High Speed Two (HS2) discussion

The network they eventually want



English routes on screen these are scottish ones

Aberdeen - Edinburgh - London
Glasgow - Edinburgh - London -
Europe
Glasgow - Edinburgh - Newcastle -
London
Glasgow - Preston - London
Glasgow - Edinburgh - Newcastle -
B’ham
Glasgow - Edinburgh - Newcastle -
Leeds - Manchester - Liverpool

Kudoson said:

The network they eventually want

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Who is they? I presume the digram has been lifted from somewhere - could you provide a source?

I would point out that the currently announced HS2 route differs from that shown.

Perhaps this is a bit older then. This is still worth a look though, there are maps of the first and second phases and then the one I picked out, the HSL train routes.

http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/NR/rdo...ko3agcda4mosmr5kqvzj2a/PrinciplesofHSRail.pdf
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I've finally got a date for that page 19 August 2010. Does anyone have an updated version of the HSL plans and did the Heathrow Express Cambridge - Portsmouth plans get scrapped, I can't seem to find anything about it and that would be a change closer to home.

Kudoson said:

Perhaps this is a bit older then. This is still worth a look though, there are maps of the first and second phases and then the one I picked out, the HSL train routes.

http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/NR/rdo...ko3agcda4mosmr5kqvzj2a/PrinciplesofHSRail.pdf
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I've finally got a date for that page 19 August 2010. Does anyone have an updated version of the HSL plans and did the Heathrow Express Cambridge - Portsmouth plans get scrapped, I can't seem to find anything about it and that would be a change closer to home.

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I think that is a submission by some kind of consultancy, of their idea of how the network should be developed.

Try http://www.dft.gov.uk/topics/high-speed-rail/line-of-route for the announced phase 1 route.

The whole plan is half-baked at best. By the time it is eventually delivered it won't solve anything.

The government are missing the chance to have a truly groundbreaking high speed network using Maglev in an s-shaped route with the arms filled in later (creating a sort of 8/double box shape).

This is the same mistake they made at time of the hover-train/APT when they could have taken Maglev forward and we would have had a full maglev network by now.

Instead they went with conventional rail then sold the APT to the italians, levying us with the rubbish we have now.

Rick1984 said:

The whole plan is half-baked at best. By the time it is eventually delivered it won't solve anything.

The government are missing the chance to have a truly groundbreaking high speed network using Maglev in an s-shaped route with the arms filled in later (creating a sort of 8/double box shape).

This is the same mistake they made at time of the hover-train/APT when they could have taken Maglev forward and we would have had a full maglev network by now.

Instead they went with conventional rail then sold the APT to the italians, levying us with the rubbish we have now.

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I don't see how having a network running in isolation (which is what any solution other than conventional rail would be) would solve anything? In fact it would just give the No sayers something else to complain about. It would also exclude the possibility of Birmingham/Manchester etc... to the continent trains which is what HS2 (via HS1) would offer.

At least HS2 (phase 1) will have the ability to connect to the WCML & HS1, and I don't buy your rubbish comment as well because trains are busier than ever which is why HS2 is needed.

Wow. So many misconceptions. Some facts:

A rail connection between HS2 and HS1 will be built as part of phase 1 of HS2. This connection will permit 3 trains per hour. This means it will be possible to run trains between northern cities and European cities. However, there are no firm plans to provide Eurostar-style security facilities at any of the new HS2 stations, which would be another prerequisite to allowing international trains to run.

It isn't that the politicians are too stupid to even think of maglev, or are maliciously ignoring its alleged benefits. Saying "rail is old technology, maglev is new, so we must go with maglev" is pathetic. Maglev WAS looked at as an option several years ago - it was discounted because it is totally incompatible with rail. If the HS2 Y-network serving London, Birmingham, Heathrow, Leeds, and Manchester was built as a maglev, places like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Preston, Stoke, and Liverpool would never ever benefit unless hundreds of miles of maglev extensions were built to directly serve those cities. This would cost a great deal of money - and it wouldn't all be done by 2033, I can tell you that. There would also be no prospect of international services because HS1, the Channel Tunnel, LGV Nord etc are railways and not maglevs. With HS2, on the other hand, those cities *will* directly benefit from 2026 because some HS2 trains will also run on existing lines. This makes the choice between maglev and high-speed rail astonishingly obvious.

