Ron Ron Ron

At the official inception of HS2, with the ignorance of my layman's perspective, I did wonder if they should have contracted the whole lot out to one of the builders of recently built HSR in Europe, rather than create a whole new organisation from the ground up, no doubt re-inventing the wheel, numerous times over the years since. HS1 is just a French LGV line after all. Going back to that time when HS2 Ltd was being set up, a former work colleague's wife, who had a senior, middle management job in the Civil Service, was seconded to HS2 Ltd. IIRC she went from Fisheries and had previous experience in Social Security. Her experience of rail, was commuting on the tube from Islington to Westminster. I think she was there for a couple of years before going back to wherever. ./

Some A340 porn...... .

They only sold a very small number of the early, short -200's. Only 28 built, compared with 218 of the longer, more popular -300's I agree, the later -500 and -600 looked better. Both are longer than a -300, with the -600 being very long, as noted by others. I always had "a thing" for long bodied or stretched airliners. Back in the day, for me, the "stretched" DC8 was the best and coolest looking airliner That is the -61 & -63 series. The very long range -62 was a not much longer than the old -30 /40/50 series. The "stretched 8's", or "tubes", seemed impossibly long compared with anything else. They still looked cool when re-engined with CFM56's as the -71 & -73 respectively. The A340-600 is a sort of latter day "stretched 8" Even the longer Super VC10, looked better than the Standard 10.

Be grateful it wasn't an outside toilet...... .

I didn't think it had any capability to program CV's other than changing a loco address to one in the 1 - 9 range and changing the orientation, or direction of a loco. Incidentally, the new version, the E-Z Command Plus (36-502), allows access to 29 functions (F0 - F28) and uses 128 speed steps, as opposed to the 28 speed steps of both earlier versions .

The only A340's I flew on, were from Dubai to Mahe, Seychelles and back, in 2014. A340-300 Emirates. If I recall correctly, the economy class seats were very uncomfortable. While large numbers of the A340, have been retired or scrapped, A330's should still be a very common sight for years to come. Over 2,000 of them built or currently on order. .

Same with a number of Airbus types. A few A380's were withdrawn from use, even before Covid wreaked havoc on the industry, with barely 10 years of operational use. A number have been scrapped. A lot of the aforementioned A340's, had a very short service life; even as little as 7 to 10 years, before being put into storage. .

...But you know that'll they'll try to implement the most complex, difficult to achieve and eye waveringly expensive technological solution, for obtaining usage information. You can count on it being a multibillion ££££ complete c*ck*p that fails spectacularly. .

Marne-la-Vallée/Chessy is an example of concrete industrial design and very cramped.

STOP ! I've just realised this thread was originally about HS1 v HS2. Now it's morphed into another HS2 thread I've also fallen to the trap myself. .

A totally Straw Man argument. HS2 is not being built to solve any transport issues within Yorkshire or the NW. Nor is it being built, despite loads of guff and nonsense from various politicians and commentators, for "levelling up". Any benefits that are derived from HS2, to the advantage those causes, are a bonus, or spin-off (if you like) and not the primary motivation or rational for creating the new line. The HS links that would have been created between both Birmingham and Manchester ...and Birmingham and Leeds, were envisioned as future enablers to help generate new economic growth and create new regional links. An opportunity created by using the spare capacity on the HS2 infrastructure, north of Birmingham. They were not being included to purely to address present day requirements. .

One of several, original concepts for how a totally brand new Euston station, might look. (From year 2011)

