HS2

[Leothebear]

Five years late and zillions over budget.
Just how rubbish does this project have to get before it's put out of its misery?

A year ago it had already soaked up £5billion. Latest estimate £88 billion.
I would have thought half that would go a long way to improving the existing network.

[kiloran]

I may be very wide of the mark, but I thought the existing network was pretty well full to capacity and expansion is difficult. HS2 adds to the capacity, but the marketing focus seems to be the high-speed aspect, which in my view is more or less irrelevant.

None of which, of course, defends the cost over-run (or maybe the poor estimate of the cost)

--kiloran

[Howard]

I may be very wide of the mark, but I thought the existing network was pretty well full to capacity and expansion is difficult. HS2 adds to the capacity, but the marketing focus seems to be the high-speed aspect, which in my view is more or less irrelevant.

None of which, of course, defends the cost over-run (or maybe the poor estimate of the cost)

--kiloran

I agree with you. The country would probably save billions if we went for LS2?

It would probably only add a few minutes to the journey time, even up to Leeds/Manchester.

Howard

[Dod101]

At the weekend the French were quoted as regretting that with their high speed rail network they did not plan for the future high speeds and so this was adopted in the planning for HS2 The result is that we need much higher spec for the track, longer and less 'bendy' bends and so on all for the sake of getting the speed a few miles per hour higher and knocking 10 or 15 minutes off the journey.

It seems that capacity is what we need rather than speed as such, especially as we are not really talking about very long distances anyway. I hope that we might see some scaling down of the spec and not cancellation, because on the whole we are not very good at infrastructure projects in this country.

Dod

[richlist]

I don't get it .......London to Manchester is only 2 hours on the train now. What's the problem with that ? It's fast enough already.
London to Blackpool is also 2 hours.

[swill453]

I don't get it .......London to Manchester is only 2 hours on the train now. What's the problem with that ? It's fast enough already.
London to Blackpool is also 2 hours.

As someone else said, it's more about capacity than speed (despite what most of the politicians say, both for and against).

Having fast and slow trains on the same track severely reduces the capacity for both. A huge amount of track-time is wasted arranging traffic so that fast trains can overtake slower trains.

Having separate tracks for fast intercity and slower stop/start local services massively helps both.

Scott.

[Dod101]

Vanity project. There is so much other infrastructure in this country that needs upgrading/replacing before this carry on.

I don't think that is true. If you try some of these train journeys the trains are very over crowded. The vanity bit of it may be in the high spec as I have said but I do not doubt that additional capacity is needed. What I do not understand is that we seem incapable in this country of getting anything done on budget and anywhere near on time. You would think we might have learned by now.

Dod

[swill453]

That's exactly what I meant by vanity. As others have said, billions to save a few minutes. I'd rather have the capacity.

- which it will provide. Sure they could probably do it cheaper, but the track is needed for the capacity.

Scott.

[stewamax]

Vanity of vanities... vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
(Eccl 1 KJV)

Very prophetic*.
Governments come and governments go.
And HS2 may be technically and economically obsolete by the time the northern sections were implemented.
Brunel built the GWR from Paddington to Bristol in 6 years or so. He would be turning in his grave over HS2's "progress"!

* even in the old meaning of vanity - 'in vain'

[Howyoudoin]

This article in the Independent does a good job of explaining why the 'speed' factor of HS2 is far less important than the increased capacity and is a necessary upgrade to infrastructure largely built in Victorian times.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 37936.html

HYD

[Dod101]

Two points here. The track is needed for the capacity sure, but not necessarily at such a high spec for speeds just a bit lower than those being planned for. I read at the weekend that at so called 'High Speed' not surprisingly the track takes a real pounding and so the whole thing needs to be much higher spec and thus much more expensive.

Reference to Brunel brings me to something I have been wondering about for a long while. Why is it that in places like Hong Kong, they can build a new offshore airport together with associated road and rail links over terrain literally round the side of a mountain and including some quite spectacular bridges and tunnels, all done as far as I know pretty much on time. I do not know about the budget but that was not really an issue as there is plenty of money in the coffers. And much of it was planned by British engineers. I guess money being no object helps, as does the lack of our much over prescriptive planning laws, and then the hardwork of the Chinese. A lot of that can be applied to Brunel's GWR I expect.

The other contrast is that we are building this new railway on a very crowded and already developed island, whereas for instance in HK, most of the work was on virgin territory give or take a few local farmers.

Dod

[tjh290633]

As far as I can see the problem is lack of capacity, particularly for freight traffic. The demand is particularly acute on the stopping services on the main lines, which include commuter services into the major towns, including London.

The perceived solution is to take the longer distance trains off the existing lines by building an up to date new line for them, which is what the French did. Building a slow speed line does not make sense.

