HS2 and capacity on classic lines - Spectator Debate

[YorkshireBear]

Isn't there another problem with Virgin picking up the MK traffic, illustrated by the 18.10 Euston - North Wales train.

This leaves Euston Full, and with a few standing.

From MK the rear unit is usually about 10% occupied.

Does it really make sense to run Voyagers from Euston to Chester and beyond to provide capacity for the first 30 minutes of the journey?

Interesting point and yes it does make sense. If one unit is taken off. But i seriously think Milton Keynes will see a large growth in traffic to Northern England with additional services.

 

[Bright Boy]

I assume that many people may have mentioned it already, and definitely thought about it, but before they open any High Speed routes to any more of the country, they should be re-opening more of the already closed routes to towns that do not have a rail link, instead of building a very expensive fast link that will have to compete with existing airline routes.

The first most obvious one is an alternative to the Devon Coast line, to towns that don't have a railway and a city that gets cut off every year !

We are currently in a boom period for railway travel and freight, so extra lines (for other routes and diversions) will take the weight of some of the current lines.

There is an old quote that goes like this 'If you cut off the branches the tree will wither and die' which is what almost happened to our railways, surely if you can 'grow' the branches back it will strengthen the (tree) network, you may have quiet lines in the country, but when all that is added to the main/existing routes, the trains will be even more packed then you will have a real need for a new mainline railway.

And what about a new mainline railway ? I can't help thinking of the name 'Sir Edward Watkin', he had a visionary idea with the GCR and the link to continental Europe, now we have that link that Watkin dreamed of, why don't we re-open the GCR main line (with some alterations and additional links) for that purpose again, linking the midlands and the north of England to HS1, most of the route is still in place, and Manchester has an existing station (not used for railways) which it could use for that.

Linking that route to Birmingham and Leeds could satisfy the existing plan and be a lot cheaper surely (less land fees) and easier to build (re-build)

and if you wanted to build an HS3 to Scotland, how about upgrading/re-building the Settle & Carlisle route and the former G&SWR/Waverley lines ?

Surely that would be money more well spent than the existing plan ?

 

[transmanche]

I assume that many people may have mentioned it already, and definitely thought about it, but before they open any High Speed routes to any more of the country, they should be re-opening more of the already closed routes to towns that do not have a rail link, instead of building a very expensive fast link that will have to compete with existing airline routes.

OK, so if we rebuild lots of branch lines that will create more passengers feeding into the existing mainline 'InterCity' network. But the main lines are fast approaching capacity, so we need more capacity in the 'InterCity' network in order to carry these extra passengers.

You could try upgrading the existing network with more capacity, but that's been tried on the WCML. It cost billions, didn't deliver what it promised and led to years of disruption. And the capacity improvements it did deliver will all be used up in the medium term.

It's actually going to be a lot cheaper to build a new line for improving the 'InterCity' network - and if you're building a new route you might as well make it a high-speed one. (Keeping the freight trains and stopping passenger trains out of the way on the existing network.) And you can construct it to allow 400m long trains built to the larger European loading gauge.

So building HS2 isn't really about the speed (that's a bonus side-effect), it's all about capacity. And when you have extra capacity on the main network, then you can look at reopening more branch lines.

 

[HSTEd]

The WCML Upgrade project would have bought HS2 Phase 1 in real terms.
That would have had a far greater effect on journeys - even then.

 

[Bright Boy]

I agree that the existing mainlines are nearly full, that's why we need to open a new mainline, that's why I suggested the GCR mainline, but also there is a lot more room on the existing mainlines than the politicians are letting on.

I was only reading today that 4 more train paths per hour can be made on the WCML with little work, the Midland mainline and the ECML can add extra train paths now, Chiltern Railways are looking at increasing their London to Birmingham route via Banbury already.

I have more thoughts, how about adding extra carriages onto trains !, we used to have 16 or more coaches on trains in the past, and more middle distance routes upgraded/re-opened will take some of the pressure off the mainlines, how about the old GWR route to Chester, its a bit quiet at the moment? that would take some heat off the WCML.

