History of High Speed 1

WesternLancer said:

This is informative on part of the topic
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7082392.stm

I recall going to a political party conference in about 1990 or '91, and BR (pretty sure it was BR before 'union railways' or whatever as set up, but it may have been at the time they WERE set up to progress all this, and they were promoting the vision at events like party conferences) had a stand there to promote their plans for the new line and terminus. This was IIRC, complete with a model of the site I feel sure, and plenty of graphic images about how it would change, and brochures about the plans.

Memory of the detail starts to fade but I'm pretty sure this involved new low level platforms in the area between KX and St P for Continental trains. What I do recall was that it involved the demolition of the Great Northern Hotel to make space for this, which I thought was a great shame and made that view clear to the people staffing the stand. No doubt I was told there was little alternative etc etc.

So when final plans eventually came through I was pleased to see that the GN hotel would be retained, and I think of this whenever I pass by the building.

In fact, having just looked up the GN Hotel room rates I wonder if I recounted this story to the hotel management they will reward me with a regular free stay?

After all, it was presumably my berating the staff on the stall for their plans to demolish this nice old GNR railway hotel that swung the decision to keep it?

PS - my name isn't Heseltine (or Prescott)....

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Sad Sprinter said:

Basically, by 1989/1990 the plan was to build a line towards Swanley where the line would tunnel beneath South London towards Peckham, where the underground junction at Warwick Gardens would send NSE javelin trains off to Waterloo. The NSE Javelins were called class 342s, although there’s no pictures of them, they could have actually have been class 381s which apparently, according to Wikipedia meant to work LTS services which is unlikely as they look like this:https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/attachments/class-318-png.398204/

This picture is taken from a 2011 article in the Railway Magazine I have. I used for an alternate history story about what would happen if BR was never privatised.

The line would have run underneath the Thameslink line to “Kings Cross Low Level” which would have made a giant underground cavern just to the north of Kings Cross station which would of had a combined Thameslink station. You can read documents dating back from the early 90s on Hansard about the blight it would cause. I read that the road “Keystone Crescent” near Kings Cross would be demolished to make way for the station.

I assume depot access would continue to be at North Pole. Which is likely because the new station was a through station that connected onto the Midland Mainline. There was actually two designs for this station but the Foster and Parters design was the one that was selected. Apparently, the station roof would of had large glass panels that would have reflected daylight onto the station platforms below:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/iqbalaalam/8316011256/

However, by 1989, Newham Council began pushing for the line to pass through Stratford, and Arup began aggressively lobbying the government to pursue its route through Stratford and into Kings Cross Low Level via a tunnel underneath the City and Mile End. This was chosen as the selected route in 1991 to avoid marginal seats in South East London. A deciding factor of this was Michael Heseltine being promoted to Secretary of State for the Environment when John Major got into power who wanted to produce an “East Thames Corridor” of development from the Docklands out to Essex. This meant the Conservatives began to favour the route running through Stratford instead, along with avoiding the marginal seats and Arups lobbying. You could argue, that if Margret Thatcher carried on as PM, the CTRL route would have been vastly different than it is today.

Apparently BR was furious and upset they were not using their own plan. However the plan to use St. Pancras instead of KX Low Level came in 1993 I think. A plan was floated to see Eurostar trains from Stratford to St. Pancras via the Goblin line. But that was rejected. Eventually, the government wanted to build the line into St. Pancras, and asked BR if it had any plans on using STP as a terminus, which they did, but BR was so dedicated to its subterranean station at Kings Cross it tried to pretend it didn’t. It was a BR director in the end that leaked *to* the government there was in fact such a plan.

I also read a story Margret Thatcher herself wanted to build a massive super station at Canning Town to connect with Canary Wharf. But got cold feet about the idea when
the amount of demolition needed to build the station became apparent.

I recommend reading “The Railway Metropolis” by Michael Schebas. Lots of what-ifs on London’s Railway history.

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Jorge Da Silva said:

Very very interesting, thank you. What issue was the Railway Magazine from (what month of 2011?)? Wasn't the plan to use the North London Line to St Pancras?

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Jorge Da Silva said:

I read the railway metropolis by Michael Schabas and it is very interesting. BR planned to use St Pancras ONLY for CTRL services and MML services diverted to a new Kings Cross Midland station.

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Sad Sprinter said:

Ah glad you liked it! It is indeed a fantastic book, and yes that CrossRail plan was really weird.

I think someone has posted it already on the first page but UCL has this PDF document on this history of the CTRL which is an absolute gold mine in terms of maps and old plans.