TJH

[ReformedCharacter]

IMO The Royal Commission on Railway Gauges made a mistake in 1845 by not adopting the 7" gauge. Brunel was right. Today a train looks like an HGV on a mini wheelbase and some of them apparently tilt (intentionally) which is surely making the most of a bad job. The big mistake after the Beeching cuts was the failure to keep hold of the land upon which the tracks were laid and which could now be put to use for other transport systems. At least this country has done better than the French train operator SNCF which ordered 2000 trains which were too wide for many platforms. Sacré bleu!

RC

[Lootman]

IMO The Royal Commission on Railway Gauges made a mistake in 1845 by not adopting the 7" gauge. Brunel was right. Today a train looks like an HGV on a mini wheelbase and some of them apparently tilt (intentionally) which is surely making the most of a bad job. The big mistake after the Beeching cuts was the failure to keep hold of the land upon which the tracks were laid and which could now be put to use for other transport systems. At least this country has done better than the French train operator SNCF which ordered 2000 trains which were too wide for many platforms. Sacré bleu!

The Japanese had the advantage of being bombed back into the stone age at the end of WW2, so there was plenty of land to build the Shinkansen.

It's not really a matter of speed versus capacity, but rather that the speed enables the capacity. For instance, stand in Shinagawa station on the Tokyo-Osaka line and a bullet train passes by about every 3 minutes. That doesn't sound like much headway but at full speed that puts the trains about 10 miles apart.

But at least the British don't do this as badly as the Americans. The California high-speed train project has trains flying from Bakersfield to Stockton in the central valley (AKA the "train to nowhere"). But into San Francisco the trains will share right-of-way with local commuter trains (maximum speed 80 mph with lots of stops). Whilst into LA I believe they haven't even agreed a route yet. At least with HS2 we are doing the difficult bits first (London and Birmingham). The rest is just tunnelling under Tory constituencies

[gryffron]

IMO The Royal Commission on Railway Gauges made a mistake in 1845 by not adopting the 7" gauge. Brunel was right.

7" is a bit small
But, no he wasn't. 7' gauge gives no advantage. The cornering issue isn't about train stability. It's about passenger stability. A standard gauge train can corner safely at speeds that would throw passengers off their feet.

In the 1970s the French researched gauges before building the TGV. It was by no means a given that it had to be standard gauge. They concluded the optimum gauge for HSR was "about 10%" above standard gauge. Any more and trackbuilding costs increase dramatically. Remember, HSR track is set in concrete to prevent it shifting. Make it wider, you have to increase the depth to maintain strength. Double the gauge, you quadruple the amount of earth moving and concrete laying. In the end, even that 10% only gave very marginal benefits, so they built to standard gauge to maintain interoperability. Well, it was still the Cold War.

Chinese standard gauge trains are the same overall width as Brunel's broad gauge ones.

Gryff
Train geek

[moorfield]

I don't get it .......London to Manchester is only 2 hours on the train now. What's the problem with that ? It's fast enough already.
London to Blackpool is also 2 hours.

I still don't get it either. Why would anyone want to get from London to Birmingham 32 minutes sooner (at greater expense, no doubt) ?

[scrumpyjack]

But this is all old technology.

In 30 years time railways will probably be as obsolete as the stagecoach is now. Auto driven electric vehicles will take people from their point of origin to their final destination efficiently. As all road vehicles will be computer driven, they will be able to use the roads to the optimum. Trains going from city centre to city centre will belong to a bygone age.

[UncleEbenezer]

I don't get it .......London to Manchester is only 2 hours on the train now. What's the problem with that ? It's fast enough already.
London to Blackpool is also 2 hours.

Distances here are much smaller than on the continent, so our case for trains much faster than the regular 125 is a lot less compelling than for many of our neighbours.

On the other hand, we have a lot of lines which are inadequate and could really do with an upgrade. In the 'northern powerhouse' area, my recollection from living in Sheffield is that the line to Manchester was scenic but far from intercity grade, while the lines to Leeds over speed-restricted dead coalfields were positively dreadful. Here in the southwest, we might (grumble) live with the line being seriously slow west of Exeter, but we could really use an inland route that doesn't get washed out to sea leaving Plymouth and all of Cornwall completely cut off!

[ReformedCharacter]

IMO The Royal Commission on Railway Gauges made a mistake in 1845 by not adopting the 7" gauge. Brunel was right.

7" is a bit small
But, no he wasn't. 7' gauge gives no advantage. The cornering issue isn't about train stability. It's about passenger stability. A standard gauge train can corner safely at speeds that would throw passengers off their feet.

Gryff
Train geek

Thanks, I realised I'd got my "'" confused with """ just too late! Interesting, I found this:

https://www.irjet.net/archives/V4/i12/IRJET-V4I1296.pdf

RC

[Alaric]

Brunel was right.

In terms of building lines for both passenger high speed and freight capacity, Brunel got it right by building straight and flat. Rather than widen the gauge, he would have bequeathed a better legacy had he insisted that his railway should have capacity for coaches and wagons somewhat wider and higher than those then in use.