Have a look at an old railway atlas and you can find quite a lot of old routes that have closed and can be re-opened and existing routes that have been downgraded, that can be upgraded.

Here's a few to chew on :-

Bedford - Northampton - Market Harborough - Melton Mowbray - Newark - Lincoln with branches to Leicester and Nottingham

Derby - Matlock - Peak Forest - Manchester

Northampton - Wellingborough - Wansford - Stamford - Sleaford - Lincoln - Gainsborough - Doncaster

Nottingham - Kirkby-in-Ashfield - Mansfield - Shireoaks - Maltby - Doncaster

all would take off some of the load that currently exists on the WCML, MML, ECML and add towns that no longer have a railway

 

[HSTEd]

16 20m coaches is only 14 23m vehicles - which we are approaching in many places.
Also trains would often be shunted at destination stations to use more than one platform - which is no longer practical.

The GCR line has been so heavily damaged that the alignment no longer remains viable.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Reopening the GCR mainline is not the magical solution to all of Britain's rail capacity needs. It doesn't go where people actually want to go, quite a number of the actually important sections would be very difficult to reopen and it doesn't solve anything on the London end as it uses only current termini, of which all (aside from Liverpool Street) are going to suffer the same capacity constraints for the future.

There is then the major issue of the law of diminishing returns. HS2 adds 18 Long-Distance-High-Speed (LDHS) paths each way between the North and London, while leaving the existing routes to have additional paths then put on them as the stopping patterns become more regular. Although it may be possible to gain another couple of paths here and there on the mainlines as they are today, the cost of providing another couple, and another and another becomes absurd as the difficulty and cost involve increase exponentially.

There is considerable difficulty in making trains longer - again subject to the law of diminishing returns. On the classic network, the limit is effectively around 260m long which is approximately the length of an 11-car Pendolino or a 2x5 car IEP, as that platform length is the best available across the entire network. Trains can only be as long as the platforms at the major stops along their route - yes, smaller stops can be served with Selective Door Operation (SDO, where doors off the end of the platform are disabled at that stop) but this is not possible for the routes HS2 is designed to serve. As trains are extended further and further, the cost of further extension gets higher and higher as more and more intensive works are required to make the extensions possible.

Also, as has been said in other posts, there is little use in reopening routes which may provide small capacity relief on specific sections if it would just shift the bottleneck to somewhere else, overall providing no real gains in capacity. There is little point in addressing some of the worst of these bottlenecks if there is then no real gains made overall from doing so - Euston needs to be rebuilt and would require extra platforms whether or not HS2 were to terminate there, but just building more platforms for the classic network would cost almost the same while not providing the journey time and inteconnectivity benefits of HS2.

The arguments you raise are not new, and have been discusses ad nauseum for years and years on this site and across the internet and media. As much fun as it is to write these lovely tl;dr posts on this site, it's not really worth restating everything that has already been said.

 

[HowardGWR]

The arguments you raise are not new, and have been discusses ad nauseum for years and years on this site and across the internet and media. As much fun as it is to write these lovely tl;dr posts on this site, it's not really worth restating everything that has already been said.

I must admit, reading Bright Boy's posts was like reading something that somebody who had been absent for the last 20 years, but everyone has a right to put their views here. I think we will see, some of his suggested reopenings, perhaps partial ones, one day, but not high speed.

 

[Bright Boy]

16 20m coaches is only 14 23m vehicles - which we are approaching in many places.
Also trains would often be shunted at destination stations to use more than one platform - which is no longer practical.

The GCR line has been so heavily damaged that the alignment no longer remains viable.

Which train operator is approaching 14 vehicles on the lines north from London ?

Virgin have increased the coaches to 11 and have lengthened the platforms, have they added in extra length for a possible future increase in train length ?

