HS2 future northern extensions

[NotATrainspott]

The HS2 route as planned today is going to be the route that will be built, give or take a few tens of metres at the very most. The only important change that can be made is for passive or active provision of junctions for future extensions; the Phase 1 line was modified to include building the Leeds junction and a few metres of continued HS2 past the Lichfield junction. The location of a Scotland junction is fixed at the Bamfurlong connection as a continuing route past Preston was designed but abandoned due to its extra £2bn cost and no real benefit in journey time. As this location is also the junction for the Manchester spur's rolling stock depot, I think it is likely that passive provision would still be designed in as the cost of extending it without it would be enormous due to the complexity of the junction/depot there. The York connection flows straight into the ECML tracks between Church Fenton and Ulleskelf, before where the Selby diversion of the ECML joins the older track to York. At the moment there is no real provision for a continued HSR track at all.

Extending HS2 further north isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when. What form would northern extensions take, especially in the form of intermediate stations?

My idea for the Newcastle extension is as follows:

• The Church Fenton connection must be modified to provide a mainline through route with the existing connection kept as a 230km/h turnout.
• From the junction the new route would pass to the west of Ulleskelf but then broadly parallel to the existing line until approximately where the Selby diversion connects back in to the line to York.
• Here, the route would swing northwards and follow the A1237 western York ring road until Poppleton, where it would swing north-north-west to follow the ECML north of York.
• Once the routes are parallel once again, there could be an option of a York Interchange station. There would be two platforms and two running lines on HS2 and two or four platforms on the ECML. This station would not add significantly to the cost as the routes have to be parallel anyway and the HS2 station could be just a simple station like TGV Haute-Picardie. The connection with the existing lines is necessary to ensure that most passengers can arrive by rail or alternatively by York's bus system around the ring-road. Parking would not be supplied on-site as road access would not be of very high standard, with car users expected to park at other ring road Park and Rides.
• From then on it's simply a matter of paralleling the straightest sections of track in the entire country. The land is effectively empty and is already used to 200km/h trains passing by without a mention of noise mitigation work so it shouldn't be that complicated to build the route.
• A few kilometres north of Northallerton the route would diverge from the ECML and continue northwards so that it misses Darlington.
• The Darlington bypass route would follow the A66 but here would be the Tees Valley Interchange station, with platforms built on the Tees Valley Line for passengers coming from Darlington and Middlesbrough. Again the HS2 route would have two platforms and two through lines, so cost would not be particularly high. Parking could be provided here but the focus would again be on public transport. The Tees Valley Line would have been electrified for many years, decades even, by the time HS2 is extended up here and the linespeeds and capacity can be increased to provide an efficient connecting service with the HS2 services. This station idea is by no means far-fetched as a Tees Valley station was identified by HS2 as a station on their 'inverted A' configuration of future high-speed lines before being trimmed back down to the Y network as we know it today.
• Continuing northwards the route would then broadly parallel the A1 and ECML, with the valley (?) at Ferryhill being avoided. Durham would be avoided as well as the route continues north following the A1. 400km/h alignments will likely not be required here as all services will be slowing down on approach to the terminus at Newcastle, so it would be easier to keep close to the existing alignment.
• The approach to the Newcastle/Tyneside station would now depend on whether bored tunnelling would be preferable to a surface route along existing railway corridors. If a bored tunnel were possible then the disused land north of the Gateshead stadium Metro stop could fit an HS2-standard station. Being along the Metro and an existing heavy rail line would allow good connection to the City Centre without having to demolish much of central Newcastle, and would assist with the regeneration of Gateshead as well.
• An alternative surface route could follow the existing rail alignment past the Team Valley Trading Estate and then along the disused alignment to the Docks along the river Team. Then it's just a high-level bridge over the Tyne to the empty land next to the Metro Radio Arena, where the station could be close enough for a travelator link to the existing station.

 

[po8crg]

I would have thought that a through-route in Newcastle to connect to Scotland that way would have considerable advantages over the western route. First, you're starting that much further north, and second the terrain is a lot better than trying to cut through the Lake District.

There's going to be an expensive routing through Edinburgh to get to Glasgow, but you'd then have a line going Glasgow-Edinburgh-Newcastle-York-Leeds, providing secondary connections that a west-coast route doesn't offer (ie Newcastle/Scotland and also the ability to serve both Central Belt cities in a single service, rather than splitting or going back and forth as WCML services have to).

The weakness of connecting that way is that you don't connect anywhere in the NW to Scotland. But a trans-Pennine HS route would still be cheaper than building York-Newcastle and Wigan-Glasgow, wouldn't it?

I think there is just enough space between the tunnel exit and the station in Manchester to squeeze a triangle in, and then there are routes out NE to head for the Yorkshire branch of HS2. That would provide a much better Manchester-Leeds (and Manchester-Sheffield and Manchester-York and Manchester-Newcastle) link than even building HS replacements for both WCML and ECML, and would make for perfectly reasonable routes going London-Birmingham-Manchester-York-Newcastle-Scotland.

Run a line from Liverpool to link to HS2 near Manchester, and you've hooked in all the really big cities.

So if you're asking me where to provide for junctions for future extensions, then:

Ardwick, between the tunnel exit and Manchester station, heading east.
Somewhere near Leeds, preferably where the main HS2 and the Leeds spur connect (Oulton?) or so
Culcheth (ie just north of where HS2 crosses the M62), to provision for an East-West link to Liverpool

Plus, as you say, something near Church Fenton for the link to Newcastle.

 

[WatcherZero]

Seems the Government and Transport Scotland think Glasgow is the bigger market and they would rather have journey times slightly favouring or equal than considerably slower for Glasgow than Edinburgh. Salmond personally has come out for the Newcastle side, but it was part of a strategy of trying to create a lobbying alliance with Tyneside to get Westminster to pay for a link to Scotland.

 

[NotATrainspott]

The via-Newcastle route has the major disadvantage that it slows down every journey to Glasgow by enough to effectively wipe out quite a bit of the journey time savings on the high-speed line. Unless you put Edinburgh on a loop, which would be very expensive, all Glasgow trains would have to spend minutes waiting in Edinburgh. Edinburgh also has the major disadvantage that it is not a particularly porus city for new transport links, so would require bored tunnelling at large expense; a through route would therefore cost twice as much as a spur. The per-kilometre cost of HSR along the effectively empty land north of Preston or York is low enough that you could build a significant proportion of it for the cost of one bored tunnel into Edinburgh, Glasgow or Newcastle.

