HS2 - the case for a review

[class26]

Given that HS1 phase 1 is over 10 years away we may have to do both (some WCML upgrades and HS2) to get us through.

Don`t you mean HS2 phase 1 ?

 

[Ships]

Most of the WCRM spend was on renewals. If the WCRM had been only renewals (with no enhancements), the disruption probably wouldn't have been that much different.

If the West Coast Main Line were not upgraded in the future, it would be still be disrupted by the need for renewals, to maintain railworthiness.

In much the same way, if HS2 were built, it would inevitably be disrupted by the need for renewals, to maintain its railworthiness.

Hi, do you have a source to support the claim most of the WCRM money was spent on renewals? WCRM did a lot of enhancement work and remodelling. S&C renewals weren't done like for like, lots of new RT60 layouts which allowed a higher line speed replacing older timber layouts etc this still constitutes an enhancement. The whole route had to be enhanced to support increased increased line speeds and vastly increased tonnage.

You can't pick up WCRM as an example of disruption caused by routine renewals. Prior to the upgrade WCML was knackered, there was a lack of investment in the latter year of BR, then the asset sweating policy and deferred renewals under rail track. You had a railway which was seriously knackered. This meant wholesale renewal was required in a fairly short space of time (ie couldn't be achieved with a normal renewals program). Throw in the considerable enhancement scheme and you have the hell to passengers that was WCRM throughout the noughties.

However this is not business as usual! There is a track asset policy which requires us to maintain the average remaining life of the track and as such the program of renewals supports this. These are generally done under rules of the route, slightly disruptive Saturday night/Sunday morning access and at bank holidays. Nothing like the huge blockades you saw during WCRM. The high output machinery was bought it such that it could work mid week in rules of the route and allow us to keep up with renewal volumes.

Now this is on a route built in the Victorian times, that has suffered greatly over its lifetime. So you have for example drainage that has fallen into disrepair and caused formation failure leading to more time consuming and expensive renewals, you have structures which modern renewal techniques (ie high output) aren't suitable for, areas where your maintainence is limited because of sighting due to curvature of the track, you have a track bed which wasn't designed with the current tonnage and linespeed in mind etc etc. So your always trying to fight your railway which makes maintainence and renewal more expensive. Despite this as I said we get away without WCRM disruption.

Now take HS2 (this is where your point about renewal falls down even further). You have a railway which is being designed from the ground up without the constraints of running on a Victorian alignment through Victorian structures. You can design it fit for purpose such that it supports for example high output throughout, it has suitable drainage throughout, the maintainer has complete asset records from the start and can have a fully optimised maintainence and renewals plan which isn't disruptive, maintains asset condition and doesn't cost as much as on the classics network. You can work to a plan which represents the best whole life cost because your not trying to firefight legacy issues which form a large part of daily life for the maintainer on the national network.

Sorry for the wall of text.

 

[snowball]

True, but for both maintenance and renewals HS2 will be designed with much better safer access in mind and will be equipped with bidirectional signalling and better clearances between tracks throughout so one line can be closed at quiet times to enable work to take place whilst traffic is accommodated on the other. As far as civil engineering is concerned, being an all new construction, modern techniques in earthwork soil mechanics and structure design etc should ensure that the route is much less trouble to maintain than the underlying Victorian infrastructure of the existing main line for many many years to come.

HS2 will also have far fewer points and crossings to maintain.

 

[Harbornite]

If the West Coast Main Line were not upgraded in the future, it would be still be disrupted by the need for renewals, to maintain railworthiness.

In much the same way, if HS2 were built, it would inevitably be disrupted by the need for renewals, to maintain its railworthiness.

That's not a good justification for scrapping HS2, is it? HS2 will be easier to maintain for the reasons mentioned in the other posts here.

 

[Altfish]

If you fill the a 80 seat carriage with 30 people paying £160 one way (peak time cost London->Manchester), that's a total revenue of £4800, and everyone travelling in comfort.

If instead you sell 100 tickets at £40 one way (offpeak cost London->Manchester), you end up with total revenue of £4000 and 20 people standing in an overcrowded carriage.

It's been going on for years.