I agree that the GCR may be damaged and also built upon in many places, but that is a small problem compared to building a completely new line, with viaducts and a long tunnel into Manchester, all the land and property they will need to buy on almost the entire length of the line

 

[NotATrainspott]

Which train operator is approaching 14 vehicles on the lines north from London ?

Virgin have increased the coaches to 11 and have lengthened the platforms, have they added in extra length for a possible future increase in train length ?

I agree that the GCR may be damaged and also built upon in many places, but that is a small problem compared to building a completely new line, with viaducts and a long tunnel into Manchester, all the land and property they will need to buy on almost the entire length of the line

The platform extension work for the 11-car Pendolinos did not, to the best of my knowledge, include provision for 12-car Pendolinos. This is because as I said, the law of diminishing returns makes extending platforms more and more become a less reasonable cost as you start to hit major physical barriers. As an example, at Coventry the WCML to Birmingham is two-track: it would be lovely to widen it but that would encroach on the back gardens of several hundred people. The station itself is wedged in between two junctions which are for all intents and purposes never going to be relocated for the biblical cost involved in doing so, so unless you want to close one or both of them you cannot extend the platforms or even have SDO trains hanging off the end, fouling the junctions.

You are significantly overestimating the ease and value of reopening the GCR. At the most basic level, there is opposition to reopening the GCR in any form from the local NIMBYs: the idea to reopen it as a freight-only line with the gauge for piggy-back lorry transport by a private firm was shot down for the same reasons as HS2 is opposed. There is then the issue that it was not the entire line that was actually closed - mostly the sections outside of towns and cities, and the capacity requirement requires a dedicated line from terminus to terminus. As a result, you would still need to build new termini in the cities, along with their approach tracks, which are by far the most expensive part of the scheme. A reopened GCR would almost certainly use the mostly-abandoned New North Main Line between Old Oak and Ruislip, as HS2 does, but as it wouldn't carry any local passengers the same NIMBY complaints would be made as there were for HS2 before it was eventually put into a bored tunnel along that section. Since you would also need a new London terminus, the best site for which is to the west of Euston, and would need to tunnel the same distance as HS2 within the M25, most of the cost saving is non-existent but you don't get the economic benefit of the scheme.

There is then the issue that reopening lines is going to be opposed by the local community if they see no benefit from it for themselves. The village of Burton Green has a disused railway going through the middle of it whose alignment will be re-used by HS2 in a cut-and-cover tunnel. This is one of the most controversial kilometres of the entire scheme, even though it quite literally is just reopening a line that previously existed. It also exemplifies the main problem of old lines: people actually live along them and in some cases on top of them. HS2 is designed to miss as many dwellings as it is possible to, so the actual number of people who will be directly affected is as small now as it can ever be in any permutation of a new north-south line. Aside from Camden, there are no other wide scale demolitions of dwellings anywhere else on the scheme (there are a few here and there, but not entire neighbourhoods) while a reopened line would most likely require far, far more.

Fundamentally the reason that HS2 is happening is because is the least-worst option that delivers the greatest benefit to the overall cost of the scheme. For all the people who would benefit from the scheme being changed significantly, there would be many more people who would be disadvantaged.

 

[Bright Boy]

Reopening the GCR mainline is not the magical solution to all of Britain's rail capacity needs. It doesn't go where people actually want to go, quite a number of the actually important sections would be very difficult to reopen and it doesn't solve anything on the London end as it uses only current termini, of which all (aside from Liverpool Street) are going to suffer the same capacity constraints for the future.

There is then the major issue of the law of diminishing returns. HS2 adds 18 Long-Distance-High-Speed (LDHS) paths each way between the North and London, while leaving the existing routes to have additional paths then put on them as the stopping patterns become more regular. Although it may be possible to gain another couple of paths here and there on the mainlines as they are today, the cost of providing another couple, and another and another becomes absurd as the difficulty and cost involve increase exponentially.

