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Solderpete

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    O Gauge modelling

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  1. until
    Hillingdon Railway Modellers - Test Track Open Day – Saturday 1st June 2024 Yiewsley Baptist Church Hall (side entrance), 74 Colham Avenue, Yiewsley, Hillingdon, London UB7 8HF. Entrance £6. Open 10.00 – 15.00hrs. Bring your O, OO, or N gauge locos and trains to run on our club’s three test tracks. DC and DCC is available, but sorry no “live steam”. Our Test Track Open Day is not an exhibition, but a chance to meet fellow modellers and try out your models. Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models, and we very much welcome new members should you wish to join the club. Refreshments will be available all day. Nearest station: West Drayton (12 minutes’ walk). Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5.
  2. until

    A friendly get-together and good chance to run your models. The refreshments are pretty good too.
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    Hillingdon Railway Modellers - Test Track Open Day – Saturday 6th April 2024 Yiewsley Baptist Church Hall (side entrance), 74 Colham Avenue, Yiewsley, Hillingdon, London UB7 8HF. Entrance £6. Open 10.00 – 15.00hrs. Bring your O, OO, or N gauge locos and trains to run on our club’s three test tracks. DC and DCC is available, but sorry no “live steam”. Our Test Track Open Day is not an exhibition, but a chance to meet fellow modellers and try out your models. Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models, and we very much welcome new members should you wish to join the club. Refreshments will be available all day. Nearest station: West Drayton (12 minutes’ walk). Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5. Website http://www.hillingdonrailwaymodellers.co.uk or phone Peter on 020 8368 4090.
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    Entrance £6. Bring your O, OO, or N gauge locos and trains to run on our club’s three test tracks. DC and DCC is available, but sorry no “live steam”. Our Test Track Open Day is not an exhibition, but a chance to meet fellow modellers and try out your models. Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models, and we very much welcome new members should you wish to join the club. Refreshments will be available all day. Nearest station: West Drayton (12 minutes’ walk). Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5. Website http://www.hillingdonrailwaymodellers.co.uk or phone Peter on 020 8368 4090.
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    Hillingdon Railway Modellers - Running Track Open Day – Saturday 9th December 2023 Baptist Church Hall (side entrance), 74 Colham Avenue, Yiewsley, Hillingdon, London UB7 8HF. Entrance £6. Open 10.00 – 15.00hrs. Bring your O, OO or N gauge locos and trains to run on our clubs’ three separate test tracks. DC and DCC available, but sorry no “live steam”. Please note that this is NOT an exhibition, but a good opportunity to meet fellow friendly modellers, chat, and test out your models. Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models. Refreshments will be available all day. Nearest railway station: West Drayton (12 minutes’ walk). Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5. Website http://www.hillingdonrailwaymodellers.co.uk or phone Peter on 020 8368 4090.
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    Yiewsley Hillingdon Railway Modellers - Running Track Open Day – Saturday 14th Oct 2023 Baptist Church Hall (side entrance), 74 Colham Avenue, Yiewsley, Hillingdon, London UB7 8HF. Entrance £6. Open 10.00 – 15.00hrs. Bring your O, OO or N gauge locos and trains to run on our clubs’ three separate test tracks. DC and DCC available, but sorry no “live steam”. Please note that this is NOT an exhibition, but a good opportunity to meet fellow friendly modellers, chat, and test out your models. Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models. Refreshments will be available all day. Nearest railway station: West Drayton (12 minutes’ walk). Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5. Website http://www.hillingdonrailwaymodellers.co.uk or phone Peter on 020 8368 4090.
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    Hillingdon Railway Modellers - Test Track Open Day – Saturday 3rd June 2023 Yiewsley Baptist Church Hall (side entrance), 74 Colham Avenue, Yiewsley, Hillingdon, London UB7 8HF. Entrance £6. Open 10.00 – 15.00hrs. Bring your O, OO, or N gauge locos and trains to run on our club’s three test tracks. DC and DCC is available, but sorry no “live steam”. Our Test Track Open Day is not an exhibition, but a chance to meet fellow modellers and try out your models. Occasionally second-hand models for sale. Expert help is on hand from knowledgeable club members if you have any problems with your models, and we very much welcome new members should you wish to join the club. Refreshments will be available all day. Nearest station: West Drayton on the Elizabeth Line (12 minutes’ walk). Local bus services 222, 350, U1, U3 & U5. Website http://www.hillingdonrailwaymodellers.co.uk or phone Peter on 020 8368 4090.
  8. As I understand it, the plan was always to terminate trains at OOC for at least for the first couple of years, whilst Euston is being prepared. At first I presume there will only be High Speed Trains working between Birmingham Curzon Street and OOC, as I don't think that there will be a connection onto the classic lines to run HS2 trains further north at that point, but I could be wrong. Once phase 2A is completed to Crewe then HS2 trains will be able to connect onto the classic lines to run to Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and possibly Manchester using the existing route. Phase 2B to Manchester will see the full High Speed service. So if that sequence of opening is correct, then OOC will have to be able to cope for a few years with HS2 passengers just to and from Birmingham. But here lies the rub. Getting out to OOC from much of the South-East is not particularly simple. Certainly for example getting to Euston from North London is simple and fast, having to go out to OOC takes longer and adds to the overall journey time if you want to go to Birmingham. So much so that it could quite easily negate any time saved by running at 200mph between OOC and Curzon St., which once again isn't exactly as central as New Street Station is. As long distance trains will still be operating out of Euston to the north, and some may still be calling at New Street, it could be quicker and more straightforward to ignore OOC and continue to use Euston, at least for those early years. This could lead the press and others saying that HS2 is a failure because people are not using it as expected. That might give rise to the scrapping of phase 2B to Manchester unless it can be clearly