The notion of a binary "invest in the classic network OR build HS2" choice is ludicrous. 850 miles of the classic network is planned for electrification before HS2 even opens - the Midland Main Line from Bedford to Nottingham and Sheffield, the Great Western Main Line from Airport Junction to Bristol and Swansea, the entire Cardiff Valleys network, the North Transpennine route, suburban routes around Birmingham and Liverpool, and more. The East-West and Portishead lines are both re-opening to passenger traffic. Manchester and Nottingham are getting their tram extensions. Investment beyond 2019 is not confirmed because that's not how the system works, but it makes sense to continue to electrify more lines as more diesel trains become life-expired. The current "big project" is Crossrail, but that is not preventing all this other stuff from happening. It will be the same with HS2.

Why would Bicester or Brackley have an HS2 station when Stoke won't? Please. HS2 will be a dedicated intercity line, and there will not be a station every 2 miles to appease every podunk town. As others have explained, either capacity would be reduced or reliability would go out the window.

I don't think anyone has posted this yet: current thinking at Glasgow City Council is for an HS line from the city centre running alongside the North Clyde line as far as Shettleston station before diverging south on a new alignment. The terminus is to be at High Street - an alternative site at Bellgrove was discounted as being too far from the city centre. The council are going to prevent this land being built on.

CalumCookable said:

I don't think anyone has posted this yet: current thinking at Glasgow City Council is for an HS line from the city centre running alongside the North Clyde line as far as Shettleston station before diverging south on a new alignment. The terminus is to be at High Street - an alternative site at Bellgrove was discounted as being too far from the city centre. The council are going to prevent this land being built on.

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Would a station at high street be well connected to the other stations in the city, or would there need to be extra lines required to integrate the various stations?

Ironside said:

Would a station at high street be well connected to the other stations in the city, or would there need to be extra lines required to integrate the various stations?

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High Street has no rail link to Glasgow Central station (the primary central Glasgow station) and no Glasgow Subway station, and nor is it likely to ever have those things regardless of whether an HS station is built there. The Subway is important for accessing the densely-populated and affluent West End, but is utterly unsuitable for people with luggage and has limited coverage of the region compared to the suburban rail network, so this might not be that big a deal. High Street is not much of a "destination" in its own right. There is some development going on in that area, but most of the attractions are elsewhere. The ability to transfer is important.

What High Street does have is various services on the subsurface North Clyde line across the north Glasgow suburbs and central Scotland all the way from Helensburgh in the west to Edinburgh in the east. These trains combine to give a metro frequency in central Glasgow, a bit like the Metropolitan Line in London. High Street is one stop by rail from Queen Street (walking distance), which is the secondary terminal station in central Glasgow. Queen Street is right next door to a Subway station.

There is a proposal to reinstate some chords and bring an existing line back into passenger use called Glasgow Crossrail, which would give High Street direct trains to stations south of the river. It's meant to be a solution to limited rail capacity at the terminal stations and providing north-south cross-city journeys and is an idea that's been kicking around since the 1990s.

No Glasgow location would solve everything, since Queen Street and Central have no connection (and the Subway doesn't directly stop at either).

That's assuming that a dedicated HS2 line/station happens as far as Glasgow (my guess is HS2 will get as far as Manchester/ Leeds and then Scottish services would move onto the existing lines north of Manchester/ Leeds)

tbtc said:

No Glasgow location would solve everything, since Queen Street and Central have no connection (and the Subway doesn't directly stop at either).

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I was just explaining the positives and negatives of High Street. But realistically, there isn't really anywhere else an HS station could go.

Right enough, Central is not convenient for the Subway. But Buchanan Street subway and Queen Street railway are essentially the same station. They are directly linked by covered moving walkways.

That's assuming that a dedicated HS2 line/station happens as far as Glasgow (my guess is HS2 will get as far as Manchester/ Leeds and then Scottish services would move onto the existing lines north of Manchester/ Leeds)

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I agree. In terms of intercity trains there's only 1 London, 1 Birmingham, and 1 Manchester train per hour at the moment on the Scottish section of the WCML.