There is considerable difficulty in making trains longer - again subject to the law of diminishing returns. On the classic network, the limit is effectively around 260m long which is approximately the length of an 11-car Pendolino or a 2x5 car IEP, as that platform length is the best available across the entire network. Trains can only be as long as the platforms at the major stops along their route - yes, smaller stops can be served with Selective Door Operation (SDO, where doors off the end of the platform are disabled at that stop) but this is not possible for the routes HS2 is designed to serve. As trains are extended further and further, the cost of further extension gets higher and higher as more and more intensive works are required to make the extensions possible.

Also, as has been said in other posts, there is little use in reopening routes which may provide small capacity relief on specific sections if it would just shift the bottleneck to somewhere else, overall providing no real gains in capacity. There is little point in addressing some of the worst of these bottlenecks if there is then no real gains made overall from doing so - Euston needs to be rebuilt and would require extra platforms whether or not HS2 were to terminate there, but just building more platforms for the classic network would cost almost the same while not providing the journey time and inteconnectivity benefits of HS2.

The arguments you raise are not new, and have been discusses ad nauseum for years and years on this site and across the internet and media. As much fun as it is to write these lovely tl;dr posts on this site, it's not really worth restating everything that has already been said.

Of Course re-opening the GCR is not the 'magic solution' there needs lots more to be done, but at least opening the old routes accesses more places that do not have a railway now, and that is my point, and they will take you to/from places that people do want to go to

I agree the London end needs to be addressed, Marylebone has a little extra capacity available, Euston does need to be re-built anyway, the old part of St Pancras could be worked upon, and it's a pity Broad Street was demolished and built over, so maybe we could use another London terminus, but what is HS2 planning?

Opening up old lines will add many more paths, and you will not need as many paths if you relieve the capacity of the mainlines by re-opening middle- distance 'relief' routes, however I do not think of them as relief routes, they are places where many people actually end up at, when they have completed their journey from the mainlines by bus or taxi

And the number of passengers in future will not rise infinitely, the British Isles can only home so many people, what that number is I don't know, but not infinite.

My Point is why open a new route with no stations other than the places that have already got several stations, that just gets you to these places many people already go a bit faster, and not as fast as the airlines already do, when lots of towns are crying out for railway connection the government plans to spend billions of our money on building a railway that does not connect any new places, opening old routes will also cost billions, possibly less than HS2, and its at least where people actually do want to go to/from and it would relieve the current mainlines.

It is always worth repeating the same old story if people have forgotten it, you can learn from History

 

[HSTEd]

There is a reason the GCR closed and not the Midland - beyond the accusations of ex Midland managers wanting rid of it, which is that it doesn't actually serve many places that would not be served otherwise, and almost all of those are tiny villages or small towns that could never justify the cost of the scheme.

As to population growth not going on forever, it only has to go on for a few more years to washout the HS2 demand statistics.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Of Course re-opening the GCR is not the 'magic solution' there needs lots more to be done, but at least opening the old routes accesses more places that do not have a railway now, and that is my point, and they will take you to/from places that people do want to go to

I agree the London end needs to be addressed, Marylebone has a little extra capacity available, Euston does need to be re-built anyway, the old part of St Pancras could be worked upon, and it's a pity Broad Street was demolished and built over, so maybe we could use another London terminus, but what is HS2 planning?

Opening up old lines will add many more paths, and you will not need as many paths if you relieve the capacity of the mainlines by re-opening middle- distance 'relief' routes, however I do not think of them as relief routes, they are places where many people actually end up at, when they have completed their journey from the mainlines by bus or taxi

And the number of passengers in future will not rise infinitely, the British Isles can only home so many people, what that number is I don't know, but not infinite.

My Point is why open a new route with no stations other than the places that have already got several stations, that just gets you to these places many people already go a bit faster, and not as fast as the airlines already do, when lots of towns are crying out for railway connection the government plans to spend billions of our money on building a railway that does not connect any new places, opening old routes will also cost billions, possibly less than HS2, and its at least where people actually do want to go to/from and it would relieve the current mainlines.