explained why the initial service is not successful. As far as I can understand the delay of two years to both Phase 2A and Euston is timed so that Euston WILL be ready for the wider service to Crewe and beyond. If Euston cannot be ready for that happening there will be major problems at OOC because I doubt the Elizabeth Line would be able to cope with such an influx off the West Coast. So, clearly Euston MUST be ready in time for phase 2A opening at the very least, but it would be preferable for it to be ready ASAP without this ridiculous two year delay, if only to make the phase 1 section viable. Building complex infrastructure nearly always runs into unexpected problems along the way. Stopping work at Euston for these two years is likely to increase the risk of it NOT being finished in time, if it then runs into problems, for the increase of service with the opening of phase 2A. Why even take that risk? One of the biggest cause of delays in opening Crossrail was the unexpected difficulty in getting a smooth transition from TPWS to the central automatic working. Such transitions can throw up many unexpected problems. The Eurostar extended service to Amsterdam also had transition problems between the Belgian and Netherlands systems which took a long time to resolve.
  9. Major work has been going on at Euston for around three years. Many hundreds ARE working there now. Bridges have been demolished, tower blocks brought down, the area from the end of the tunnel into the west side of the station is being worked on now. OOC, and in particular the Elizabeth Line, cannot cope with thousands of passengers joining trains there off HS2. The Elizabeth Line is already VERY busy and will only get busier by the time HS2 starts running on phase 1. Apart from all that, the overall journey on HS2 to and from Birmingham will possibly end up being worse than it is today if everyone has to get to and from OOC to use the HS2 trains. That part of the journey will cancel out all the benefits of High Speed running from OOC to Birmingham. It is absolute madness not to get the trains running into Euston as soon as possible.
  10. In this time of high inflation the quicker the project is finished the cheaper it will be. For example any new High Speed Trains bought now will be cheaper than they will be in 5 years time. Completing the full project ahead of time by speeding up the process will save overall costs AND give the public their first truly high speed railway from north to south earlier than was projected. It's a WIN WIN all round.
  11. Like most of us I don't know exactly when the first tracks will be laid on HS2, however having been a Eurostar Driver I closely followed the construction of HS1, as did many of us. HS1 took several years of planning, as you'd expect, before ANY groundworks were started. Eventually ground preparation work started and cabling, drains, and roads were diverted away from the route. One significant cable that had to be moved was the electricity cable from France which connected into our National Grid east of Westenhanger on Channel Tunnel Route One (CTRL1). HS1 runs alongside CTRL1 from Ashford to Eurotunnel. It was the one place we could see progress as HS1 was being built on a daily basis. Eurostar did organise coach trips on a couple of occasions for staff to watch the progress all along the route. The major infrastructure work was started first, such as the 19kms of London Tunnels between St Pancras and Dagenham, the Thames Tunnel, the Huge Medway Bridge, Ebbsfleet station, and several shorter tunnels between there and Ashford. All the time that HS1 was being designed and then built, St Pancras station was also being transformed as well as modifications made to the approaches of Ashford International, and of course the link into the Channel Tunnel at Folkstone. The bits of the route between these major infrastructure projects was cleared and embankments and cuttings made. There was also a new temporary link made between CTRL1 and HS1 just after Ebbsfleet station. HS1 would be opened in two stages with Eurostar trains continuing to use Waterloo International whilst using the temporary link onto HS1 until St Pancras and the more complicated work of the London Tunnels etc. was finished. As to the question of when track laying starts, I cannot remember the exact date we started seeing track being laid followed by the catenary systems being put in place above the track, but it was well into the project and possibly only 18 months before we started using the route. The track laying trains are extremely efficient and fast, and most of the materials, ballast, track and overhead equipment, at least through Kent was delivered and transferred to the construction trains at a large temporary depot near Charing in Kent between CTRL2 and HS1. That depot, which I've forgotten the name of name, was after construction finished, completely dismantled and returned to farm land. Today you'd have a hard job to spot where this very busy 24 hr construction depot used to be. The London Tunnels all have the track embedded in concrete giving a very stable ride with no dangerous movement of track. I was was one of a small team of drivers who were tasked with testing HS1 after completion before passenger trains could start using it. We spent about 6 weeks testing the overhead power systems, the crossovers, and the track circuiting along the whole route, including the new Eurostar depot at Temple Mills, Stratford. So the purpose of this long diatribe is to say that the laying of the greater part of the track will happen very quickly followed by the overhead equipment going up. It is amazing how quickly that process is, and if you get a chance to watch it do so.
  12. https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/tunnels/green-tunnels/burton-green-tunnel/ Some info about the creation of Barton Green Tunnel.
  13. I thought some of you may be interested to read the obituary published in Railnews recently about my brother, Mike Storey, who originally started this thread on RMweb.
  14. How far north of Birmingham has work been started on phase 2A to Crewe? Is there anything to see yet near Stafford or Crewe? It is interesting to see the photos of the work progressing north of Lichfield. Thank you.
  15. Not everyone owns a car so trains can be lifelines to many. However I agree, fares need to reflect other options that are available to some. I.e. be more competitive. Fare structures and support are a government decision and remember we elect governments. Up until the pandemic fares were used as a way of discouraging rail travel in peak periods on some routes, simply because there wasn't the seat capacity to meet the demand on those congested routes. HS2 will add around 40% seat capacity on the main north/south routes and that should allow for more competitive fare structures, if only to fill the extra seats.
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