The HS2 platforms are entirely new additions. They are entirely separate and segregated tracks from the “classic network” rails into the existing platforms. From a purely railway track operational perspective, (if built) Euston will be two entirely separate stations, sitting side-by-side. They couldn’t use the existing station platforms, as all the released platform capacity is earmarked for the expansion of local and regional services that the moving of intercity trains onto HS2 will enable. A bit of background. Plan 1 - The initial concept. The original concept and idea, was to create a new, much larger and more modern Euston station. That involved replacing the 1960's station, almost in its entirety. In that plan, it was proposed that the platform and tracks of the existing station and those of the new large extension, would be lowered and extended out beyond what is currently the Euston concourse, towards Euston Road. The new concourse was to be placed above the tracks, with platform access more evenly distributed along the length of the long trains. The whole design concept described platforms open to the concourse above, to allow lots of natural light to illuminate the whole stain on all levels, down to track level. There was also wide scope in this concept, for significant over station, commercial development, which could have helped offset the cost. However, when the likely price tag was estimated, plus concerns raised about how much disruption would be caused through a long, phased rebuilding program, the Treasury emphatically said NO ! Plan 2 - the first full design. Instead of a full blown, brand new and larger Euston, HS2 Ltd were only allowed to design a new station building for the HS2 platforms. The existing 1960's terminus would get a significant update and remodelling, but essentially the tracks and platforms would stay at the current height and location. Design work for this was quite advanced up to a few years ago, when the Treasury bean counters saw that the estimated cost had mushroomed, so they ordered the plan to be scaled back, with either one or two ? fewer HS2 platforms and pinching a platform from the WCML station. Plan 3 - Billion £ bonfire. The revised plan with fewer platforms and other cost cutting measures was supposed to save money. It catastrophically failed, as the cost of the cut back new plan, is turning out to cost more than the scrapped version. They also wasted a fortune on the previous design, by scrapping it. . .

When I were a lad........CAM was my bible. Somewhere, tucked away in the dark recesses of my study, I have my old CAM's from 1968 to about 1976. I also have an early 60's copy, that a relative gave me in the early 70's I also have a couple of editions of WAF from that era, although their pages became loose very early on. I haven't dug any of this stuff out for a couple of decades. I used to study these books intensely, along with my copies of the the different annual editions of the Observer's Book of Aircraft. When I left home as a teenager at the start of 1974, to start my lifelong career in the industry, I came across copies of Jane's All The World's Aircraft for the very first time. I'd never heard of it before. That was a WOW moment for me at the time. .

A common site, if you frequented Frankfurt, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona or Heathrow, amongst other locations. They built just shy of 100 -600's. 97 to be precise. The largest operators being Lufthansa, Iberia and Virgin Atlantic. The rarest A340's were the short fuselage models, the early -200 and the later -500. The latter being the shorter, very long range version of the -600. They only made 34 of those (e.g. SIA and Etihad used them on ultra long range flights) The latest, very efficient big twins (787 & A350) saw off most of the A340 fleet, the final nail in the coffin, being Covid closing down most of the international passenger operation. n.b. Lufthansa have reactivated a number of stored A340-600's, due to a shortage of LH capacity and the long delay in taking delivery of their large order of 777X .

VW are in big trouble. Despite being the first large legacy auto maker to jump in to the EV revolution with both feet, they've rather bungled their way to the trouble they find themselves in. The problems are many fold. e.g. ....... 50% of their global sales income, comes from China and by all accounts, their sales there have collapsed. Note: They have a couple or more, big joint venture factories there. VW's expensive EV products are just not selling in the huge Chinese market, against a much broader range of far cheaper and better specified Chinese brand alternatives. Meanwhile their ICE products have lost their previously strong Chinese market, as that market moves towards EV's. Internal corporate wrangling and inertia has seen stiff resistance and reluctance from many quarters of the company, to the transition to an electric car future. The prospect of losing their large manufacturing capacity for IC engines, gearboxes etc, would not only result in large numbers of job losses at the factory level, but is being seen as a threat to their bloated corporate structure. The previous CEO, who was responsible for VW's full on drive into EV's, was sacked last year after facing fierce opposition from and being undermined by, senior executives and management in various part of the VAG empire. There is also a lot of opposition from the unions and local politicians, in the areas where factories faced with redundancies and possible closures lie. So on the one hand, you had a corporation that at the very top, wished to drive headlong towards electrification; but on the other hand, resistance and active opposition to the plan from all levels of the organisation, from top to bottom, both inside the company and from without. The new CEO is trying to turn that cluster**** around. VW made a big mistake with spending hundreds of millions, if not a billion or more, on chronically flawed software for their new generation of cars, both EV's and ICE lines. Compounded by putting that software on underspecified hardware, with terrible user interfaces. They have now embarkied on a mission to replace the whole lot, no doubt at great expense. Meanwhile, they have no alternative but to keep on churning out cars with patched up and updated versions of the officially abandoned software and substandard hardware.. Another mistake, was to move away from the companies long standing policy to produce cars with fairly basic and bland, but well built and durable interiors; towards the use of cheap and low rent plastics, with questionable choices in the type of switchgear being fitted. The long standing perceived image of quality and VfM that VW had lived off for decades, was thrown out of the window. Covid and the resulting supply chain issues have hit the German automotive industry badly. The industry is still suffering today, even as the supply chains are gradually restored, but the economic climate and inflation has now become the problem. The new CEO recently stated that Tesla (as an example) make an EV in a 10th of the time it takes to make a VW EV. Industry commentators have said that VW's production processes are basically the same as for their manufacturing of legacy ICE cars. VAG are a massive corporation on a global scale, but they're $$billions in debt. Too big to fail ? .