It is always worth repeating the same old story if people have forgotten it, you can learn from History

Your assumption is that the vast majority of passenger demand to London is passengers who then travel away from London again. This is not the case. Something that is depressingly often overlooked by opponents to HS2 is that there are a lot more improvements happening on the classic networks than there are on HS2. At this very moment the East-West rail project is chugging along without fear of cancellation or NIMBY opposition and completely under the media radar, linking up at the very least the Great Western, Chiltern, West Coast and Midland main lines and almost certainly eventually the East Coast and Anglia lines as well (and indeed with the Electric Spine work, the South Western main line to top it all off). If you want to reopen lines to free up capacity on the north-south lines, there isn't much of a better one right now than this one! It connects up where people want to go where they might previously had travelled all the way to London and back, providing an electrified and double-track route for freight and passengers to eventually take advantage of the further capacity gains on classic lines from HS2.

The CrossCountry core network is the next in line after the Great Western for electrification, with the resulting journey time improvements and additional seats and services it entails. HS2 is intended to open in 2026, while the rail industry has only definitively planned its upgrade programmes until around 2019, so there are many more upgrades and indeed other line reopenings (such as the proposed Chinese investment in reopening the Stonebridge Railway to connect directly to HS2's Birmingham Interchange) which can happen in the meantime. The rolling programme of electrification across the country will also improve the quality of local, regional and intercity services. Today demand is suppressed across much of northern England, south-west England and south Wales as frequencies are low and quality is bad due to the cramped, slow and uncomfortable diesel stock which has to be used. Once these lines are electrified, the marginal cost of running faster, cleaner, longer and more frequent electric services drops precipitously, leading to many more journeys eventually ending up on the intercity rail networks and a greater need for the capacity relief that only HS2 can realistically bring. Without HS2, the classic lines will be under intense pressure and only the most HS2-like service pattern will be able to survive, so places such as Watford and Milton Keynes will see their level of service decrease and places such as Shrewsbury won't even have a chance to have a direct London service, thus making the rail network worse than it is today.

HS2 should be seen as a very long-term upgrade of our rail network, based in the reality that such a long-term upgrade of the existing lines is no longer a better solution than simply building a new line altogether. That is the fundamental reality of the situation and that is why all three parties support it - Ed Balls is just trying to steal political points from the public. Something to remember again is that the report which identified the need for a new line had a 20-year timescale: today the country is 25% through the timescale of this report but it has seen 40% of the passenger growth. Even if growth starts to slowly taper off it is still exponential, and since rail is by far the most sustainable mode of intercity travel versus car and air it can only gain more in future.

 

[Bright Boy]

Your assumption is that the vast majority of passenger demand to London is passengers who then travel away from London again. This is not the case. Something that is depressingly often overlooked by opponents to HS2 is that there are a lot more improvements happening on the classic networks than there are on HS2. At this very moment the East-West rail project is chugging along without fear of cancellation or NIMBY opposition and completely under the media radar, linking up at the very least the Great Western, Chiltern, West Coast and Midland main lines and almost certainly eventually the East Coast and Anglia lines as well (and indeed with the Electric Spine work, the South Western main line to top it all off). If you want to reopen lines to free up capacity on the north-south lines, there isn't much of a better one right now than this one! It connects up where people want to go where they might previously had travelled all the way to London and back, providing an electrified and double-track route for freight and passengers to eventually take advantage of the further capacity gains on classic lines from HS2.