Also, the Eastern leg of HS2 isn't as suitable as the Western leg for very high speed running due to the route having more stations and some tighter curves to follow the motorway. The Western route has no speed reductions in any location and only has a single sort-of-planned intermediate station (Preston Interchange) beyond the inevitable Birmingham Interchange and Old Oak Common.

 

[po8crg]

The via-Newcastle route has the major disadvantage that it slows down every journey to Glasgow by enough to effectively wipe out quite a bit of the journey time savings on the high-speed line. Unless you put Edinburgh on a loop, which would be very expensive, all Glasgow trains would have to spend minutes waiting in Edinburgh. Edinburgh also has the major disadvantage that it is not a particularly porus city for new transport links, so would require bored tunnelling at large expense; a through route would therefore cost twice as much as a spur. The per-kilometre cost of HSR along the effectively empty land north of Preston or York is low enough that you could build a significant proportion of it for the cost of one bored tunnel into Edinburgh, Glasgow or Newcastle.

Also, the Eastern leg of HS2 isn't as suitable as the Western leg for very high speed running due to the route having more stations and some tighter curves to follow the motorway. The Western route has no speed reductions in any location and only has a single sort-of-planned intermediate station (Preston Interchange) beyond the inevitable Birmingham Interchange and Old Oak Common.

Fair enough - though, won't those trains pass through Manchester Airport?

Do you agree with me that extending both routes to Scotland is never going to happen?

If so, is York-Newcastle the best option? Might Carlisle-Newcastle be a better choice, obviously in conjunction with a Western extension to Scotland?

It's shorter, and should be cheaper; it would penalise journey times from London and Birmingham to Newcastle very little and it would provide a major improvement to connections from Newcastle to Manchester and Glasgow as well as London. You don't gain time for Newcastle-Leeds-Sheffield-EMH, of course, but there will be the CC services along ECML from York.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Fair enough - though, won't those trains pass through Manchester Airport?

Do you agree with me that extending both routes to Scotland is never going to happen?

If so, is York-Newcastle the best option? Might Carlisle-Newcastle be a better choice, obviously in conjunction with a Western extension to Scotland?

It's shorter, and should be cheaper; it would penalise journey times from London and Birmingham to Newcastle very little and it would provide a major improvement to connections from Newcastle to Manchester and Glasgow as well as London. You don't gain time for Newcastle-Leeds-Sheffield-EMH, of course, but there will be the CC services along ECML from York.

Manchester Airport is on the Manchester spur only. The engineering report for the Western leg did look at Manchester or its airport being a through station to Scotland but it didn't recommend it.

I agree that there will never be a Carlisle-Central Belt line as well as a Newcastle-Central Belt line. Beeching suggested closing the ECML north of Newcastle for the same reasons that HSR will never be built there - there will be an overabundance of extra capacity on the remaining route and neither route would be easier to construct than the other.

York-Newcastle would be cheap to build (in HS2 terms) and the demand is there. A Carlisle-Newcastle line doesn't need to be out of the question though as Edinburgh-Carlisle-Newcastle isn't much further than Edinburgh-Berwick-Newcastle. It also adds a useful diversionary route and would enable a Stranraer-Ireland tunnel to connect to Newcastle and the East Coast once that's built at some point this century. The Scottish Government want additional regional stopping services along the ECML between Edinburgh and Newcastle and the IEPs will still be running along this stretch so Edinburgh-Newcastle passengers aren't going to be disadvantaged much, especially if some works are done to fix the most problematic bits of the route (i.e. Morpeth).

 

[Altnabreac]

The route from Leeds - Northallerton can be presumed from looking at the Engineering Options report here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ing-options-report-west-midlands-to-leeds.pdf

Page 10 contains a map with the words:

Passive provision for expansion of network towards Newcastle

This is at the point where HS2 curves eastwards alongside the M1 near Garforth.

The map on page 238 then shows the considered ECML connection options including a route directly north from Garforth to Northallerton that was not progressed at this stage due to cost/benefit but you can reasonably assume would be similar to that chosen for the northward extension to Newcastle.

North of here we need to speculate but I agree the logical option is east of Darlington with a station where the new line, the Tees Valley line and the A66 intersect being an obvious choice.

From here my route would take a new smoother alignment through Ferryhill but then follow the Leamside line alignment to Penshaw with a new high speed viaduct over the Wear before rejoining the Leamside tracks to stop at a Wearside Interchange station near the Nissan works north of the A1231 and north east of Washington.

From Pelaw the railway will tunnel under Gateshead across a new Tyne crossing similar to the QE2 metro bridge and then a high speed through underground station underneath Newcastle Central Station.

The through line continues on to Scotland from there.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The via-Newcastle route has the major disadvantage that it slows down every journey to Glasgow by enough to effectively wipe out quite a bit of the journey time savings on the high-speed line. Unless you put Edinburgh on a loop, which would be very expensive, all Glasgow trains would have to spend minutes waiting in Edinburgh. Edinburgh also has the major disadvantage that it is not a particularly porus city for new transport links, so would require bored tunnelling at large expense; a through route would therefore cost twice as much as a spur. The per-kilometre cost of HSR along the effectively empty land north of Preston or York is low enough that you could build a significant proportion of it for the cost of one bored tunnel into Edinburgh, Glasgow or Newcastle.

Also, the Eastern leg of HS2 isn't as suitable as the Western leg for very high speed running due to the route having more stations and some tighter curves to follow the motorway. The Western route has no speed reductions in any location and only has a single sort-of-planned intermediate station (Preston Interchange) beyond the inevitable Birmingham Interchange and Old Oak Common.

There's no reason why a new high speed line north of Newcastle has to head up the east coast for Edinburgh.

You can tackle much steeper gradients than a traditional line and start looking at some unconvential routing ideas.

A Newcastle - Carstairs - Edinburgh/Glasgow route is about the same distance as via Berwick and gives Edinburgh and Glasgow similar cross border journey times.

This route would speed up NE and Yorkshire to Scotland times much more and extending a Newcastle line northwards has the benefit of less track in England serving sparsely populated areas like a western route would have...

 

[CheshireCrusty]

Fair enough - though, won't those trains pass through Manchester Airport?