There alternative options to those you give.
How about sell 70 tickets at £80, you are now making £5600

 

[Harbornite]

There is one option: huge upgrade to Chiltern Mainline to take all Birmingham to London express traffic. Use one path to run give a semi fast service to stations that would lose out and give the remaining two paths for extra services to the north / Scotland.

I am a strong supporter of HS2 but I admit the capacity could be scraped together for another decade or so of growth but with the consquence of less reliable and slower services.

What about the passengers for Birmingham International and Coventry?

 

[tbtc]

Travel to and from Euston isn't even 5% of national rail journeys. So HS2's potential to accommodate future demand growth, is more than a little exaggerated

You're perhaps forgetting that HS2 is going to be the main route from Edinburgh/ Newcastle/ Leeds etc into London too (as well as stations at Meadowhall and Toton) - i.e. it's not just Euston that it's going to relieve.

Plenty other schemes for plenty other places - HS2 won't make a difference to the majority of rail journeys in the UK but it's not the only infrastructure improvement we'll have in the UK over the next generation. Similarly Crossrail won't make a difference to the majority of "underground" journeys in London, but it's still worth doing.

In much the same way, if HS2 were built, it would inevitably be disrupted by the need for renewals, to maintain its railworthiness.

Well, everything needs renewed at some stage - that's an unusual stick to beat HS2 with.

The difference being that it will be designed to deal with disruption better than the old Victorian lines.

There is one option: huge upgrade to Chiltern Mainline to take all Birmingham to London express traffic. Use one path to run give a semi fast service to stations that would lose out and give the remaining two paths for extra services to the north / Scotland. Really clutching at straws would be to run 2 out of 3 Manchester services via Hope Valley and non stop from Sheffield to London. I imagine allot of work would be required to gain the extra capacity and get the speed to 2 hours 30 mins. I imagine the current service 2 hours 10 mins would be nearly impossible. East Coast Main Line has some decent options left, 4 tracking Welwyn for instance but its not the main problem. Perhaps standardising all WCML services at 110 mph with the same stopping pattern south of Crewe would create more paths but cause a huge time penalty.

I am a strong supporter of HS2 but I admit the capacity could be scraped together for another decade or so of growth but with the consquence of less reliable and slower services.

Interesting ideas - we may have to consider things like slowing the WCML "fasts" down to 110mph to deal with scarcity of paths if we can't build a new line.

True, but for both maintenance and renewals HS2 will be designed with much better safer access in mind and will be equipped with bidirectional signalling and better clearances between tracks throughout so one line can be closed at quiet times to enable work to take place whilst traffic is accommodated on the other. As far as civil engineering is concerned, being an all new construction, modern techniques in earthwork soil mechanics and structure design etc should ensure that the route is much less trouble to maintain than the underlying Victorian infrastructure of the existing main line for many many years to come.

Now this is on a route built in the Victorian times, that has suffered greatly over its lifetime. So you have for example drainage that has fallen into disrepair and caused formation failure leading to more time consuming and expensive renewals, you have structures which modern renewal techniques (ie high output) aren't suitable for, areas where your maintainence is limited because of sighting due to curvature of the track, you have a track bed which wasn't designed with the current tonnage and linespeed in mind etc etc. So your always trying to fight your railway which makes maintainence and renewal more expensive. Despite this as I said we get away without WCRM disruption.

Now take HS2 (this is where your point about renewal falls down even further). You have a railway which is being designed from the ground up without the constraints of running on a Victorian alignment through Victorian structures. You can design it fit for purpose such that it supports for example high output throughout, it has suitable drainage throughout, the maintainer has complete asset records from the start and can have a fully optimised maintainence and renewals plan which isn't disruptive, maintains asset condition and doesn't cost as much as on the classics network. You can work to a plan which represents the best whole life cost because your not trying to firefight legacy issues which form a large part of daily life for the maintainer on the national network.

Sorry for the wall of text.

Good points.

A lot of enthusiasts seem fixated with rebuilding Victorian lines, but HS2 will be so much better.

 

[Altfish]

More targeted investment where it really matters would provide far better returns than giving London yet another railway.

Can you give an example of 'where it really matters' - one that isn't already in the pipeline.