The CrossCountry core network is the next in line after the Great Western for electrification, with the resulting journey time improvements and additional seats and services it entails. HS2 is intended to open in 2026, while the rail industry has only definitively planned its upgrade programmes until around 2019, so there are many more upgrades and indeed other line reopenings (such as the proposed Chinese investment in reopening the Stonebridge Railway to connect directly to HS2's Birmingham Interchange) which can happen in the meantime. The rolling programme of electrification across the country will also improve the quality of local, regional and intercity services. Today demand is suppressed across much of northern England, south-west England and south Wales as frequencies are low and quality is bad due to the cramped, slow and uncomfortable diesel stock which has to be used. Once these lines are electrified, the marginal cost of running faster, cleaner, longer and more frequent electric services drops precipitously, leading to many more journeys eventually ending up on the intercity rail networks and a greater need for the capacity relief that only HS2 can realistically bring. Without HS2, the classic lines will be under intense pressure and only the most HS2-like service pattern will be able to survive, so places such as Watford and Milton Keynes will see their level of service decrease and places such as Shrewsbury won't even have a chance to have a direct London service, thus making the rail network worse than it is today.

HS2 should be seen as a very long-term upgrade of our rail network, based in the reality that such a long-term upgrade of the existing lines is no longer a better solution than simply building a new line altogether. That is the fundamental reality of the situation and that is why all three parties support it - Ed Balls is just trying to steal political points from the public. Something to remember again is that the report which identified the need for a new line had a 20-year timescale: today the country is 25% through the timescale of this report but it has seen 40% of the passenger growth. Even if growth starts to slowly taper off it is still exponential, and since rail is by far the most sustainable mode of intercity travel versus car and air it can only gain more in future.

I agree with a lot of what you say, we do need another line, the widespread electrification, east-west and electric spine lines are a very good step in the right direction, and opening up old lines will put more strain on the main lines up to a point, but when more cross country lines and up/down lines are open it will spread the strain over a wider area.

HS2 will undoubtedly happen, expensive as it is, and it is good that they are opening more railways whether new or old, I just believe that it would be better and possibly cheaper with the old GCR and other lines, I know that most of the places the GCR served have already got stations,

but for example:- if someone from Rugby wants to travel to Nottingham they would have to use the WCML (London Midland) to Nuneaton, cross-country (EMT) to Leicester then MML to Nottingham, adding congestion to the WCML and MML and adding passengers to the already overcrowded East Midland cross-country trains, HS2 will not help this situation and many other travel routes, it will take some of the strain from the WCML, ECML and MML, but how much, will the HS2 trains be cheap to travel on ?, how many people are going to pay the extra from London - Birmingham/Manchester/Leeds, just first class and business executives? and HS2 will not help the East Midland or any other cross country routes

I agree that you cannot just keep upgrading the current mainlines, not just about expense, it is also impractical, we either need new lines or old lines re-opened

But my concern is about the many (some small yes) towns or even suburbs of cities that have grown, basically anywhere there are large enough populations that are without or too far from a railway connection and need one, want one and deserve one. I believe that all these places should have a railway before a super-fast one from/too large centres that already have Inter-City trains/Airlines/Bargain Coaches

 

[Geezertronic]

Rugby to Nottingham can be done with one change at either Tamworth or Birmingham New Street. Both use LM/VT and XC

 

[Bright Boy]

Rugby to Nottingham can be done with one change at either Tamworth or Birmingham New Street. Both use LM/VT and XC

Same problem, Longer Journey, also need to change stations at Tamworth and 5 min+ wait at Derby

 

[Philip Elliott]

Rugby to Nottingham can be done with one change at either Tamworth or Birmingham New Street. Both use LM/VT and XC

Typical journey time of 100 minutes versus 40-50 minutes direct via the GC or about 60 minutes by car.

No doubt pre-1977 you wouldn't have supported re-opening Leamington - Coventry to passengers "as you can go via Birmingham". Funnily enough not many did.:roll:

 

[NotATrainspott]

When reopening the GCR is brought up as a strategic alternative to HS2 it gets shot down for the arguments I've already stated. However, that is not to say that it might not have some merit in reopening as a local or regional line, which it would be far better suited to than as a purely LDHS line to connect the cities of Britain. The costs of reopening a line to <=160km/h electrified double-track standard on a mostly preserved alignment with several new DDA-compliant stations is known from Airdrie-Bathgate (connecting Glasgow's West-East electrified network to Edinburgh) and it has been a great success. Such a slower route connect up cities via towns currently unserved by rail would obviously not attract vast numbers of intercity travellers but would add an additional diversionary route, increase the rail catchment area for the entire network and reduce dependencies on cars. HS2 happily shares the former GCR alignment with the Chiltern line between Aylesbury and Calvert, where the east-west rail scheme crosses over and the infrastructure maintenance depot for HS2 is located.