(My bold) A part of your post and argument is based on a false premise. As conceived, both in the years prior to the official HS2 programme launch and at that programme's inception, HS2 was clearly defined in concept form, to its northern end points. Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham. The routes north of Birmingham were never meant to be extensions. HS2 was conceived as a whole. The phasing of the build (into Phase 1, 2 which later on became 2a & 2B) was introduced later on, when the practicalities of planning for how it would be constructed and financed, were identified. Of course, we are in a different place now and are lead to refer to Phase 2A & B as "extending the route", rather than "completing the full route" as it was originally intended. .

This is a dilemma that's facing many western economies. All living on an inflated bubble, with central banks frantically trying to put sticking plasters on all the little air leaks. .

It was said that the 2 year "pause" to building Euston and the Euston tunnels (assuming they continue to build them after that 2 year delay) was likely to increase costs by something in excess of another £300m. In other words, it wasn't saving anything, even in the short term. The pause has increased the cost. I'm also puzzled how cancelling phases, that won't be built for another 10 years, will solve the immediate financial problems? It won't even save money in the future, because as already mentioned, it'll cost a lot more to do it later, than at today's prices. . .

Making it sound like the north only wants hand outs, isn’t going to do your cause much good. Meanwhile, the media commentators and politicians are blathering out loads of guff about “levelling up”. Mostly talking gibberish. There are claims that HS2 was being built for “levelling up”. That’s as much rubbish as saying that it’s being built to save 20 minutes between London and Birmingham. .

Domestically, yes.......not forgetting Belfast, but that's across the water. The only one missing from pre-Covid and financial crisis times, is Dundee, which now operates from LHR. .

London to BHX. Flights ended decades ago. BEA pulled off them in the late 1960’s , possibly as late as the start of the 70’s…..IIRC ? BMA ran LHR - BHX flights during the 1980’s and possibly early 90’s to provide connections through LHR, but they didn’t last. Only small aircraft were used. Also in the 1980’s, Brymon briefly tried 19-seat aircraft on BHX - LGW, again for connections at Gatwick, but it didn’t last long. I don’t believe there were ever any LCY - BHX flights. VLM ran LCY - MAN flights in the 1990’s and 2000’s, reaching a peak during the disruption caused by the WCML upgrade, when they ran 5 flights a day, Mon-Fri. At that time, there were more than 30 flights every day between Manchester and all the London airports. The introduction of the Pendolino’s and Virgin’s high frequency “clock face” timetable, killed of the LCY flights and reduced the number of others. .

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Rails are now being laid on the Aylesbury to Princess Risborough line, HS2 diversion. Engineering train on the new bridge over the HS2 formation...... .

Geographically, Curzon Street station faces approximately ENE and shortly after leaving the station, the route out of central Birmingham (to join the HS2 mainline at Water Orton), goes NNE to Washwood Heath, before turning east, towards the Delta junction with the main HS2 route. Train service wise......the original intention was for Curzon St. to be a terminus for services to/from.... London (via HS2 south) Manchester (via HS2 NW) Scotland (via HS2 NW then the WCML) East Midlands, Sheffield, Leeds & the NE (via the Eastern leg & beyond). If only Phase 1 is completed, then it will be just a "south facing" station, with some underused platforms. .