HS2 to Scotland

[Jorge Da Silva]

Their have been proposals to have a HS2 service to Scotland in 3 hours which would involve upgrading the WCML and ECML. But what upgrades would this involve? Any new sections of track?

 

[HSTEd]

You would have to cut approximately 30-40 minutes off the post HS2b timing to make that feasible.

There are several routse that could be considered, a new HSL North from the vicinity of Wigan would probably be the most heavily trafficed line, but would have a relatively small time saving.

Next up would be new track in scotland, but the slowest parts of the route are north of Carstairs, which means that each km of track built would only improve the journey times to one of the two Scottish cities, so economically it is not particularly attractiev because the total journey time reductions (in terms of passenger-minutes) per km built are lower.

There are also occasionally proposals for short sections of track in the vicinity of Morpeth and Durham on the ECML, at which point you could route via the Leeds branch and York.

Whichever is best I am not sure, but I think line north from Wigan is the most likely to be funded, followed by ECML improvements.

 

[aylesbury]

I seem to remember the Scottish Government did not want to put any money into HS2 on grounds of cost and value for money.

 

[HSTEd]

I seem to remember the Scottish Government did not want to put any money into HS2 on grounds of cost and value for money.

The cynic in me says the SNP doesn't want to it to happen because it would reduce the isolation of Scotland from the English economy and society more generally, which obviously conflicts with their long term goals.

 

[snowball]

There's an existing thread here (the link is to its current page):

https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/high-speed-rail-scotland.120231/page-6