Edwin_m

We can't know this, but construction is well under way over most of the route of HS2 London to Birmingham so it is possible to get something started eventually. As to rail freight, coal has largely disappeared but intermodal traffic has increased, including the likes of Tesco doing trunk hauls between distribution depots in England and Scotland. This tends to be long-distance, so the total tonne-kilometres of freight hasn't changed that much. Shorter distance goods still goes by road, but a fairly small change in circumstances (such as gauge clearance to Southampton a few years ago) can lead to the break-even point moving and a quite big increase in rail freight assuming the relevant capacity is available. Gauge and capacity enhancement could produce something similar for Transpennine, although as distances are shorter than Midlands to Scotland it's not a certainty that the economics will work out. Another development is at least two companies converting surplus EMUs to carry parcels traffic - not yet proven viable but one to watch. Coal traffic was unsurprisingly between coal mines or ports and power stations, so didn't overlap much with the trunk passenger routes, and providing alternative routes for passenger trains would only have allowed extra coal traffic in a few places. Intermodal tends to run to major centres of population, so has much more need to use the same routes as intercity passenger, and should benefit that much more from capacity released by high speed lines.

The one in the middle is quite camouflaged too.

Indeed it did, pending a review of options for Leeds.

I'm probably guilty of oversimplifying here. Sometimes multiple options are made public, but in the case of EWR they were no more than shaded areas on maps showing that the option would run somewhere through the shaded area. And when they got specific, they managed to score a massive own goal with Bedford. As of just now, HS2 north of Sheffield is still shown on their interactive map and the plans are still on gov.uk. How long it remains there is another question. https://www.hs2.org.uk/in-your-area/map/#11/53.2597/-1.2397/filter=hs2-stations,hs2-network https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hs2-phase-2b-crewe-to-manchester-and-the-west-midlands-to-leeds#west-midlands-to-leeds-route-maps At the risk of going off-topic again, I'm aware that a Manchester-Marsden-Bradford option was being talked about a year or two back as a means of serving both Bradford and Huddersfield, so I would expect early stage plans for Manchester-Marsden to exist already.

Options will have been looked at and design work done on some of them, to a level to establish feasibility and an approximate estimate of costs. But at this stage of a study these are kept strictly confidential, otherwise if they were released people would start claiming property blight when one of the routes impacted on their houses etc. This might end up costing the taxpayer large sums, much of it for options that weren't ultimately taken up. If properties were purchased then they might end up being sold again and the money recovered, but not the amount spent by the project in undertaking the purchase and sale. Normally options are whittled down to a preferred route, which is published prior to consultation and arrangements for compensation for property blight brought in at the same time.

Nottingham and Derby are about as far from London as Birmingham is, and I don't think anyone questions that Birmingham should be a primary HS2 destination (other than those that question HS2 as a whole). Nottingham to Birmingham is a further than Manchester to Leeds, and I don't think anyone questions that should be a primary NPR route (other than those that question NPR as a whole). So I don't think these journeys can be described as too short for high speed. Nor are they as fast today as many journeys that are replaced by high speed in the original plans. From London you can be in Warrington or York in a similar time to Nottingham or Derby, . I'd be interested in a source for your Nottingham vs Derby to London figures - certainly before Covid Nottingham had the same number and similar length of trains to Derby and Sheffield combined, suggesting the number of passengers was in a similar ratio. I can only think it's because many people in the Nottingham area with access to a car will drive to Grantham for a faster service.

There's also a nasty reverse curve going round a hill just east of the eastern portal, which would probably impose a speed restriction compared to the straighter alignment further east. So I'd expect it to tunnel through that hill, and if it was me* I'd put the junction about where Ordance Survey shows Slaithwaite Hall. Depending on the topography and the alignment needed to head towards Manchester, there might even be a very short surface section crossing the Colne Valley near the existing portal. *I've been involved in high speed line design projects, but have no inside knowledge on this one.

I think they were talking about the east portal of Standedge, not the west. Neither the Micklehurst Loop nor the route via Lees nor any other existing/disused route in the area would offer any journey time benefit.

They may be equivalent to London but there are other places to travel to, and which will benefit from HS2. Nottingham to Birmingham is over an hour, including several minutes reversing in Derby, and will be less than half that if HS2 is built as proposed in the IRP. Derby to Birmingham has twice as many trains (in non-Covid-times), including some that skip the stops that Nottingham trains make.

Having said that, the plan was always to progress Phase 1 first, so a fairer comparison would be from 2009 up to the Phase 1 hybrid bill, which was published in 2013. During that four year period it was necessary to define a route, do several stages of business case, design it, carry out consultation and re-work as required. Royal Assent was in 2017 but main contracts didn't start until 2020. Some of that period was definitely government delay but some may have been taken up with tendering and selecting contractors, and some was "enabling works" let on a separate contract as they would have delayed the main work if not started early. Phase 2a could have been done in similar timescales had the government wanted to, and importantly if the design industry had the capacity to do both at once.