No - not at present. The current proposals provide a station referred to as Manchester Airport but it is very close to a mile away from the present Manchester Airport station and further from airport terminals 1 and 3 and on the opposite side of the M56 motorway. While there is speculation about a moving walkway connection it will still be quicker for HS2 passenger to stay onto Manchester Picc and then transfer to the 9tph 13 minute connection to the existing station in the middle of the airport terminals. Similarly for passengers to all the other rail destinations served from MIA, interchange at MAN will be quicker and a lot less hassle.

Indeed the lack of a sensible interchange station to the South of Manchester means that for 40% (those commencing their journey South of the City Centre) of the existing Manchester WCML passengers, journey times to London will actually be longer on HS2 than with present VirginRail service. As these tend to be higher yielding passengers - I expect we will end up with a mix of about 50% of London services to Manchester being on HS2 and the other 50% routing through Stockport and either joining HS2 at Crewe or or routing down the existing WCML through Stoke and then running non-stop to London.

 

[edwin_m]

The current proposals provide a station referred to as Manchester Airport but it is very close to a mile away from the present Manchester Airport station and further from airport terminals 1 and 3 and on the opposite side of the M56 motorway. While there is speculation about a moving walkway connection it will still be quicker for HS2 passenger to stay onto Manchester Picc and then transfer to the 9tph 13 minute connection to the existing station in the middle of the airport terminals. Similarly for passengers to all the other rail destinations served from MIA, interchange at MAN will be quicker and a lot less hassle.

Indeed the lack of a sensible interchange station to the South of Manchester means that for 40% (those commencing their journey South of the City Centre) of the existing Manchester WCML passengers, journey times to London will actually be longer on HS2 than with present VirginRail service. As these tend to be higher yielding passengers - I expect we will end up with a mix of about 50% of London services to Manchester being on HS2 and the other 50% routing through Stockport and either joining HS2 at Crewe or or routing down the existing WCML through Stoke and then running non-stop to London.

I agree there won't be much interchange between HS2 and classic rail at Manchester Airport. However the HS2 station is nearly on the western Wythenshawe loop Metrolink route which has powers but no funding, and if this is built it will give good public transport access from a large slice of the southern suburbs as well as a one-stop journey to the existing airport station.

Other than this the Airport station is primarly intended for drive-up access. Most of the affluent passengers from south of Manchester will currently drive to Stockport or Wilmslow or wherever and can simply go to the Airport station instead.

Not sure what this has to do with northern extensions though?

 

[HSTEd]

The via-Newcastle route has the major disadvantage that it slows down every journey to Glasgow by enough to effectively wipe out quite a bit of the journey time savings on the high-speed line. Unless you put Edinburgh on a loop, which would be very expensive, all Glasgow trains would have to spend minutes waiting in Edinburgh.

I am not entirely sure how the Eastern route is going to wipe out large amounts of time since at 320kph the extra distance would be traversed in something like ten minutes.

Station counts are irrelevant since they will all have bypasses or through lines that would allow the train to run fast as neccessary.

And the cost of a 'loop' at Edinburgh is small compared to the neccesity of diverting the Edinburgh-Glasgow line miles to the south of the direct route to reach Carstairs.

And if yuo try and keep the direct route Glasgow-Edinburgh line you will force a right-angle junction with the line from the South which will drastically extend your route, taking away your supposed journey time advantages.

Additionally Newcastle is neccessary to actually building a business case for the route since the Western alignment would never carry sufficient traffic to be worthwhile.

 

[TheKnightWho]

I am not entirely sure how the Eastern route is going to wipe out large amounts of time since at 320kph the extra distance would be traversed in something like ten minutes.

Station counts are irrelevant since they will all have bypasses or through lines that would allow the train to run fast as neccessary.

And the cost of a 'loop' at Edinburgh is small compared to the neccesity of diverting the Edinburgh-Glasgow line miles to the south of the direct route to reach Carstairs.

And if yuo try and keep the direct route Glasgow-Edinburgh line you will force a right-angle junction with the line from the South which will drastically extend your route, taking away your supposed journey time advantages.

Additionally Newcastle is neccessary to actually building a business case for the route since the Western alignment would never carry sufficient traffic to be worthwhile.

And this is exactly the reason why I'm wary of the idea of having one High Speed line trying to do the job of 3 current mainlines.

It probably wouldn't ever be a good idea to replace the WCML, MML and ECML like for like, but having HS2 follow the M40 then the M6, and another HS line following the M1, the A1(M) and then a direct route to Edinburgh would probably be better relief for traffic in the end, rather than the Y design we're currently going with.

Getting to Glasgow via Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh hardly seems to be the most efficient route...

 

[po8crg]

Getting to Glasgow via Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh hardly seems to be the most efficient route...

'Tisn't.

But there's one other advantage of bringing the Scots down the eastern line: when (and it's when, not if) the Birmingham-London track is overloaded, you can build a Toton-Stratford line to link with HS1 (and a spur into London if you can find somewhere to terminate it). Then Scotland and Yorkshire come in down an easterly route to London, while Birmingham and the NW come down the westerly route. That would balance the load better between the two routes than linking Scotland over the Western route (which would probably force you to four-track through the Chilterns).

Glasgow via Toton, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh is a great deal less bad.

That Birmingham-Toton track that you no longer use for London trains is still really useful for connections from Birmingham and the SW to Yorkshire and the NE. Take a look at the time improvements from Birmingham to Leeds for current HS2 - hardly a minor route, but ridiculously slow on XC at present.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I am not entirely sure how the Eastern route is going to wipe out large amounts of time since at 320kph the extra distance would be traversed in something like ten minutes.

Station counts are irrelevant since they will all have bypasses or through lines that would allow the train to run fast as neccessary.

And the cost of a 'loop' at Edinburgh is small compared to the neccesity of diverting the Edinburgh-Glasgow line miles to the south of the direct route to reach Carstairs.

And if yuo try and keep the direct route Glasgow-Edinburgh line you will force a right-angle junction with the line from the South which will drastically extend your route, taking away your supposed journey time advantages.

Additionally Newcastle is neccessary to actually building a business case for the route since the Western alignment would never carry sufficient traffic to be worthwhile.

The issue is that the distance between the two cities is small enough that no trains would ever get up to 320km/h, no matter how straight the alignment is. HS2 Ltd talked to Transport Scotland about the Scotland route and they mutually agreed that a Western route is better as it serves the two cities equally.

