How many carriages will the HS2 trains have?

[stuving]

And how many doors? There was a story in the last Sunday Times about the HS2 trains having "not enough doors". Ignoring the journalistic excesses, it's saying that the trains were specified with a door at one end of each carriage, as in TGVs and Eurostars. This will now need to be changed to two per carriage by a "variation order", at a cost of tens of millions of pounds. The reason given is that with more stops to be at "classic" stations, dwell times would be too long with the current design.

Some of it isn't too convincing, but there is a quote from HS2 that "The train design is still in detailed development. HS2 Ltd. is looking at the number of doors per carriage and this process is not yet concluded." Anyone know any more about this|

 

[nwales58]

How many *trains* will HS2 need if it's only going as far as Old Oak Common initially?

The Treasury will want a cost reduction, arguing lower demand, but the fluid design and variation orders will push up the price per train. You end up with half the fleet for 75% of the cost. HMT wins, taxpayer and users lose.

If only we could buy ETR1000 or Velaro off the shelf rather than bespoke.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Is anyone talented enough to be able to photoshop a Frecciarossa 1000 into Avanti West Coast livery? That’s pretty close to what we’re currently expecting for HS2, and I’d love to visualise it.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

How many *trains* will HS2 need if it's only going as far as Old Oak Common initially?

If they're going to be slower once past Birmingham because of the lack of high speed tracks, and therefore a longer journey time, logically the required fleet would need to be bigger, not smaller, than the original planned size. Longer journey times = more diagrams required to cover the service = more trains required to be built.

At the very least, that would likely cancel out any fleet size reductions caused by not having Old Oak Common to Euston.

 

[Efini92]

Too long for one, existing infrastructure can't accommodate 18, 20, 22-car trains.

They also don’t work in multi. Apparently the coupler pins are too corroded to send the electrical signals.
If a pendo assists another pendo they only use the mechanical and pneumatic connections.

 

[nwales58]

[snip] logically the required fleet would need to be bigger, not smaller

Logic? We're talking about public capital spending.

Even in cost-benefit analysis each train added to the order has less benefit than the one before, and pricing off excess demand improves the financial analysis, probably, in this part of the curve.

As the Treasury now has the chance to demand a reappraisal of the fleet purchase I fear the worst.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

You do know the trains will be going beyond Birmingham, even if the new infrastructure doesn't?

I imagine it will be possible to run double sets to Birmingham Interchange, splitting there for two northern destinations.
But whether that makes commercial or operational sense is another matter.
Extending platforms at Crewe and maybe Preston to 400m would make more sense, but who knows.
I can't see any sets being dedicated to Curzon St, they will all be working WCML routes interchangeably.
Reconfiguring the sets to Pendolino length seems more likely.

 

[The Ham]

I imagine it will be possible to run double sets to Birmingham Interchange, splitting there for two northern destinations.
But whether that makes commercial or operational sense is another matter.
Extending platforms at Crewe and maybe Preston to 400m would make more sense, but who knows.
I can't see any sets being dedicated to Curzon St, they will all be working WCML routes interchangeably.
Reconfiguring the sets to Pendolino length seems more likely.

Are there any locations which couldn't cope with a slightly longer than 11 coach 390?

I think that Liverpool would struggle with 12 coaches, or is my memory faulty on that?

 

[Snow1964]

The original plan was 54 sets of about 200m for batch 1, then about 30 sets of batch 2 when reached Manchester

Batch 2 sets would have been dedicated to the line and could have been double deck because they would be built to bigger loading gauge. Allowing batch 1 sets to operate services beyond the high speed line

The problem since cancellation is they will operate majority of their time on existing lines which are limited to nearer 280m trains (exact max varies bit by station). Continuing a 200m design loses capacity, and double sets can't operate north of Birmingham so rethink is now required.

Many think the section to Crewe will be added back after election, there is absolutely no point in stopping line just short of a 2 track bottleneck. But have to wait and see.

 

[The Planner]

Many think the section to Crewe will be added back after election, there is absolutely no point in stopping line just short of a 2 track bottleneck. But have to wait and see.

Like it made huge sense to do the same for phase 1?