classic services would terminate further north, at Orleans.

One thing which does cause total confusion - exploited by a journo in the Telegraph last Sunday - is the confusion of passenger numbers with line etc capacity.  Part of the problem is that most people find it easy to think in terms of overcrowded (or not overcrowded in many instances) trains rather than an overcrowded railway; the two are very different things and impact in different ways.

 

You are correct to say that little attention has been given to explaining this but equally we need perhaps to understand that there are plenty of folk within the rail industry, let alone in the wider population, who do not understand how line capacity works (or doesn't) and the factors which influence it and even then those factors need to be carefully presented to avoid them being thrown back in one's face with all the obvious remedies.  This sort of thing can be presented in relatively simple ways but to do so I think those presenting them must understand what they are trying to impart - back in the late 1980s I presented a short paper at an IMechE symposium on heavy haul locos sponsored jointly by BR, GM, and Yeomans and all was going swimmingly about higher horsepower, super creep and ever increasing trainloads until my turn came.  I concentrated on both loads and running times showing the impact on pathing that resulted from heavier loads and slower trains - which even alerted Roger Ford to something he had not considered before.

 

So don't debate about the number of people - the key is the number of trains and their speed profiles plus the capacity specified into the signalling system plus gradient profiles and all sorts of other things.  And watch out for holes because anyone who understands such things could find one in HS2 planning - and oddly it is exactly the same as the one that was in CTRL (HS1) planning and now bedevils part of its operation.

 

A past planner of trains and infrastructure.

Of course I agree with most of what you say, but forecast passenger demand (and freight tonnage, and many other things) and thus future payback, drives the business case, not numbers of trains. There are still large pockets of objectors trotting out the same message as in the 1990's, that people will travel less in future because of video-conferencing, regional re-locations and so on. As they know not what they are talking about, they fail to see that those 30 year old predictions were pretty much 180 degrees wrong, and still fail to see it now - such activity has actually caused an increase in in business and thus an increase in travel . That is a different argument to the one now gaining ground that, if you accept that demand will continue to increase, that the same fiddling around the edges that has been done for the last 100 years, will be sufficient. That is a more dangerous argument that needs to be repelled, and SM rightly describes the repelling approach to that, as do others, But the argument for the actual  Business Case, where forecast demand and benefit is still strongly contested by anti-HS2 groups, needs to be won first.

As for HS1 problems, do you mean the gradients and signalling layout around Stratford Int?

Mike

Many of you are completely missing her very valid point - the public case for HS2 has been appalling badly handled, and Pete W calling the IoD "prats" is not helping. Until somebody properly explains the true reasons why HS2 is necessary (CAPACITY), in a truly populist way that could be understood and hopefully obtain consensus, it will always be open to this kind of critique, and rightly so.

Those currently arguing for lots of "minor" works, instead of one big bang, are making ground despite the lunacy of that approach - have they all forgotten the 10 years of (passenger) misery of the  West Coast Main Line Upgrade? (which is now already nearly full). How do you make trains longer without massively re-building Euston (again), St Pancras (already full) and Kings Cross (pretty much full), as well as dozens of other key locations and massively upgrading total power supply? How do you "improve" signalling to handle more trains on lines already at capacity, without slowing every train down to a crawl or introducing ERTMS 3 nationally, when they can hardly make it work on one line in Wales? How do you run the ever-growing number of freight services on passenger lines that are close to saturation? How do you price people off the peaks, when, no matter how much fares go up, demand rises even faster and off-peak is already getting close to full on many services already? etc etc etc.

Ex-Programme Director, Network Rail Major Projects.

Looks like the two new guys Dapol have contracted to replace Dave, the MD's of, respectively, Tower Models and DCC Concepts, have very high credibility. Here's hoping the Class 73 appears in the foreseeable future.

I see ex-Dapol Dave has started up on his own, but with some niche products for 2014 - I know I will get into a lot of trouble with somebody for saying they are niche - but they are, aren't they???!!

I see the Blue Grey version has been put back to 2014 by Hornby. I hope the long wait will be worth it for the "promised" improvements. My layout will run devoid of 4VEPs until then, even at the current dramatic discounts on the flawed version. I am more than happy to pay top dollar for a model that is reasonably accurate and runs well, even if it needs a few tweaks that can't be achieved in mass production.

I'm just glad they produced one, but I won't buy any until the Blue/Grey version arrives in the summer, on which I recall Simon said some of the faults will have been rectified. I am still perplexed as to Hornby's distaste for blue period liveries - Simon explained this to me at the Peterborough show as due to lack of demand. I think Bachmann has proved that to be utter nonsense. Nonetheless, I am still glad that Hornby put a toe in the water with an EMU and I think we should encourage them, despite the quality issues. I will be paying only a slightly discounted price, having reserved two already, but am prepared to do that to encourage more production. I hope Bachmann go for a 2HAP eventually - I have struggled to make a decent model with Charlie's kit - my fault, not Charlie's.

Mike