All through stations other than OOC have non-stop lines, yes, but the linespeeds around Toton and Meadowhall aren't 400km/h. The Nick Clegg Kink at the latter reduces the linespeed to around 270km/h, IIRC, which is still definitely HSR speed but it means that a non-stop train would still have to accelerate and decelerate. On the Western route there aren't as many, if any, of these speed 'pinch points' as the route is straighter and avoids population areas much more.

The cost of a loop at Edinburgh would likely be the cost of not one but two bored tunnels from either end of the city bypass into Waverley, where presumably some kind of lower-level station would have to be built underneath the existing one so that it can go straight back into tunnel. The cost per kilometre of this would be enormous, compared to the cost of the route between the two cities.

The bend required to head southwards from the west of Edinburgh isn't as important as the speeds possible on turnouts. 400km/h over a set of points is fine when they're in their normal position but the current maximum speed is 230km/h for trains which are diverging. Since the routes either side of the turnouts would not be particularly long the trains would really be limited to this speed all the way to their termini. I suppose a through-Edinburgh solution would help here but there isn't really a problem only being able to run at 225km/h into cities. Beyond Fawkham Junction (just south of Ebbsfleet International) the HS1 route is 225km/h only but this isn't really a problem seeing as how on classic routes the speed reduces in cities as well.

If the current HS2 Ltd/Transport Scotland ideas go ahead, there would effectively be a non-stop 360-400km/h route all the way from Carstairs to the Ruislip tunnel which would shatter the current journey time. Google Maps says the driving distance between these points is 377 miles, or 606km. At a more-or-less constant 360km/h it would take around 1hr 40, and when you add in an intermediate stop or two and the time to Euston and to the Scottish termini it would still be only around 2hr 25. The time difference by changing the E&G section would be effectively meaningless in the grand scheme of things as the air market between the Central Belt and London/Birmingham would be completely annihilated. The train has such a low share of that market now that the DfT would even allow one company to run both ICWC and ICEC due to the competition of the airlines. The provision for these journeys would only be limited by the number of paths available on Phase 1. As Newcastle would also see a similar effect, albeit maybe less severe due to the existing shorter journey times, I'm sure there would be enough passenger flow on these routes even if the trains-per-hour figure north of Preston or York might not be that impressive. In the real world of HSR the tph figures planned for HS2 Phase 1 post 2 are astronomical - Uzbekistan has a 250km/h HSR line with only two (!) 200m trainsets that only runs five times a week!

 

[transmanche]

Getting to Glasgow via Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh hardly seems to be the most efficient route...

It isn't.

But eventually (in the far future), I would expect an HS line heading south west from Birmingham - turning the Y into an X.

Plus in due course, I would also expect an HS line heading from Stratford via Stansted and heading roughly northwards from there to York. That would eventually carry most of the Scotland-London traffic (and onwards towards mainland Europe).

 

[NotATrainspott]

'Tisn't.

But there's one other advantage of bringing the Scots down the eastern line: when (and it's when, not if) the Birmingham-London track is overloaded, you can build a Toton-Stratford line to link with HS1 (and a spur into London if you can find somewhere to terminate it). Then Scotland and Yorkshire come in down an easterly route to London, while Birmingham and the NW come down the westerly route. That would balance the load better between the two routes than linking Scotland over the Western route (which would probably force you to four-track through the Chilterns).

Glasgow via Toton, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh is a great deal less bad.

That Birmingham-Toton track that you no longer use for London trains is still really useful for connections from Birmingham and the SW to Yorkshire and the NE. Take a look at the time improvements from Birmingham to Leeds for current HS2 - hardly a minor route, but ridiculously slow on XC at present.

I agree that a Toton-Stratford route will be needed eventually. However, this would take the Eastern arm and the then-existing route would take the Western arm, other than any HSXC trains to and eventually through Birmingham. Keeping the current service plans, this would result in 11 tph on the London-Birmingham route and 6 tph on the London-Toton route, which is an imbalance but would be dealt with by the additional services on the Eastern route. At the same time though because the entire route is dual-track and grade-separated it would still be capable of 18tph so there is still space for additional services on both routes after a split. A Carlisle-Newcastle line or the TransPennine line would allow quite a bit of further capacity balancing across the two without affecting the current plans which are the least bad option right now.

 

[Altnabreac]

The issue is that the distance between the two cities is small enough that no trains would ever get up to 320km/h, no matter how straight the alignment is. HS2 Ltd talked to Transport Scotland about the Scotland route and they mutually agreed that a Western route is better as it serves the two cities equally.

I can say with some certainty that this is not the case.

No decision has yet been made on what the preferred route to Scotland is.

You can read the HS2 remit for Scotland routes here:
http://assets.hs2.org.uk/sites/default/files/inserts/131101-hs2-options-scotland.pdf

It is at the end of this joint process by HS2 Ltd and Transport Scotland that the preferred route(s) will be identified.

All through stations other than OOC have non-stop lines, yes, but the linespeeds around Toton and Meadowhall aren't 400km/h. The Nick Clegg Kink at the latter reduces the linespeed to around 270km/h, IIRC, which is still definitely HSR speed but it means that a non-stop train would still have to accelerate and decelerate. On the Western route there aren't as many, if any, of these speed 'pinch points' as the route is straighter and avoids population areas much more.

Once you get times below 3 hours you have captured most of the air market so it doesn't really matter if the times are 2.25 or 2.45 the benefits will not be much greater.

So the deciding factors on which route is chosen will be:

• Which route is faster? - Preston route but only marginal benefit compared to some east coast options.
• Which generates the most total passengers? - East Coast will generate more intermediate passengers to Newcastle, Leeds etc.
• Which costs more? - If you are definitely building to Newcastle anyway then a Newcastle - Scotland line will cost less than a Preston - Scotland one. If you are only building on one side of the country Preston may be cheaper.
• Which provides benefits on both sides of the border? - East Coast route wins every time.

Don't get me wrong - There are some benefits to a Preston route - shorter journey time being one of them - but no decision has yet been made and I don't think it's at all certain which route will stack up best financially and politically.

 

[po8crg]

On the "off-the-wall" ideas line:

If a transPennine route is going to be built anyway (big if, but I think it's inevitable), how about running from somewhere in the middle of the TP line to Settle, closing Settle-Carlisle for a few years, upgrading it and reopening it as the route to Scotland?

Obviously it connects up even fewer intermediate stations than WC (ie no Preston), but the argument goes that Settle-Carlisle is sufficiently over-engineered that much less construction work would be needed, and there would also be a major saving in land acquisition costs, and less political/planning controversy (ie people living along the line already live along a railway line)

If it's a lot cheaper, it might be a low-cost option. I suspect, though, it's the rail-nerd, love-the-Settle-Carlisle, wouldn't-it-be-cool? option, rather than a hard-nosed realistic 21st century rail line.