CalumCookable said:

I was just explaining the positives and negatives of High Street. But realistically, there isn't really anywhere else an HS station could go.

Right enough, Central is not convenient for the Subway. But Buchanan Street subway and Queen Street railway are essentially the same station. They are directly linked by covered moving walkways.



I agree. In terms of intercity trains there's only 1 London, 1 Birmingham, and 1 Manchester train per hour at the moment on the Scottish section of the WCML.

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Sorry, didn't mean to look like I was arguing, just agreeing that no one site will solve everything (due to the way that Glasgow was designed). I expect HS2 trains to serve Central, just like all the other "English" services and use the same tracks as far as maybe Wigan.

Much as I'd love to see one "unifying" station (as in Berlin) underneath Glasgow!

tbtc said:

Sorry, didn't mean to look like I was arguing, just agreeing that no one site will solve everything (due to the way that Glasgow was designed). I expect HS2 trains to serve Central, just like all the other "English" services and use the same tracks as far as maybe Wigan.

Much as I'd love to see one "unifying" station (as in Berlin) underneath Glasgow!

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Yes, agree with all you say. I'd just like to add that Central is facing capacity problems of its own, and this is a massive barrier to increasing the frequency of all the services using it, so we could well see a new station appearing in Glasgow independent of an HS2 extension to Scotland. It's either that or a Manchester-style light rail system to take some of the suburban services out of Central.

would not St Enoch be the best site for a Glaswegian HS2 terminus? Already plugged into the Subway, and it would be possible to reconfigure Argyle St station to become the new 'Glasgow St Enoch low level'

Waverley125 said:

would not St Enoch be the best site for a Glaswegian HS2 terminus? Already plugged into the Subway, and it would be possible to reconfigure Argyle St station to become the new 'Glasgow St Enoch low level'

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There isn't enough free space for a station big enough for 400 metre long trains unless you demolish the shopping centre, and even then it's pretty tight. But yes, that is pretty much the best site for connectivity. In my ideal world, the old St Enoch would still be standing and we wouldn't have that horrible greenhouse, but we are where we are.

I'd knock the SEC down. Glasgow city centre, the shoppers will find new premises, there are no other decent sites for an HS terminal.

Also, with regard to Leeds HS, I really hope it gets built as a through station. It'd require a mile or so of tunnelling from Crown Point to Neville Hill, but a through station is easily achievable. Though it'd mean no 'express' through services, I don't see that as a problem. Leeds, like Manchester, is big enough, and far enough north, that every service should call there,

I am not convinced tha Classic Compatible services from the existing Phase 2 proposal make any sense at all, you don't save any time and the pruning of the timetable to the existing Y will provide all the paths required to get major increases of capacity. (You could drop 2tph each from Birmingham and Manchester and one from Leeds, giving you one tph more to Newcastle, Liverpool and generic WCML destination and still leaving you with free paths for freight and LM).

The CC sets appear to purely political and I don't at all understand the rationale behind ordering 250m sets for a railway wtih 400m platforms.

It just throws paths away.

A Glasgow HS station would also grab the Edinburgh traffic so its going to have to have major transport links to the existing suburban network.

HSTEd said:

I am not convinced tha Classic Compatible services from the existing Phase 2 proposal make any sense at all, you don't save any time and the pruning of the timetable to the existing Y will provide all the paths required to get major increases of capacity. (You could drop 2tph each from Birmingham and Manchester and one from Leeds, giving you one tph more to Newcastle, Liverpool and generic WCML destination and still leaving you with free paths for freight and LM).

The CC sets appear to purely political and I don't at all understand the rationale behind ordering 250m sets for a railway wtih 400m platforms.

It just throws paths away.

A Glasgow HS station would also grab the Edinburgh traffic so its going to have to have major transport links to the existing suburban network.

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You are quite wrong. HS2 phase 1 saves around 30 minutes to classic WCML destinations and phase 2 saves a further 30 minutes. 1 hour off London - Glasgow/Edinburgh journey times is not insignificant.

Edinburgh is not a suburb of Glasgow. From 2016, the trains on the fastest of the 4 routes between the two cities will take 40 minutes. Let's call it an hour including connections: that erases much of the time saving. Any Scottish HS line will serve Glasgow and Edinburgh. Nonsense to suggest otherwise. Glasgow is the larger city, but Edinburgh is the second most touristed city in the UK.