 

[Bright Boy]

Typical journey time of 100 minutes versus 40-50 minutes direct via the GC or about 60 minutes by car.

No doubt pre-1977 you wouldn't have supported re-opening Leamington - Coventry to passengers "as you can go via Birmingham". Funnily enough not many did.:roll:

Well Put

 

[HSTEd]

The GCR is of no use a regional line because it doesn't actually go anywhere which needs such a connection.
Vast sections of its route have also been obliterated - how do you plan to get through Leicester?

If you want improved regional connectivity in the midlands there are far superior schemes to achieve it than trying to breath life into the shatered remains of a pointless line that simply duplicated several others.

 

[Bright Boy]

The GCR is of no use a regional line because it doesn't actually go anywhere which needs such a connection.
Vast sections of its route have also been obliterated - how do you plan to get through Leicester?

If you want improved regional connectivity in the midlands there are far superior schemes to achieve it than trying to breath life into the shatered remains of a pointless line that simply duplicated several others.

HS2 duplicates Euston - Birmingham/Manchester

 

[NSEFAN]

HS2 duplicates Euston - Birmingham/Manchester

Not exactly, HS2 is supposed to extract the bulk of intercity traffic from the existing WCML, giving the capacity increase desired. The GCR only duplicated the WCML as far as Rugby before heading off via Leicester and Sheffield to get to Manchester, so it would largely be serving a different market if reopened.

Another reason why HS2 is being proposed in its current form is to try and dig into the domestic flight market. Reusing the old GCR arrangement wouldn't allow for the high speed required to bring down journey times to the point that the train can seriously compete with planes. You'd need to build the railway from scratch in order to acheive this, in which case why not use a better suited route rather than sticking with an old one?

Finally, various sections of the former GCR are currently operational (and busy) railways, so you would have the same problem of disruption during construction if you were to reopen it. I wouldn't mind seeing express trains return to the Marylebone-Aylesbury route, but this line is now heavily used as a commuter route, so express trains would just get in the way as they do on the southern WCML.

 

[Geezertronic]

Typical journey time of 100 minutes versus 40-50 minutes direct via the GC or about 60 minutes by car.

No doubt pre-1977 you wouldn't have supported re-opening Leamington - Coventry to passengers "as you can go via Birmingham". Funnily enough not many did.:roll:

Since I was replying to a post that suggested two changes were required, I hardly think it is your place to suggest what I would have supported or not. The fact is that Rugby to Nottingham can be done with one change either at Tamworth or Birmingham New Street and avoids using EMT. The fact that the journey by car seems to be quicker very much depends on the time of day and the M1. The GC time is irrelevant since the line no longer exists

 

[Oscar]

A new railway connecting the Northampton and Leicester areas could improve a strategically important link between stations on the southern WCML / Oxford/Swindon/Reading via East-West Rail and the East Midlands. This could attract traffic away from the M1, and would be a project of a very different nature to HS2.

 

[joeykins82]

If you wanted to maximise usage you'd connect Northampton to Wellingborough and (ideally) a new chord/curve* to run from Corby to Peterborough via Stamford. Public transport within Northamptonshire is pretty dire, and the A45 and A43 are busy pretty much all of the time.

Run 1tph local Bletchley/Northampton to Leicester via Corby and Melton Mowbray, and 1tph XC-esque from somewhere beyond Oxford (Reading/Bristol/Southampton?) to somewhere beyond Peterborough (Cambridge/Stansted/Norwich/Ipswich?).

Presumably though that'd only be possible with HS2 built and the WCML paths freed up.

