HS2 - Phase 2

The Sheffield station at Meadowhall will have connections with local trams, trains and buses

I view all the above, but note that the Cons, the LibDems AND the Labour party have all publicly stated their total support for the scheme - today......

Give it five years, a change of Gov't (perhaps/really?) and more economic woes, who knows??

But, as the Beeb told us, with all that lot (and the business lobby) in support, the 'anti-lobby' might as well give up and go home until/unless conditions change.

Or building expensive tunnels almost everywhere...

@grahamhewitt

I think the competition for HS2 will be very healthy for the rail industry, with passengers being the beneficiaries!

I'm sceptical. I think I'm one of the few 'enthusiasts' who was initially positive about HS2 but upon further reading have become very sceptical about the whole scheme.

The state has always wanted a profitable railway ever since the formation of British Railways in 1948. For HS2 to be operationally profitable, the state will have to cut the competing 125mph classic InterCity services so people who choose to travel long distances by rail, have to travel by HS2.

My knowledge of continental railways is poor, but I believe the French, since the advent of TGV, now have a skeletal service over the classic network and the Germans do not run 125mph classic services competing with ICE. I doubt Britain will be any different.

This would mean a downgrading of services from traditional InterCity destinations such as Coventry, Leicester and Stoke on Trent. I know Coventry is planned to get only 1 slower InterCity type service to London, down from the current 3.

I seriously doubt destinations in France or Germany of a similar importance to Coventry would have a HS line running close by without a station. There are purpose built TGV stations which serve destinations the size of Amersham and Chesham!

I'm very sceptical of any purported economic benefits to Derby and Nottingham with their 'out of town' HS station. The main hub of economic activity in both settlements are their city centres. The Toton station is a fudge, trying to serve two destinations and thus, will serves neither. At least Meadowhall serves a shopping district.

HS2 ticket prices will inevitably be higher than current InterCity prices. Afterall HS2 is intended for the businessman. Judging by HS1 it will be around 20% higher. I don't think the prices on classic services to Kent fell when HS1 opened, yet the classic services became slower.

On a lighter note, I chuckled to myself when I read that the London to Newcastle HS2 time is projected to be 2 hours 18 minutes. British Rail achieved 2 hours 19 minutes back in 1985 on the Tees Tyne Pullman!

A big difference between HS2 London to Birmingham and even on to Manchester and Leeds is that it quite short in comparison to initial high speed lines built in other countries. Paris to Lyon, Tokyo to Osaka and Madrid to Seville, for example, are equivalent to London to Newcastle in distance. So conventional trains can cut into high speed journey times for shorter distances or where stations are not built in town centres.

Quite so. What do they do on HS1 for relief routes when maintenance is required? One of the plus points about the existing system is that they can put trains onto alternative tracks to bypass engineering works completely. How will that work with HS2?

HS2 trains have been planned to use the WCML and ECML, so if you have tracks that have OHLE, you're good to go. (let's just hope that by then the WCML and ECML both have been fitted with ERTMS)

Are double deckers planned for the first part of the route? And otherwise, France uses classic 1500V DC/25kV AC lines to enter large city centres, but doesn't use classic infrastructure for that long. Are there many problems enlarging the gauge of short bits of WCML/ECML to enter cities like Liverpool and York?

It won't be easy to enlarge the gauge of classic lines to accept the continental loading gauge, but it'll be easier and cheaper to enlarge parts of them than the whole lot!

Reading the route development for the East Midlands line, its commented once that the former GC line would be unsuitable because its been largely built on in the city centres. Well of course it has, for reasons too depressing and miserable to repeat yet again. We don't have a 'track bank' scheme in this country either, so this will happen again and again.

Toton might be a ploy to enable Nottingham and Derby to become one large conurbation?


It pretty much is a fifth rate version of the GCML isn't it? The wide boys have had an extra 25 odd years mucking about with transport than they have with the other former public services.

But if this is the only carrott thats being offered, its better than nothing. All three parties are in favour of it, whilst none are in favour of re-nationalising BR or ditching the franchise system all together. Lets not forget that at privitisation, IC was running at a profit and NSE was apparently within a whisker of doing so aswell. And both had 20-30 year plans that would have seen far more achieved than has been. Third rail over the remaining southern lines, GWML, ECML, WCML all doing 125-160mph. A continued programme of station reopenings.

Its almost as if they *Don't* want a profitable railway...

I see a lot of freight on the WCML, but then there are quite a few freight interchanges and sidings there. Willesden/Northpole, Wembley, Stonebridge, DIRFT at Crick/Rugby... There's a disused line from Warwick into Rugby... that'd do as a start for a new railfreight distribution network... and Aylesbury to Rugby... wait, that's the GC isn't it?! It is just so blazingly obvious.

metrailway

Doesn't the current TOC 'competition' environment argue against 'the state will have to cut' other railway services?

To be honest, the link would probably be via the (slow) North London Line, as the cost of demolishing even more buildings is even more greater. And in any case, a link to the North London Line would be needed for freight, probably.

Through services to Europe? I think they'd just leave us to do the short-ish walk to/from Euston and St Pancras. Although the Chelney line (if ever built, at this rate) would join these stations together in one station.

@whistlekiller - in terms of city centre-Toton access times, I'd guess around 20 minutes to either Derby or Nottingham for an express bus/tram connexion. if you add a further time penalty for interchanging between train and tram of, say, 15 minutes, you have lost upwards of half an hour by siting the HS station in the suburbs. That strikes me as about 100% of any time savings from higher speeds. Why should the punters pay more for less? [The optimum solution may be simply to omit the E Midlands stop, but the politicians wouldn't stand for it].

chrisvandenkieboom - I do hope that EC and WC aren't equipped with ERTMS - slightly slower travel is well worth the improvement in reliability - Fyra...

@i1group - international trains via HS2? We have been here before (in 1992)! No one could make the business case work then, as journey times centre to centre were always beaten by air travel, except perhaps for Brum, and the appearance of Dandair and his friends has knocked the bottom out of prospective revenues since. Add to that the existing congestion on the NLL and the problem is almost insoluble - any gains from HS1/2 are frittered away sitting around near Camden Road. [Not to mention other stupidities and self-inflicted wounds such as the "Britannia Insula est" policy of the UK Borders Agency which will undoubtedly have everyone off any through trains at Lille so that they can troop through a passport control - as with Eurostar's Avignon service, and the continued inability of European train operators to offer single cut price fares across borders].

GH