 

[HSTEd]

The issue is that the distance between the two cities is small enough that no trains would ever get up to 320km/h, no matter how straight the alignment is.

Thats complete nonsense.
They do it every day in Japan.
They manage to average more than a 100mph with 30km between stations using modern rolling stock.

HS2 Ltd talked to Transport Scotland about the Scotland route and they mutually agreed that a Western route is better as it serves the two cities equally.

And Transport Scotland is happy to pay for the entire alignment from Wigan on North?
There are no other significant population centres en route so the entire route must be couched in terms of supporting Scotland-England traffic.

It is highly unlikely there is insufficient traffic to support such a route as is.

All through stations other than OOC have non-stop lines, yes, but the linespeeds around Toton and Meadowhall aren't 400km/h. The Nick Clegg Kink at the latter reduces the linespeed to around 270km/h, IIRC, which is still definitely HSR speed but it means that a non-stop train would still have to accelerate and decelerate. On the Western route there aren't as many, if any, of these speed 'pinch points' as the route is straighter and avoids population areas much more.

Even OOC only costs non stop trains something like 90 seconds (if you ever wanted to run non stop through) according to the Bombardier ERTMS studies.
The slowing down thanks to such things is completely marginal and irrelevant.

And there will never be trains running at 400km/h, it is highly unlikely they will ever even run at 360km/h since literally everyone who has tried it commercially has subsequently abandoned it.
The Japanese, especially, concluded, after a lengthy test programme that over 320km/h running was not worth the cost.

The cost of a loop at Edinburgh would likely be the cost of not one but two bored tunnels from either end of the city bypass into Waverley, where presumably some kind of lower-level station would have to be built underneath the existing one so that it can go straight back into tunnel. The cost per kilometre of this would be enormous, compared to the cost of the route between the two cities.

Why the hell are you doing that?
Why are you even approaching Edinburgh from the East?
You are assuming you hug the coast.

You would almost certainly proceed directly from Newcastle to Edinburgh, approaching from the south.

If a loop is too expensive you would instead have a triangle in the vicinty of the Airport with trains looping back on themselves, even that only costs you two minutes or so since you eat up track at the rate of five kilometres each and every minute.

The bend required to head southwards from the west of Edinburgh isn't as important as the speeds possible on turnouts. 400km/h over a set of points is fine when they're in their normal position but the current maximum speed is 230km/h for trains which are diverging.

According to Bombardier it is 250km/h+. The number climbs every year. It is unlikely to have any significant impact in journey times.

Since the routes either side of the turnouts would not be particularly long the trains would really be limited to this speed all the way to their termini. I suppose a through-Edinburgh solution would help here but there isn't really a problem only being able to run at 225km/h into cities. Beyond Fawkham Junction (just south of Ebbsfleet International) the HS1 route is 225km/h only but this isn't really a problem seeing as how on classic routes the speed reduces in cities as well.

So it isn't a problem and yet it is a problem? Which is it?

If the current HS2 Ltd/Transport Scotland ideas go ahead, there would effectively be a non-stop 360-400km/h route all the way from Carstairs to the Ruislip tunnel which would shatter the current journey time.

It would only run 320km/h, but lets just assume 360km/h for the sake of argument.
Lets say the route via the Eastern alignment is 50km longer, that means it costs you less than ten minutes, plus the extra two minutes or so for the 'kinks' in the route.

Google Maps says the driving distance between these points is 377 miles, or 606km. At a more-or-less constant 360km/h it would take around 1hr 40, and when you add in an intermediate stop or two and the time to Euston and to the Scottish termini it would still be only around 2hr 25. !

And the few extra minutes to run via the Eastern Alignment costs you virtually nothing to that overall journey time.
But you by taking the western route exclude Tyneside from providing any traffic at all to you destroy your passenger figures.

HSR on the continent is not expected to pay its way in such places as Uzbekistan, it is primarily a political statement.
This is Britain, and I can't see it being possible to blow many billions of pounds on a vanity route to Scotland that seems to have an alignment chosen to prevent any other traffic from using it.

Especially as we have trainsets that can do 0-170mph in three minutes or less now.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Thats complete nonsense.
They do it every day in Japan.
They manage to average more than a 100mph with 30km between stations using modern rolling stock.

Well then, I appear to be wrong then.

And Transport Scotland is happy to pay for the entire alignment from Wigan on North?
There are no other significant population centres en route so the entire route must be couched in terms of supporting Scotland-England traffic.

It is highly unlikely there is insufficient traffic to support such a route as is.

The basis of your argument is that extending HS2 to Scotland benefits only Scotland and thus Scotland should pay for the entirety of the extension beyond where it benefits mainly England. Unfortunately that is not necessarily true as it will benefit all of the UK, especially seeing as how independence is vanishingly unlikely to happen within this generation. The cost per kilometre of HSR drops immensely once you leave London, the South East and the major cities so I very much imagine that the entirety of a Wigan-Scotland and York-Newcastle extension Phase 3 would cost approximately the same as the other two phases. The extension to Newcastle would pass through the least expensive region of the entire UK and would be simple to build, so it would not be too expensive to add on to any other plans.

Even OOC only costs non stop trains something like 90 seconds (if you ever wanted to run non stop through) according to the Bombardier ERTMS studies.
The slowing down thanks to such things is completely marginal and irrelevant.

The effect may not be as pronounced as I thought it would be, then. There will still be some timetabling issues when more and more non-stop trains are mixed in with an irregular service pattern between Birmingham and Leeds/York which would not be the case on the Western extension.

And there will never be trains running at 400km/h, it is highly unlikely they will ever even run at 360km/h since literally everyone who has tried it commercially has subsequently abandoned it.
The Japanese, especially, concluded, after a lengthy test programme that over 320km/h running was not worth the cost.

The AGVs have 360km/h as their design speed and the plans for HS2 involve the possibility of 360km/h running during service perturbations, so I wouldn't discount the possibility so quickly. Technology is improving daily as trains are getting more and more advanced and efficient and by the time the HS2 tender for rolling stock comes around there will be more advances still. At some point advances in material sciences will allow carbon-composites to be used in rolling stock manufacture, which would significantly reduce their weight and most probably allow regular 400km/h running at no extra energy or infrastructural wear cost.