Yes, growth has been about 2.5%. But this won't last. As we begin to see continued reductions on so called busy lines, the already weak case for HS2 crumbles .

Where are these 'so called busy lines' that are having declining passenger numbers?

This is why a review is needed. Re-examining the case anew could open up far more innovative solutions in the regions than the "London only" thinking we're currently lumbered with.

Can you again give me some examples of these 'far more innovative solutions'?


I normally only travel from Manchester into Euston, but a couple of weeks ago I went to Bletchley Park and was on the station for about 30-minutes. This was a Saturday, so no commuters (or very few) - I was surprised by the numbers and frequency of trains, Pendolinos, Voyages, 350's, etc, etc. plus a couple of freight and two ECSs.
The line looked full to bursting to me.

 

[The Ham]

Don`t you mean HS2 phase 1 ?

Yes, silly phone keyboard!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I almost fell off much chair. That's a load of rubbish. Because of WCRM budget constraints in the south many of the track renewal were just components and skim dig it might be mainly a G44 CEN60 railway but the track bed was generally not improved. This means now that WCML south is have major issues with formation failure. A very large part of their conventional renewals are ROW 12 (formation only).

My observations over a long period suggests the TV4 section of the WCML is close to continental standards, and maybe also the Crewe-Stafford rebuilt section.
The major site upgrades were pretty comprehensive too (Rugby, Nuneaton etc).
But much of the route got little attention - eg Stafford-Colwich-Armitage, Amington-Nuneaton etc.
Nothing much was done to the West Midlands loop, and the recent resignalling seems to be like-for-like, no new bi-di or tilt for instance.
Signalling on the main line is pretty much sorted out now, south of Crewe, but we still have the "Stockport 5".
Meanwhile the northern section Crewe-Glasgow is little changed since 1974 and is a seriously constrained 2-track railway.

Chris Gibb's report on the reliability of WCML South was a reminder of how difficult operations are south of Rugby, and I'm not sure much has improved since.
Is a 90%-reliable railway acceptable, because that seems to be the maximum the infrastructure will bear.
It is still a railway that breaks all too easily and takes too long to recover. It also seems to need every bank holiday weekend off for maintenance.
I can see why NR/DfT are not keen to embark on another round of expensive and disruptive upgrades.

Travelling in Switzerland and Austria last week I was impressed by how flexible their layouts were, and how line speeds are matched to requirements.
Fast running into platforms for instance. How about that at Crewe, Preston, Carlisle etc?
We waste limited capacity on restrictive approach control.
Not to mention day-time maintenance using bi-di signalling.

 

[HSTEd]

Flexible layouts are expensive, but remember just how simple the track layouts for HS2 can be.
The points count for the entire route probably comes out less than the current count in the approach to Euston.

 

[dviner]

Travelling in Switzerland and Austria last week I was impressed by how flexible their layouts were, and how line speeds are matched to requirements.
Fast running into platforms for instance. How about that at Crewe, Preston, Carlisle etc?
We waste limited capacity on restrictive approach control.
Not to mention day-time maintenance using bi-di signalling.

It's one thing to say "look at what they've got there". However, what isn't being considered in that statement is "how did they get it to be like that?"

 

[Voglitz]

It's one thing to say "look at what they've got there". However, what isn't being considered in that statement is "how did they get it to be like that?"

However 'they got it to be like that', it's not from building high speed lines. In the case of Austria, it's likely that a lot of the mileage would have benefited from post-WW2 damage reconstruction.

Hi, do you have a source to support the claim most of the WCRM money was spent on renewals?

Paragraph 2.35

WCRM did a lot of enhancement work and remodelling. S&C renewals weren't done like for like, lots of new RT60 layouts which allowed a higher line speed replacing older timber layouts etc this still constitutes an enhancement. The whole route had to be enhanced to support increased increased line speeds and vastly increased tonnage.

In many instances, the disruption involved in better-than-before and like-for-like, would have been much the same. So in those cases, the upgrade disruption would have been, in effect, zero.

You can't pick up WCRM as an example of disruption caused by routine renewals.

You can pick up WCRM as an example of disruption caused by backlogged renewals.