*not sure on the correct term here

 

[Oscar]

I was thinking more something along the lines of Reading - Oxford - Milton Keynes (as already proposed for East-West Rail) - Northampton - Wellingbrough - Kettering - Leicester - (Derby / Nottingham). This would link a lot of urban areas and limit the need to travel via London / Birmingham. East-West Rail should already provide services to/from Cambridge and East Anglia and travel between Oxford/Milton Keynes/Northampton and Peterborough should be possible via Bedford using East-West Rail and changing somewhere on the ECML.

 

[NotATrainspott]

The GCR is of no use a regional line because it doesn't actually go anywhere which needs such a connection.
Vast sections of its route have also been obliterated - how do you plan to get through Leicester?

If you want improved regional connectivity in the midlands there are far superior schemes to achieve it than trying to breath life into the shatered remains of a pointless line that simply duplicated several others.

I wouldn't suggest reopening the entire route as it was, but if there are sections where it can be relatively easily reopened and then connected into existing lines and stations where it is difficult to reopen then hypothetically there could be some merit in considering it. I wanted to point this out because the arguments Bright Boy put forward about connecting towns and cities along the GCR with a reopened line are not completely without merit for a local/regional line. Offering to reopen local or regional lines along the general route of HS2 could help to soften the impact of having the construction work but no station, something only made possible by the capacity relief from HS2 on classic lines.

 

[Bright Boy]

Unfortunately the cost of building HS2 and re-opening more local/middle distance lines would be too much of an hurdle for our government. I know they are planning on re-opening the east-west line, but that is just a tempter.

If they were given that choice, they would always choose HS2 or something similar, primarily because they are not interested in serving the majority of peoples needs, in the regions, they are more interested in serving themselves an their business friends, now that MP's expenses come under more scrutiny they are having a difficult time of fiddling the figures with second homes, and they don't like "mixing" it with normal working class people on busy trains for a long journey, so now they want a faster, more exclusive train where they don't have to share first class when the train is packed, why do you think this extremely expensive project got through parliament?, why they all support it and why they have turned down all the objections.

They will not be concerned with how much a ticket costs, because they can claim it all back in their expenses, and use the taxpayers money to build it !, most of the tax of course being paid by working class people.

Most of the passengers these trains will be taking off the WCML/MML/ECML will be MP's, business executives and their friends, so it will not benefit the rest of the railway network much, though they will always claim otherwise.

And how difficult is it to re-open local lines ? Can't be that hard, The Scottish Parliament seems to be able to mange and with less money than our government !!

 

[jon0844]

Most of the passengers these trains will be taking off the WCML/MML/ECML will be MP's, business executives and their friends, so it will not benefit the rest of the railway network much, though they will always claim otherwise.

Wow, that argument again.

Yes, HS2 is built purely for MPs and bankers to get around (and their rich friends). All quaffing champagne and singing songs about the plebs I'll bet. Those nasty people going around on 400 metre trains all to themselves because there's no demand from anyone else.

I'm glad you've exposed the conspiracy!

Fact*: Absolutely nobody else will benefit from a high speed, high capacity railway line - either those using HS2 itself or the improved local services that can now run without having to fit around current Intercity services.

Let's close this thread - there's nothing more to discuss.

* maybe

 

[Bright Boy]

Wow, that argument again.

Yes, HS2 is built purely for MPs and bankers to get around (and their rich friends). All quaffing champagne and singing songs about the plebs I'll bet. Those nasty people going around on 400 metre trains all to themselves because there's no demand from anyone else.

I'm glad you've exposed the conspiracy!

Fact*: Absolutely nobody else will benefit from a high speed, high capacity railway line - either those using HS2 itself or the improved local services that can now run without having to fit around current Intercity services.

Let's close this thread - there's nothing more to discuss.

* maybe

Sarcasm, but will you be paying the extra cost for a ticket on HS2, or will you be mixing it with everyone else on the regular trains with a cheap ticket?