Why the hell are you doing that?
Why are you even approaching Edinburgh from the East?
You are assuming you hug the coast.

You would almost certainly proceed directly from Newcastle to Edinburgh, approaching from the south.

I had assumed you wanted a through route through Edinburgh, which would allow one train to service both cities. For that to be at all sensible or even feasible you require two approaches to the city - one from Glasgow and one from London. Both approaches would need to be bored tunnels, regardless of which direction they approach Edinburgh in.

What is your southern approach to Edinburgh? There would need to be a trade-off between E&G journey times and London journey times as the faster you make the journey from London, the slower and more circuitous the journey to Glasgow becomes, and vice-versa.

If a loop is too expensive you would instead have a triangle in the vicinty of the Airport with trains looping back on themselves, even that only costs you two minutes or so since you eat up track at the rate of five kilometres each and every minute.

I can't imagine what you're trying to describe here. Could you elaborate on this? If you explained more of the general route of your idea then I think it would help with the debate over which solution is better. If your idea would be an improvement over mine then I have no problem with it, and I am open to suggestions and comment.

According to Bombardier it is 250km/h+. The number climbs every year. It is unlikely to have any significant impact in journey times.

230km/h is what the engineering specification of HS2 says is possible and what the route is designed for.

So it isn't a problem and yet it is a problem? Which is it?

You had said that the 'right-hand' kink needed to send trains south from the cities would be a problem, which I said wouldn't be because the limit is the turnout speed rather than the curve itself. My point is that the speed once you get to the Central Belt isn't vastly important when you come up the middle and split to serve both. When you come from the vicinity of one city and then have to serve the other it becomes more important.

It would only run 320km/h, but lets just assume 360km/h for the sake of argument.
Lets say the route via the Eastern alignment is 50km longer, that means it costs you less than ten minutes, plus the extra two minutes or so for the 'kinks' in the route.

HS2 is planned to run normally at 334km/h (208mph), so your insistence on 320km/h is in itself slightly wrong. Not massively, but still mildly irritating.

I also doubt that the route would only be 50km longer. Scotland is not just north of England but to the west of it as well as Edinburgh is west of Carlisle. Any eastern route from London would go north-north-west then north-east then north then north-west again, while a western route simply goes north-west and then north. If you are going to send trains via the eastern route they would stop in more stations - good for regional connections, but not good for London journey times. HS2 is designed around stations on spurs rather than through stations in cities, so a through Newcastle station would almost inevitably end up as a city-outskirts job which would upset the locals quite a bit.

And the few extra minutes to run via the Eastern Alignment costs you virtually nothing to that overall journey time.
But you by taking the western route exclude Tyneside from providing any traffic at all to you destroy your passenger figures.

There are enough people travelling from Scotland to London and Birmingham to justify not stopping at Newcastle on the way. The IEPs aren't going to vanish when HS2 Phase 2 or 3 opens so there will still be links which are just as fast, if not faster, than there are today. The number of people travelling from Scotland to Newcastle isn't enough for a captive service yet but the demand for Scotland to London (in total, including air) is definitely high enough to justify one even if the tph won't be that high in comparison to further south. It's not like I'm advocating sending all the trains up to Aberdeen or anything just yet. Yet.

HSR on the continent is not expected to pay its way in such places as Uzbekistan, it is primarily a political statement.
This is Britain, and I can't see it being possible to blow many billions of pounds on a vanity route to Scotland that seems to have an alignment chosen to prevent any other traffic from using it.

We are allowed to have more than one HSR route through the country. It would not be a vanity route as its main beneficiaries would be the airports and their neighbours of London. On this route there would be trains to Birmingham and to Manchester from day one, and if a TransPennine link is also created there could be trains going through that as well.

Especially as we have trainsets that can do 0-170mph in three minutes or less now.

If they are available then the timetable can be written to take advantage of them.

 

[MidlandMainlie]

The basis of your argument is that extending HS2 to Scotland benefits only Scotland and thus Scotland should pay for the entirety of the extension beyond where it benefits mainly England. Unfortunately that is not necessarily true as it will benefit all of the UK, especially seeing as how independence is vanishingly unlikely to happen within this generation.

I wouldn't be quite so sure, option polls over the last couple on months have shown a narrowing of the the gap between the yes campaign and the better together campaign.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I can say with some certainty that this is not the case.

No decision has yet been made on what the preferred route to Scotland is.

You can read the HS2 remit for Scotland routes here:
http://assets.hs2.org.uk/sites/default/files/inserts/131101-hs2-options-scotland.pdf

It is at the end of this joint process by HS2 Ltd and Transport Scotland that the preferred route(s) will be identified.

I appear to have conflated the choice of the western arm of Phase 2 carrying the Scotland services with that route being chosen specifically for further extension.

Once you get times below 3 hours you have captured most of the air market so it doesn't really matter if the times are 2.25 or 2.45 the benefits will not be much greater.

What I really hope is that they do not try to cheap out and go for the bare minimum journey saving to make rail competitive with air. At three hours, it makes the train a better choice than air for central London to central Edinburgh or Glasgow journeys, but for the people who live some distance beyond direct connection distance air will likely still be a possibility. The cost of extending to Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh should be taken into comparison with the cost of expanding air capacity in the South East, and the environmental cost of a continuing domestic air market. If the route is built to full HS2 speed and spec all the way, without making a detour via Newcastle, the train would not only be competitive with air but would completely destroy it as it becomes faster for far more people to travel via train. A journey time of 2hr 20 would make the train competitive with air for travellers from Bristol via the upgraded GWML interchanging at Old Oak or at Birmingham via XC. If the journey time is slowed down, this journey wouldn't be competitive with air at all. On the Scottish end, if the route is made as fast as possible then it does open up the possibility later on of an extension beyond the Central Belt; without a fast route to the Central Belt, there is no hope of the train being competitive anywhere beyond there.

So the deciding factors on which route is chosen will be:

• Which route is faster? - Preston route but only marginal benefit compared to some east coast options.
• Which generates the most total passengers? - East Coast will generate more intermediate passengers to Newcastle, Leeds etc.
• Which costs more? - If you are definitely building to Newcastle anyway then a Newcastle - Scotland line will cost less than a Preston - Scotland one. If you are only building on one side of the country Preston may be cheaper.
• Which provides benefits on both sides of the border? - East Coast route wins every time.