Now take HS2 (this is where your point about renewal falls down even further). You have a railway which is being designed from the ground up without the constraints of running on a Victorian alignment through Victorian structures. You can design it fit for purpose such that it supports for example high output throughout, it has suitable drainage throughout, the maintainer has complete asset records from the start and can have a fully optimised maintainence and renewals plan which isn't disruptive, maintains asset condition and doesn't cost as much as on the classics network. You can work to a plan which represents the best whole life cost because your not trying to firefight legacy issues which form a large part of daily life for the maintainer on the national network.

High output plant, like Robel Mobile Maintenance Systems etc, would offer much the same benefits when used on 100-year old routes, as when used on HS2.

It's reasonable to assume that HS1 is more stable down below the ballast than the legacy lines. How that plays out in terms of total maintenance costs and practices, is completely unknown.

All HS2 regular maintenance would have to be done at night, and even with high power lamps, there is likely to be some productivity penalty. All the tunnels must also impact the maintainability bill.

 

[The Planner]

Depends if they slab it, maintenance in the main would be reduced somewhat.

 

[dviner]

However 'they got it to be like that', it's not from building high speed lines. In the case of Austria, it's likely that a lot of the mileage would have benefited from post-WW2 damage reconstruction.

No, the point is that it was either designed in from the start, or significant disruption/spend occurred to make it happen. I'm expecting that it was the former, and wasn't done with weekend and bank-holiday possessions.

 

[Ships]

However 'they got it to be like that', it's not from building high speed lines. In the case of Austria, it's likely that a lot of the mileage would have benefited from post-WW2 damage reconstruction.



Paragraph 2.35



In many instances, the disruption involved in better-than-before and like-for-like, would have been much the same. So in those cases, the upgrade disruption would have been, in effect, zero.
I didn't claim otherwise, fairly irrelevant to my point

You can pick up WCRM as an example of disruption caused by backlogged renewals.

Again irrelevant to my point which was about the disruption in future caused by renewals, or lack of as to comply with policy average asset age needs to be maintained. You can maintain something designed for a purpose (HS2) more cheaply than an asset that's suffered underinvestment, has areas of ageing components not designed for the line speeds and tonage that are using it with often inadequate drainage that causes many maintainence issues. (Despite this its maintained without major disruption).

High output plant, like Robel Mobile Maintenance Systems etc, would offer much the same benefits when used on 100-year old routes, as when used on HS2.

The Robel mobile maintainence system isn't high output plant. I'm talking TRS and BCS. These are much more efficient working on a railway designed to allow their use fully, not having to worry about structures with insufficient clearance or that don't have the structural integrity to allow them to work over. If you have a probably constructed formation with sufficient drainage to could do all your renewals (components and ballas) with high output machines, vastly reducing your renewal costs. you cannot do that on the national network now.


It's reasonable to assume that HS1 is more stable down below the ballast than the legacy lines. How that plays out in terms of total maintenance costs and practices, is completely unknown.

Rubbish, a properly designed and drained track bed will be much cheaper to maintain, you get full life out of your components and ballast and not have to spend large sums on reactive maintainence

All HS2 regular maintenance would have to be done at night, and even with high power lamps, there is likely to be some productivity penalty. All the tunnels must also impact the maintainability bill.

Night time doesn't really impact productivity, also a large proportion of maintainence on the national network is done at night. I would imagine the tunnels will be slab tracked as such require little maintainence

.....

 

[Voglitz]

No, the point is that it was either designed in from the start, or significant disruption/spend occurred to make it happen. I'm expecting that it was the former, and wasn't done with weekend and bank-holiday possessions.

Austria and Switzerland don't have bank holidays as such. The idea that 100+ year old infrastructure in those countries was 'designed from the start' for bi-directional working, 15kV ac electrification, etc, is a bit of a stretch.

I didn't claim otherwise, fairly irrelevant to my point...Night time doesn't really impact productivity, also a large proportion of maintainence on the national network is done at night. I would imagine the tunnels will be slab tracked as such require little maintainence

That is your opinion. There are no figures setting out the annual cost of maintaining 1 mile of HS1, and 1 mile of West Coast track, or how long it takes to change damaged ohle or whatever.