That said, there is little case for a Scottish HS line. The Scottish section of the WCML carries 3 intercity trains per hour in each direction: 1 London-Glasgow, 1 Birmingham-Glasgow/Edinburgh, and 1 Manchester Airport-Glasgow/Edinburgh. The new Birmingham ICWC trains will have 6 carriages; the new Manchester Transpennine trains will have 4. The London trains are fairly well-used but don't start getting really busy until Preston. Hardly stretching the limits of a double-track railway. Network Rail says the Carstairs junction can be remodelled for higher speeds and the Edinburgh branch of the WCML can be upgraded to 125mph. The only other justification left is for modal shift from air to rail, but the air demand is not really great enough to fill several 400 metre trains per hour.

The real capacity problems are at Central and Waverley, which will both be full soon. These stations are the barrier to more frequent trains on all routes. The general rule of no passengers standing for more than 10 minutes does not apply to the Paisley Gilmour Street to Glasgow Central section because even the recently introduced 7 and 8 carriage trains are not adequate.

The chatter about a Scottish HS line was born out of political desire to be seen to be "doing something" and, like that batty idea of a Glasgow-Edinburgh maglev that was doing the rounds a few years ago, will be dropped as soon as they think people have stopped paying attention.

CalumCookable said:

You are quite wrong. HS2 phase 1 saves around 30 minutes to classic WCML destinations and phase 2 saves a further 30 minutes. 1 hour off London - Glasgow/Edinburgh journey times is not insignificant.

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How exactly does it propose to do this?
If we take, for example, the Phase 2 proposal for a line to Manchester, unless this line extends significantly north of Manchester hten you have to use conventional lines to crawl to the proper WCML, or you have to leave it significantly further south.
The trainsets would be limited to 110mph north of Manchester (as 200mph tilting trainsets don't seem to actually exist) and once you account for the fact that it will take 30+ minutes to get from Manchester to Preston or more (it takes 40 minutes now, if you delete the intermediate stops you will save ten at most with superior electric train accelerations).
So its now taken you 1hr50 or more to reach Preston... compared with 2hr08 or 2hr as it happens now.

Once you include the fact that the trainsets will indeed loose time north of Preston you end up back where you started.
Any savings effectively have to come from deleting stops north of Preston, which could happen anyway really.

If you go via Leeds you end up with the same problem, you have to get from Leeds to York in 30/40 minutes even to break even, and you won't be able to do it any faster than that without building the high speed line all the way to York.
Bypassing Manchester and Leeds might help you marginally but then you have to build yet more high speed track to get links to lines in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't really help that much in the Manchester case, and only marginally in the Leeds case.

CalumCookable said:

Edinburgh is not a suburb of Glasgow. From 2016, the trains on the fastest of the 4 routes between the two cities will take 40 minutes. Let's call it an hour including connections: that erases much of the time saving. Any Scottish HS line will serve Glasgow and Edinburgh. Nonsense to suggest otherwise. Glasgow is the larger city, but Edinburgh is the second most touristed city in the UK.

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I meant that the Glasgow HS station would grab the Edinburgh-Glasgow traffic since any reasonable HSL to Scotland would go via Newcastle and Edinburgh to Glasgow, giving you a 19 minute journey time using Shinkansen style commuter trainsets, perhaps 23-24 if you include an intermediate stop at Falkirk.

CalumCookable said:

That said, there is little case for a Scottish HS line. The Scottish section of the WCML carries 3 intercity trains per hour in each direction: 1 London-Glasgow, 1 Birmingham-Glasgow/Edinburgh, and 1 Manchester Airport-Glasgow/Edinburgh. The new Birmingham ICWC trains will have 6 carriages; the new Manchester Transpennine trains will have 4. The London trains are fairly well-used but don't start getting really busy until Preston. Hardly stretching the limits of a double-track railway. Network Rail says the Carstairs junction can be remodelled for higher speeds and the Edinburgh branch of the WCML can be upgraded to 125mph. The only other justification left is for modal shift from air to rail, but the air demand is not really great enough to fill several 400 metre trains per hour.