Don't get me wrong - There are some benefits to a Preston route - shorter journey time being one of them - but no decision has yet been made and I don't think it's at all certain which route will stack up best financially and politically.

I see the York-Newcastle extension as undeniable, so I know that it will be built. If a Newcastle-Central Belt route were the only way for Scotland to get a dedicated HSR, I would not be outraged so long as provision were made for it to be linked up later on to the western route. If the route went from Newcastle to Carlisle to the Central Belt, it would also provide benefits to Cumbria and the Borders in the form of Carlisle (which would likely lose its fast services once the Glasgow trains are gone). Building HSR through the Northumberland National Park would not be a good idea, so the route would have to veer around it in any case so the difference in distance might not be as severe as it could be. It would also have the benefit of being accessible by existing rail and road corridors and would be already blighted by human development. Once this section is built the remaining distance to connect Carlisle to Preston would be small so it could be built as a kind of Phase 4, thus reducing the journey times from the Central Belt to Manchester, Birmingham and London by even more beyond what it would be then already.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I wouldn't be quite so sure, option polls over the last couple on months have shown a narrowing of the the gap between the yes campaign and the better together campaign.

I still doubt that the numbers would shift all the way, unless there were some kind of 'October surprise' (well, an August one) where the UK Govt were caught on mic/camera disparaging Scotland as a country. However, if David Cameron were caught saying such things backstage it wouldn't change that much in the minds of Scots since we all assume that's what he thinks anyway.

In my opinion the referendum is a protest vote against the direction of the UK as a whole because we feel there's nothing else we can do to change things. Scotland does not vote Tory but we get a Tory government in charge of ruining our pensions and benefits system. If we vote Labour we get a middle-ground government that still has to pander to the economic desires of the South-East of England. When you have even close to a plurality of a country's population actively considering massive constitutional change it's a sure sign that something needs to change. Devo Max is the natural outcome of the referendum based on current opinion polls. There wouldn't be a vast difference between a Sterling-pact rUK+Scotland and a Scotland with Devo Max but the latter option isn't as drastic for much of the same benefit.

 

[Altnabreac]

Notatrainspotter

I think it pays to think of the argument like this.

If Newcastle/Teeside justify a high speed line lets assume the Westminster Government makes a decision to build that and its fully costed and definitely happening.

If we then decide we want a line to connect Edinburgh/Glasgow to the High Speed network we need to compare the costs and benefits of a line to Wigan to a line to Newcastle.

Speed may be slightly better via Wigan but costs will be quite a lot less to Newcastle (as its half the distance).

I think it's unlikely Glasgow would be served via Edinburgh. If approaching from the East Coast you have at least 4tph to play with (the 2 Scotland trains and 2 Newcastle trains from Phase 2). A 2tph GC Gauge 400m service to each city is likely to be sufficient capacity.

So if you approach Edinburgh from the south east Glasgow trains would probably bypass the city. Or more likely you approach from the south west and Glasgow trains run direct from Newcastle pretty much as the crow flies.

Now a Wigan route may still add up better, especially if its decided Newcastle doesn't need a High Speed Line but I think it's very tricky politically for Westminster to sign off £XBn on a line for Scotland and give nothing to north east England.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Notatrainspotter

I think it pays to think of the argument like this.

If Newcastle/Teeside justify a high speed line lets assume the Westminster Government makes a decision to build that and its fully costed and definitely happening.

If we then decide we want a line to connect Edinburgh/Glasgow to the High Speed network we need to compare the costs and benefits of a line to Wigan to a line to Newcastle.

Speed may be slightly better via Wigan but costs will be quite a lot less to Newcastle (as its half the distance).

I think it's unlikely Glasgow would be served via Edinburgh. If approaching from the East Coast you have at least 4tph to play with (the 2 Scotland trains and 2 Newcastle trains from Phase 2). A 2tph GC Gauge 400m service to each city is likely to be sufficient capacity.

So if you approach Edinburgh from the south east Glasgow trains would probably bypass the city. Or more likely you approach from the south west and Glasgow trains run direct from Newcastle pretty much as the crow flies.

Now a Wigan route may still add up better, especially if its decided Newcastle doesn't need a High Speed Line but I think it's very tricky politically for Westminster to sign off £XBn on a line for Scotland and give nothing to north east England.

I think I made a reasonable compromise suggestion in my last post before I answered something about the referendum. I presume that you haven't seen it yet as I only posted it a few minutes ago.

At the same time I don't know where your idea that it would be a choice between the E&G extension and the Newcastle extension. The Newcastle extension is technically simple, cheap to build and would provide an enormous boost to if not the most economically deprived area in England by improving its connections to Leeds (via the north curve there that would also be built, obviously), Birmingham and London.

 

[Altnabreac]

I think I made a reasonable compromise suggestion in my last post before I answered something about the referendum. I presume that you haven't seen it yet as I only posted it a few minutes ago.

At the same time I don't know where your idea that it would be a choice between the E&G extension and the Newcastle extension. The Newcastle extension is technically simple, cheap to build and would provide an enormous boost to if not the most economically deprived area in England by improving its connections to Leeds (via the north curve there that would also be built, obviously), Birmingham and London.

I agree with most of your points. I wouldn't like to end up with something not fit for purpose either.

However while I don't think it's either/or I do think once you commit to a Newcastle branch it undermines the economics of a West Coast route to Scotland

We should know the answer by the middle of next year. And of course it looks like we'll have HSR up and running in Scotland by the mid 2020s een if the full line takes longer.

 

[NotATrainspott]

On the "off-the-wall" ideas line:

If a transPennine route is going to be built anyway (big if, but I think it's inevitable), how about running from somewhere in the middle of the TP line to Settle, closing Settle-Carlisle for a few years, upgrading it and reopening it as the route to Scotland?

Obviously it connects up even fewer intermediate stations than WC (ie no Preston), but the argument goes that Settle-Carlisle is sufficiently over-engineered that much less construction work would be needed, and there would also be a major saving in land acquisition costs, and less political/planning controversy (ie people living along the line already live along a railway line)

If it's a lot cheaper, it might be a low-cost option. I suspect, though, it's the rail-nerd, love-the-Settle-Carlisle, wouldn't-it-be-cool? option, rather than a hard-nosed realistic 21st century rail line.

High speed running isn't just a matter of how straight the route is, which the Settle & Carlisle line isn't. High speed running requires much stronger and larger structures to take the increased track and aerodynamic forces and tunnels have to be larger than the minimum loading gauge so that the trains won't have to work against the air in front of them. As a result there's no way the S&C could ever realistically form part of an HSR line.