 

[dviner]

Austria and Switzerland don't have bank holidays as such. The idea that 100+ year old infrastructure in those countries was 'designed from the start' for bi-directional working, 15kV ac electrification, etc, is a bit of a stretch.

15kV from 100 years ago. How very straw-man.

Bi-directional design wouldn't be too big a stretch, though.

If it wasn't though, how long did it take to implement it? I bet it wasn't overnight.

 

[HSTEd]

More than three quarters of Swiss railways was electrified by 1939, let alone any time recently.

We can lay out a new route with generous provisions for access and with large spacings between tracks to enable easy single track running, and the very high speed allows single track running to be made practical without putting crossovers every couple of miles.

At 320km/h you can run several flights of trains per hour in each direction even if your single track section is many miles long. [Minimum headway would be ~120 seconds since we can accept degraded performance in a maintenance scenario]

The small number of junctions and crossovers would also make it possible to have lighting and even tool power supplies pre installed at the worksite, allowing maintenance to commence immediately upon the line being blocked.

Between OOC's pointwork and Birmingham International's approach how many crossovers would you even have? 2 or 3 at most? Each one consists of precisely four swingnose crossings, all of which I imagine would be practically identical.

 

[Ships]

Austria and Switzerland don't have bank holidays as such. The idea that 100+ year old infrastructure in those countries was 'designed from the start' for bi-directional working, 15kV ac electrification, etc, is a bit of a stretch.



That is your opinion. There are no figures setting out the annual cost of maintaining 1 mile of HS1, and 1 mile of West Coast track, or how long it takes to change damaged ohle or whatever.

Thanks for splicing the end of my quotes together, missing most of my answer. Having worked in track maintainence and renewals I can say that planning norms don't change depending on weather it's night or day. You might not have the figures but they exist. Maintaining a brand new (well decade or so old ) railway built to high speed standards will be cheaper than something where your often fire fighting and having to keep assets going longer than is optimal. Because youre building new you can maintain and renew in a way which gives you the best whole life cost. Something which isn't always possible on the existing infrastructure

 

[MarkyT]

The small number of junctions and crossovers would also make it possible to have lighting and even tool power supplies pre installed at the worksite, allowing maintenance to commence immediately upon the line being blocked.

Also, worksite protection, warning and power isolation facilities can be built into the signalling and control ecosystem throughout the new route, so taking possessions and applying protection can be a very quick and simple process rather than the planning and form filling nightmare it is on the classic network, again allowing more productive work to take place within the time available.

 

[Haydn1971]

Also, worksite protection, warning and power isolation facilities can be built into the signalling and control ecosystem throughout the new route, so taking possessions and applying protection can be a very quick and simple process rather than the planning and form filling nightmare it is on the classic network, again allowing more productive work to take place within the time available.

We are doing this more and more on the motorways now with fixed taper points at gantries - means longer sections of lane closure at night, but means the site staff are able to spend more time doing the required work rather than waiting around for traffic management to be deployed

 

[HSTEd]

I wonder if anyone has proposed building the two lines further apart with a barrier in between so that they can operate entirely independently, apart from at crossovers.
Might impede plant access though.

 

[najaB]

I wonder if anyone has proposed building the two lines further apart with a barrier in between so that they can operate entirely independently, apart from at crossovers.
Might impede plant access though.

Nice idea, increases land grab though.

 

[Agent_c]

HS2 is all bad news for the following:

It will cause huge economic woes for some cities (HS2 tried to hide the fact).
IMidland and Northern cities which will either get a slower service, less frequent service or worse trains when traffic is diverted via HS2.

The increased capacity means more options for services on the existing line

CO2 emissions are high as it's top speed needs so much energy.
Connectivity with lenghy walks/tram trips are needed at many stations isn't ideal.

This is a bit of a lie. High speeds don't need more energy - cruise requies a comparatively small amount of energy. What needs more energy is more accelleration and deceleration. By taking out all those areas where it needs to slow down and speed back up again - Towns, Curves, Steep hills, you reduce CO2.

Not to mention its speed makes it attractive to high CO2 producers on the Road and in the air. Rail is a very low polluting form of trans;port.