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Any Scottish HSL simply won't go via the WCML route, it would have to go via Newcastle to gain additional traffic that simply isn't present in Cumbria or South West Scotland.

EDIT:

I know how HS2 Ltd have generated these frankly ridiculous time savings figures.

They use the "typical" travel time as the baseline and then they use the stopping patterns north of Leeds and Manchester of the fastest trains to generate the travel times for the HS2 services, this seems rather disengenuous to me.

They can't hope to run an hourly Flying Scotsman via HS2, is there not a giant bottleneck on the northern ECML anyway thanks to Pacers and 125mph trains on the same route?
As for doing this on the WCML they don't appear to have accoutned for the problems I noted in my main post with regards the loss of speed north of Manchester.

HSTEd said:

How exactly does it propose to do this?
If we take, for example, the Phase 2 proposal for a line to Manchester, unless this line extends significantly north of Manchester hten you have to use conventional lines to crawl to the proper WCML, or you have to leave it significantly further south.
The trainsets would be limited to 110mph north of Manchester (as 200mph tilting trainsets don't seem to actually exist) and once you account for the fact that it will take 30+ minutes to get from Manchester to Preston or more (it takes 40 minutes now, if you delete the intermediate stops you will save ten at most with superior electric train accelerations).
So its now taken you 1hr50 or more to reach Preston... compared with 2hr08 or 2hr as it happens now.

Once you include the fact that the trainsets will indeed loose time north of Preston you end up back where you started.
Any savings effectively have to come from deleting stops north of Preston, which could happen anyway really.

If you go via Leeds you end up with the same problem, you have to get from Leeds to York in 30/40 minutes even to break even, and you won't be able to do it any faster than that without building the high speed line all the way to York.
Bypassing Manchester and Leeds might help you marginally but then you have to build yet more high speed track to get links to lines in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't really help that much in the Manchester case, and only marginally in the Leeds case.

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Apparently the time penalty of not tilting on the Glasgow route is 11 minutes, or 4 minutes with some unspecified minor work. Unfortunately I can't remember the specific document I read this in, so I can't link to it, but it was definitely from HS2 Ltd or the DfT or somewhere similarly official. And am I not right in saying that there are few, if any, 125mph sections on the northern half of the WCML anyway? A lot the track is *very* curvy and I thought the modernisation fiasco meant they ended up not bothering to upgrade the northern half. Correct me if I'm wrong there.

CalumCookable said:

Apparently the time penalty of not tilting on the Glasgow route is 11 minutes, or 4 minutes with some unspecified minor work. Unfortunately I can't remember the specific document I read this in, so I can't link to it, but it was definitely from HS2 Ltd or the DfT or somewhere similarly official. And am I not right in saying that there are few, if any, 125mph sections on the northern half of the WCML anyway? A lot the track is *very* curvy and I thought the modernisation fiasco meant they ended up not bothering to upgrade the northern half. Correct me if I'm wrong there.

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I am not sure, the Northern WCML is not an area I know very much about.
But even with 11 minutes you end up at most ten minutes on the conventional service at Preston.

And as these minor works are almost certainly on the WCML proper.... you can't really chalk them up as a time saving versus the existing service since those same works would presumably benefit the tilting trains as well. Unless they convert 125EPS speed limits to 125MU speed limits.... at which point I have to ask why this was not done to start with during the WCRM (and like you said, I am not sure there is much 125EPS stuff north of Manchester anyway).

Looking at the map on the DfT site it looks like the HS2 services would be roughly what the existing WCML & ECML services are now; terminators at Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds with continuations on to the classic lines from triangular junctions where the terminating services diverge from the HS2 route.

tl;dr summary: London-Glasgow services wouldn't call at Manchester by the looks of the map; they'd shoot straight on through just as they do now. Same as London-Edinburgh not calling at Leeds or indeed the proposed London-Manchester or Leeds not calling at Birmingham Curzon St.

You could knock a good ten minutes off the current Euston - Central timings if there weren't so many other services in the Motherwell area and in the approach to Central.