Do you have a source for 2005? Even the Network Rail high speed proposal, which was an ancestor of HS2, wasn't until 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/scotland/8222413.stm It's not correct to imply that the Phase 2a Hybrid Bill took 12 years - it was lodged in 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/high-speed-rail-west-midlands-to-crewe-bill. I agree with what you may have intended to say, that the whole process has taken 12 years and counting. This includes design work, consultation and legislation, which I think most people would agree were necesssary. It also includes at least one pause while a new set of politicians decided on whether to continue or not.

That's clearly an option. An alternative would be to cascade them as I suggested, and introduce for the MML a straight electric unit, which wouldn't need provision for bi-mode and various other features that an 810 has but wouldn't be necessary on that route, so could be lighter and cheaper. It depends on the rolling stock market in 10+ years time, which nobody can know.

The bi-modes could be cascaded to somewhere like Cross Country which has a lot of mileage under wires but many of its routes extend beyond. Indeed, most people would be driving there. And therein lies the problem. It's all very well for affluent locals who want to go to London, but much less attractive for visitors to the area who end up being dropped off several miles from where most of them want to be. And it's probably the inward visitors who bring in prosperity instead of sucking it out. A lot of people in the Nottingham area drive to Grantham to get trains to London, and I imagine those further west would drive to a WCML station. They are somewhat easier to drive to and the train is faster. EM Parkway was primarily intended to capture some of those London travellers - the airport access was always some sort of sideshow and P&R into Nottingham was never going to happen with only a couple of trains every hour. I did the math on that at the time. Even when HS2 was going to be not far east of Barnsley, Manchester to Leeds via a triangle in that area would have taken longer than via Diggle. It actually collapsed because it was costing too much, although part of the reason for that was to do with lack of experienced people.

Not quite the same, because the fast trains from London, broadly the Avanti services today, will use HS2 instead. So there is significant capacity released for services aimed more at intermediate journeys and freight. This won't happen on MML, although there will be more seats for Leicester etc because London to Derby/Nottingham/Sheffield passengers won't be on those trains.

It will only replace the MML in the sense that London-Derby/Nottingham/Sheffield passengers will have an alternative. There will still need to be something very similar to the current timetable on the MML south of EM Parkway, because Leicester and the other intermediate stations don't benefit from HS2 and still need a service at least as good as they have today. That includes fast services between Leicester and further north, which for passenger and operational convenience would probably still be continuations of London-Leicester trains.

A short distance down the M42 is the bridge they put in last year, to carry the road that will be obliterated by the HS2 bridge. I presume the "bridge to nowhere" on Ron's picture is the remains of this, apparently re-purposed to carry just a footpath. This was also put in place by a transporter - not sure if this qualifies as the "hi-tech raft" - but if so the only major innovation seems to be that the abutments and pier are put in place in one piece with the bridge, instead of being built beforehand and the bridge placed on top of them.

They won't - there's no design of tilting train available that can do the necessary speeds. Some years ago it was estimated that not having tilt would extend journey times by 15min between Golborne and Glasgow/Edinburgh, which was more than offset by gains by using high speed line further south. People are looking at higher speeds for non-tilting trains on parts of this section, which is only limited to 110 because nobody has wanted to run a faster non-tilt train until recently (and Virgin would have been very unhappy about potential competition!). For example there are straight sections either side of Preston and around Lockerbie where it ought to be possible to save a few minutes.

I think that's probably the most likely for a station with platforms reasonably close to grade. It also allows a gate to bring barrows and even vehicles etc onto the platform, which could then cross the line via the "barrow crossing". I imagine Superquick have designed their buildings for the traditional flat baseboard with platforms standing above it.

Not Ron Ron Ron's flying saucer then?

There are numerous methods in current use, including modular systems where the surface is supported by a steel frame, and even the use of polystyrene blocks as infill. There should be articles on station reconstruction on the link below, which should give some idea. https://www.railengineer.co.uk/

Certainly the tunnel cross-section limits the speed, due to various factors including pressure effects on passengers and the air the train pushes out of the way causing a backdraught so the pantograph sees an airflow faster than the train speed.

Gradient has an effect too. I can't read the captions on the profile posted above, but when I did a similar one I concluded that the HS2 train would not be able to reach maximum speed northbound through the Chilterns. A Pennine crossing could be on a severe gradient, but this also means the trains in the downhill direction will accelerate faster. Normally it also means they will take longer to decelerate, which approximately cancels out, but in the case of the partial alignment on the west side the deceleration will be approaching Manchester where it's relatively flat.

Last I heard, HS2 was using ballasted track further north but slab track on the busiest section south of Birmingham. Design speed is 400km/h (250mph near enough) except where there is a reason to reduce it.

There are proposals for both a fusion reactor and a rubbish incinerator. I don't think anyone has yet suggested using the latter as fuel for the former. Neither are likely to generate much patronage at the Parkway station, and as experimental fusion reactors tend to be huge net consumers of power I hope there's enough left for the MML.

You also have to consider journey times, which seem to be a major driver for NPR bringing the cities closer to each other. The existing line won't give any time saving between Manchester and Leeds, in fact going via Guide Bridge would slow it down, and the Micklehurst Loop wouldn't be much different.