The cost is not worth it, the money would be better spread into reopening lines and making tramways.

The job of transport is not taking people from where they're not to where you think they should go, its to take them from where they are to where they want to go.

Lets say we did build those extra lines, you've not got a whole bunch of people at the junction with the Trunk. What now? Too bad someone didn't sort out the problem with the trunk line being at capacity, otherwise we'd have been able to take them somewhere.

Ancient woodland which stands to be destroyed is an irreplaceable loss

A small slither, that eventually would be replaced with a 7 lane motorway if we don't build it....
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I'm sure improvements can be made to platform lengths, signals, timetables and infrastructure to avoid building a new line into Euston .

The trains are already very long, so we're looking at clearing huge parts of Real estate to build these new platforms. Given the central location of these stations, that isn't going to be cheap, nor easy, even if there's not a bunch of heratage orders preventing it.

 

[najaB]

I'm sure improvements can be made to platform lengths, signals, timetables and infrastructure to avoid building a new line into Euston .

I love how people say 'something' can be done without specifying what exactly 'something' is, and at the same time ignore the opinions of professionals who would already have considered and dismissed the 'something' option.

 

[Voglitz]

I love how people say 'something' can be done without specifying what exactly 'something' is, and at the same time ignore the opinions of professionals who would already have considered and dismissed the 'something' option.

It isn't at all clear why it would be possible to vastly increase capacity of existing lines south of the Thames by upgrading, but not possible on 80-odd miles of track out of Euston. Timetable re-casts, higher capacity rolling stock, re-signalling, grade separation, longer platforms, and use of alternative existing routes, are all perfectly viable options, which have been used elsewhere to increase capacity.

 

[Agent_c]

It isn't at all clear why it would be possible to vastly increase capacity of existing lines south of the Thames by upgrading, but not possible on 80-odd miles of track out of Euston. Timetable re-casts, higher capacity rolling stock, re-signalling, grade separation, longer platforms, and use of alternative existing routes, are all perfectly viable options, which have been used elsewhere to increase capacity.

Do you want to pay for the extra real estate needed to expand Euston, etc to fit these longer platforms?

2x 25.1m + 23.9m *9 = 265m long for a Pendolino. How many cars are you planning for the SuperLongLino?

 

[Voglitz]

Thanks for splicing the end of my quotes together, missing most of my answer. Having worked in track maintainence and renewals I can say that planning norms don't change depending on weather it's night or day. You might not have the figures but they exist. Maintaining a brand new (well decade or so old ) railway built to high speed standards will be cheaper than something where your often fire fighting and having to keep assets going long through open than is optimal. Because your building new you can maintain and renew in a way which gives you the best whole life cost. Something which isn't always possible on the existing infrastructure

Actually, the quote button generated no quoted text, because of the way your post was framed.

I don't think there's much evidence that the JLE is markedly less expensive to maintain than the much older ex-Bakerloo section, or that the M40 costs less to fix than the M1, or that HS1 is less expensive to maintain, overall, than legacy infrastructure.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Do you want to pay for the extra real estate needed to expand Euston, etc to fit these longer platforms?

2x 25.1m + 23.9m *9 = 265m long for a Pendolino. How many cars are you planning for the SuperLongLino?

Euston expansion is only required for the HS2 scheme. Any train with 25-metre carriages, such as the IEP, would seat around 700 passengers with the existing platform lengths.

 

[HSTEd]

Southern region has significantly more track to use to generate these services, with rather fewer constraints on stopping patterns and the like.
Waterloo to Clapham Junction is what, eight tracks? Plus however many more out of Victoria.

SR was limited by power supplies more than anything else.
Euston is very heavily operated already and has far fewer tracks to work with.

Euston expansion is only required for the HS2 scheme. Any train with 25-metre carriages, such as the IEP, would seat around 700 passengers with the existing platform lengths.

As opposed to around six hundred with these 'inefficient' Pendolinos.
That is not that big an uplift really.
And making a 25m tilting carriage fit in the loading gauge is really going to be fun.
You would likely have to revert to 110mph operations, at which point your journey time projections go out the window.