And we've argued about the fact that there are no large populations in Cumbria/ Dumfriesshire etc before - surely for HS2 this is A Good Thing as it allows the trains to run at, erm, High Speed (rather than all the stops that people want to put in it - HS2 isn't about stops at places like Falkirk - no disrespect to the place)

tbtc said:

And we've argued about the fact that there are no large populations in Cumbria/ Dumfriesshire etc before - surely for HS2 this is A Good Thing as it allows the trains to run at, erm, High Speed (rather than all the stops that people want to put in it - HS2 isn't about stops at places like Falkirk - no disrespect to the place)

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It is not a good thing if there is noone around to actually use the trains and justify the huge cost of construction of the line. Going via Newcastle means you get an extra million people you don't get otherwise, at these latitudes the East Coast is far more heavily populated than the West.

The Argument about intermediate stops that holds on the core does not really hold north of Leeds, since we will not be short of paths.

Even between Glasgow and Edinburgh you would have at most 4 through trains to the South, you could have a turn-up-and-go E-G service with a station stop at Falkirk and not interfere with operations.

CalumCookable said:

A rail connection between HS2 and HS1 will be built as part of phase 1 of HS2. This connection will permit 3 trains per hour. This means it will be possible to run trains between northern cities and European cities. However, there are no firm plans to provide Eurostar-style security facilities at any of the new HS2 stations, which would be another prerequisite to allowing international trains to run.

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I believe the HS1 link is for services to/from Heathrow to access HS1.

Falkirk already has a 15-minute frequency Glasgow and Edinburgh service. Glasgow-Edinburgh in general is very well served with 11 trains per hour across 4 different routes. There is also the possibility of a further 2 Glasgow-Edinburgh trains on the current infrastructure with a journey time of 37 minutes, but that was recently kicked into the long grass. If any HS line between Glasgow and Edinburgh has an intermediate stop, it is not going to be much faster than the committed 2016 time of 40 minutes.

Stats said:

I believe the HS1 link is for services to/from Heathrow to access HS1.

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No, the Heathrow link is for trains from the north only. While we don't yet know the exact route the Heathrow line will take, we do know that Heathrow-HS1 trains will not be possible - though the plan was to design the Heathrow line so that it could be extended towards London in future if necessary.

CalumCookable said:

No, the Heathrow link is for trains from the north only. While we don't yet know the exact route the Heathrow line will take, we do know that Heathrow-HS1 trains will not be possible - though the plan was to design the Heathrow line so that it could be extended towards London in future if necessary.

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No. The junction to the Heathrow spur will be a delta junction with one side providing connections to the North and the other towards London to "enable trains to run from Heathrow on to HS1... when the spur is built". The junctions will be built during construction of Phase 1.

A fully-built HS line to Scotland would work, because it could actually compete with intercity air travel to London. Extending HS2 to Edinburgh via Newcastle, avoiding York would allow Newcastle-London in one hour 40, and Edinburgh-London in 2 hour 20, a time that would wipe out short-haul air travel between the two. Extending to Glasgow would give Glasgow-London in 2hr 40, and Edinburgh-Glasgow in 20 mins, hugely alleviating the M8 for intercity travel.

Fare prices would have to be very competitive in order to completely wipe out cross-Britain air travel, but I imagine that even if a high speed train journey cost slightly more than by air, more people would go for rail to avoid the hassle with security et al.

But how would people get from their homes to Euston, Waverley or wherever? Would travellers use rail services to get to a station? Anywhere to park the car? And if travelling to the continent via HS1/CT, where would security measures take place? It wouldn't be viable to expand every station only serving a few international trains per day. Transfer at Old Oak Common? Stratford? St. Pancras/Euston with a travelator?

The West Coast Main Line will be full in 10 years? The A14 (Birmingham-Felixstowe and Peterborough-Huntingdon-Cambridge-London being major traffic flows) has been full for at least 10 years! HS2 leaves me scratching my head; there is so much I would like to know...

HS2north of leeds is a non starter as the WCML and the ECML are relatively short of trains,the scottish MSP,s constantly call for better(?)links to England and recently extended the M74 into Glasgow a road that is quiet north of Carslile and yet the calls for more links keep coming.With more paths identified on the WCML the need for HS2 is dimminishing rapidly and the ECML can cope when extra lines adjacent to it are wired,(TP)I think that this government will want to spend money on new roads ,airports ,houses etc not a white eliphant rail link.Just listen to the ministers and you will see the way things are going.