 

[clc]

Notatrainspotter

I think it pays to think of the argument like this.

If Newcastle/Teeside justify a high speed line lets assume the Westminster Government makes a decision to build that and its fully costed and definitely happening.

If we then decide we want a line to connect Edinburgh/Glasgow to the High Speed network we need to compare the costs and benefits of a line to Wigan to a line to Newcastle.

Speed may be slightly better via Wigan but costs will be quite a lot less to Newcastle (as its half the distance).

I think it's unlikely Glasgow would be served via Edinburgh. If approaching from the East Coast you have at least 4tph to play with (the 2 Scotland trains and 2 Newcastle trains from Phase 2). A 2tph GC Gauge 400m service to each city is likely to be sufficient capacity.

So if you approach Edinburgh from the south east Glasgow trains would probably bypass the city. Or more likely you approach from the south west and Glasgow trains run direct from Newcastle pretty much as the crow flies.

Now a Wigan route may still add up better, especially if its decided Newcastle doesn't need a High Speed Line but I think it's very tricky politically for Westminster to sign off £XBn on a line for Scotland and give nothing to north east England.

Is that because of Glasgow/Edinburgh politics?

Instead of running 2tph to Glasgow and 2tph to Edinburgh would it not be more efficient to run 4tph to Glasgow via Edinburgh, so both cities would have 4tph? You'd then save on the operating costs of the proposed Glasgow-Edinburgh 140mph shuttle which would be rendered redundant.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Is that because of Glasgow/Edinburgh politics?

Instead of running 2tph to Glasgow and 2tph to Edinburgh would it not be more efficient to run 4tph to Glasgow via Edinburgh, so both cities would have 4tph? You'd then save on the operating costs of the proposed Glasgow-Edinburgh 140mph shuttle which would be rendered redundant.

Serving both cities like that would increase costs quite a bit as you would require two approaches to Edinburgh, both of which would have to be bored tunnels, and a larger station as well. The Edinburgh stop would have very significant flows of passengers off of it as it is very much a destination in its own right, probably more so than most other intermediate stations along the route (as in, literally half the train or more would be getting off there). As a result the dwell times would not be particularly good and combined with the time needed to decelerate and accelerate in and out of the station, it would eat away at the journey time savings on which billions of pounds would have been spent. Splitting and joining some of the services at a suitable site further south is a better proposition, at least in my opinion. The E&G shuttle's needs wouldn't be a tail which wags the dog as its existence is only due to the rest of the infrastructure being required.

 

[Altnabreac]

Is that because of Glasgow/Edinburgh politics?

Instead of running 2tph to Glasgow and 2tph to Edinburgh would it not be more efficient to run 4tph to Glasgow via Edinburgh, so both cities would have 4tph? You'd then save on the operating costs of the proposed Glasgow-Edinburgh 140mph shuttle which would be rendered redundant.

A through Edinburgh route is likely to be significantly more expensive and the small benefit from additional frequency (but no extra capacity at a Central Belt level) would likely be outweighed by the economic loss of the additional time for Glasgow passengers.

So I suspect it would fail on multiple economic grounds but as you say politically it wouldn't be popular either.

An Edinburgh Glasgow service run by cross border trains only would have less capacity (due to England bound Glasgow passengers taking up seats) and be inherently less reliable than a dedicated service.

The business case for HS2 hints at the way the business case for services is boosted by having direct point to point captive services. These can be filled end to end as opposed to carrying lots of fresh air at one end of the line.

So I think a 2tph service to each of Edinburgh and Glasgow is the logical long term service pattern whichever route is chosen.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I've found the statement in an official document which prices a York-Newcastle HSR line:

6.1.4 The cost of upgrading the existing York to Newcastle railway to accommodate European GC gauge trains has been estimated at between £3.5 billion and £4 billion, exclusive of disruption costs. The work would take over eight years to complete and would involve significant route closures every weekend. In contrast an entirely new high speed line from York to Newcastle would cost in the region of £3.5 billion, and could be built largely away from the operational railway to minimize disruption to existing users.

Review of the Technical Specification for High Speed Rail in the UK A report to Government by HS2 Ltd January 2012 [Page 15]

It's a reasonably vague statement, not describing whether this would include stations, but it makes clear that an extension to Newcastle is affordable enough that it wouldn't damage the economic case for a Western route as much as it could have.

 

[TBY-Paul]

My Understanding is that "A" future line north "might" leave HS2 at Swillington and head towards Northallerton and then on to Newcastle.

Somewhere along the line a Tees Valley Interchange will be built, it's just a question of where. So far the only places being mentioned appear to be in the Darlington area where the present Tees valley line crosses a possible future HS2 extension.

I'd like to explore other possible options other than Darlington East.

If the line from Swillington continued towards Northallerton, then at some point just south of Northallerton the line could deviate to the east of Northallerton and follow the A19 or the Northallerton to Eaglescliffe line towards Teesside. Once the line reaches the Picton area it opens up Two further Options.

Option 1

From Picton continue to Follow the A19 corridor through Teesside, this would give the option of building a station in the Tees Yard area, this would give easy access to the Tees Valley line, easy road access to the A19 and A66. The Station would be relatively central for all locations with-in Teesside, Although rail travel to areas north of the river would be lengthy. There are a few other problems with this area, it's east-west orientation means it's has a shortish north-south profile. And anyone who has ever been to Teesside retail park will understand, the land is prone to subsidence (it's the old riverbed/Flood-plain).

Option 2 (my preferred option)

From Picton the line would skirt east of Yarm, cross the River Tees before entering a short tunnel under Eaglescliife, that would emerge just north of Eaglescliffe station and parallel to the Tees Valley line. The HS line would run in a straight line all the way to the present location of Stockton Station before entering another short tunnel which would emerge in open ground north of Norton.
This route would open the possibility of an inter-change Station in the Eaglescliffe/Stockton area that would tie into all routes North, South, East and West. Onward rail travel to Saltburn, Darlington, Hartlepool & Yarm & beyond would make it a true Hub. If by this time the Leamside line was open it could be accessed by the Stillington line. The possibilies are endless.

(Just as an added note, Judging by the way planning applications are getting put in for land south of Ingleby Barwick and Yarm, by the time HS2 gets up here(20+ yrs?) I can see Yarm station being a very busy station as it will be in the middle of a vast housing area.)