Also, there’s another book on the history of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link that’s probably the mother of them all, but it’s 40 quid and usually when I’ve seen it wrapped in cellophane. I did manage to get a sneak peak at it once in the London Transport Museum shop and I think that’s where I got the “Margret Thatcher Super Station” at Canning Town story.

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3ECO said:

For those of you that may be interested in the construction and commissioning phases of the great Channel Tunnel Rail Link project you may enjoy the following video that covers the works that where carried out on the Section 2 of the project:-

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• BR initally planned a staggering 8 Eurostars per hour leaving London for Paris; 4 from Waterloo and 4 from King's Cross.
• Aside from Warwick Gardens, BR looked at two further sites for a connection to the main network; Elephant and Castle and New Cross Gate. Both were rejected because Eurostars couldn't access Waterloo and would require the demolition of much of Walworth to build the E&C link or the resiting of the Deptford power station at NXG.

• Bourne Wood (Swanley) to King's Cross running under Hither Green, Old Kent Road and the City
• Bourne Wood to King's Cross, as above, but via Warwick Gardens
• Bourne Wood to Stratford surfacing at Canning Town

• Hither Green to Stratford running under Blackheath, Greenwich and surfacing at Canning Town
• Hither Green to Kings Cross under the Old Kent Road
• Hither Green to Kings Cross via Warwick Gardens running to the north of Ladywell, under Brockley, Nunhead and the South of Peckham.

Sad Sprinter said:

Interesting video

Going back to this thread, I've found out some more information on this subject for those still interested from the 1991 British Rail publication-Comparison of Routes:

• BR initally planned a staggering 8 Eurostars per hour leaving London for Paris; 4 from Waterloo and 4 from King's Cross.
• Aside from Warwick Gardens, BR looked at two further sites for a connection to the main network; Elephant and Castle and New Cross Gate. Both were rejected because Eurostars couldn't access Waterloo and would require the demolition of much of Walworth to build the E&C link or the resiting of the Deptford power station at NXG.

In 1988 BR looked at a number of sites for a second Eurostar terminal. These included; Euston Low Level via a tunnel under the West End, Euston Low Level via a tunnel under London Bridge and Kingsway, Euston High Level, St Pancras (via a very long circuit over the North London Line from Canning Town), London Bridge, Bishopsgate, Temple Mills and amazingly a site at Smithfield. The sites that were taken forward for further analysis were Stratford, White City(?) and King's Cross Low Level. From that, Stratford and Kings Cross were the only serious ones, of which there were an number of routes under two categories-short tunnel and long tunnel routes which I'll list below:

LONG TUNNEL ROUTES

• Bourne Wood (Swanley) to King's Cross running under Hither Green, Old Kent Road and the City
• Bourne Wood to King's Cross, as above, but via Warwick Gardens
• Bourne Wood to Stratford surfacing at Canning Town

SHORT TUNNEL ROUTES

The short tunnel would have extended the HS line from Swanley to Hither Green Depot were the tunnel site would be.

• Hither Green to Stratford running under Blackheath, Greenwich and surfacing at Canning Town
• Hither Green to Kings Cross under the Old Kent Road
• Hither Green to Kings Cross via Warwick Gardens running to the north of Ladywell, under Brockley, Nunhead and the South of Peckham.

Very interesting stuff, that's the main bulk of the document.

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Jorge Da Silva said:

I have heard the current HS1 was built for 6 trains per hour on Eurostar so its interesting that 8 trains per hour was muted at one point. Currently i think its 2 trains per hour.

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Bald Rick said:

There’s 4 Eurostar paths an hour now (well, in normal circumstances), but by no means all of them are used. It wouldn’t take too much timetable tweaking to double that. Getting them past Dollands Moor might be an issue though!

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Jorge Da Silva said:

I also heard HS1 itself was built for a lot more domestic trains than currently but due to lack of platform availability at St Pancras it is limited

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Jorge Da Silva said:

I also heard HS1 itself was built for a lot more domestic trains than currently but due to lack of platform availability at St Pancras it is limited

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Bald Rick said:

Platform capacity at St P isn’t the issue. You could easily run 12 domestic trains an hour off the three platforms. The issue is overall Network capacity, ie tieing in with the Eurostars, getting slots onto the classic Network at Northfleet and Ashford, and then suitable slots to their end destination.

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Jorge Da Silva said:

So if they wanted to run more services they could if they find capacity on the current classic network

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