HS2: useful additions to attract more passengers?

[The Ham]

All of which will probably reduce substantially post-Covid 19. Very significant numbers of past commuters have now appreciated that their work can be completed remotely much of the time. Season ticket sales will plummet and the London peak overcrowding will reduce.

In the short term almost certainly, however there could well be other factors which come into play. For instance in the medium term there could be those who have "just" kept hold of their jobs may be included to look at ensuring that they can cut their costs at the drop of a hat. Which is where rail comes in as you just don't renew your season ticket, whilst cars have longer term costs (lease costs, insurance, etc.) which will still need to be paid if they are not being used.

I think the jury is still out. I think there will be a drop in people commuting all 5 days per week.

But commuting 2-4 days per week (depemding on individual circumstances) will establish itself as the norm...which makes doing a longer commute fewer times per week much more practical...the sort of distances HS2 will be practical for. Fewer season tickets, but more higher-yield daily or carnet-type tickets.

Especially if people can do the journey off-peak in at least one direction and make use of working time on the train. People won't generally want to cut off from face-to-face time in the office entirely. In some industrues, it is pretty much essential to foster the greatest creativity.

The other thing to consider is those households with more than one car, if two people work from home 2 or more days a week then rail may benefit.

As an example if it's 2 days a week at home for each person when their days could be that there's only one day where one car wouldn't be sufficient. As such rail might be used for that one day, however this would also likely result in other occasional rail travel.

Given that 80% of travel is done by road, whilst rail is 10%. As such even big dogs in rail could be offset by small changes in road use.

The other thing to consider is that air travel could well change, which could also benefit rail, especially HS2.

For instance Southampton to Manchester would drop from 4:00 to 2:45, which would potentially make rail a faster option than by air and certainly more frequent.

 

[Chester1]

It would be easier to sell a change of trains if Curzon Street was classed as the same station as Moor Street. They will be next to each other, linked by an elevated corridor and the HS2 station is partly on the road. It's not going to be much different than transferring between the main shed and platforms 13 and 14 at Piccadilly. If the Bordesley Chords are built then it would allow many Cross-country services to officially serve the HS2 Station.

 

[LesF]

1. The Economic Case for HS2 assumes the 3 Pendolinos per hour New St to Euston are cut to 1tph and it would extend to Liverpool. It's by cutting services like that they calculate a saving of £11bn. But West Midlands Combined Authority have bid to keep all 3.
2. Large proportions of HS2 passengers are forecast to be leisure travellers, those transferring from WCML and new travellers. Surprisingly small numbers are forecast to be transfers from road and air.
3. HS2 talk about "up to 18 tph". 20tph is possible - as long as they don't stop on the line! But stopping on short loops at WM interchange will ensure 18tph is never achieved.
4. HS2 was conceived as a segregated railway at UIC gauge to satisfy EU TSI's, i.e. so continental trains could run onto HS2 as part of the trans-European network. But 3 changes have rendered the thinking obsolete: the link from HS2 to HS1 has been abandoned so there cannot be through trains, HS2 have dropped their plan to have a mixture of UIC gauge and UK gauge trains in favour of UK gauge only so the trains could have used existing stations, and thirdly we're leaving the EU so we no longer need to comply with their rules. Birmingham should not be served by a branch. Nor should anywhere else. Any new tracks should be fully integrated into the network to give several times the connectivity possible with HS2. That means through running, not termini.
5. Season ticket sales have dwindled and ought to die out completely. Instead we should have electronic carnets and variable fares according to the demand at various times of day. That would encourage passengers to use off-peak trains and encourage employers to allow flexible working hours. This will reduce peak demand and fill up off-peak trains.

 

[The Ham]

1. The Economic Case for HS2 assumes the 3 Pendolinos per hour New St to Euston are cut to 1tph and it would extend to Liverpool. It's by cutting services like that they calculate a saving of £11bn. But West Midlands Combined Authority have bid to keep all 3.

Could this be sure to the increased passenger growth which I highlighted above. One point which I didn't highlight was that although the overall growth in the business case was for 2.5% per year between London and Birmingham growth was expected to be 1% a year.

As such, the growth rate up to opening to phase 2 was expected to be +30% and we've already seen +80%. Therefore there's probably a good business case for retaining more than just one of those existing services.

As a case in point look at the extra passengers which use now use Coventry compared to a decade ago.

 

[si404]

Birmingham should not be served by a branch. Nor should anywhere else.

So trains will run London - Birmingham - East Midlands - Sheffield - Manchester - Liverpool - Preston - Leeds - York - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow, or short turns thereof? (the order of stations may be different). :P

The reason HS2 branches rather than runs through is that is massively saves on construction costs, keeps journey times down and the frequency (which isn't bottlenecked by the massively long platform loops for Birmingham Interchange station, but by the London/Chiltern tunnels and the spacing of vent shafts) is enough anyway to add on the few extra trains that branching requires.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do you also not think that it's right that 2 out of the 3 Avanti services to Birmingham terminate there, out of interest?

 

[Peter Kelford]

I think the jury is still out. I think there will be a drop in people commuting all 5 days per week.

But commuting 2-4 days per week (depemding on individual circumstances) will establish itself as the norm...which makes doing a longer commute fewer times per week much more practical...the sort of distances HS2 will be practical for. Fewer season tickets, but more higher-yield daily or carnet-type tickets.

Especially if people can do the journey off-peak in at least one direction and make use of working time on the train. People won't generally want to cut off from face-to-face time in the office entirely. In some industrues, it is pretty much essential to foster the greatest creativity.

Logically, that will not be as profitable. Not all Birmingham-London trains are chock-full of passengers.

 

[edwin_m]

3. HS2 talk about "up to 18 tph". 20tph is possible - as long as they don't stop on the line! But stopping on short loops at WM interchange will ensure 18tph is never achieved.

The loops are long enough that the 225km/h points at each end can be passed at that speed. At the northern end the four-track section formed by these loops splits with two tracks going towards Crewe and two towards East Midlands, so parallel moves are possible.

 

[LesF]

Do you also not think that it's right that 2 out of the 3 Avanti services to Birmingham terminate there, out of interest?

The last time I looked (and I haven't been near a train this year) 2 of the 3tph Avanti Euston-Birmingham ran past New St, one to Edinburgh/Glasgow alternate hours, the other a 2x5-car Voyager running on to Shrewsbury. The capacity of New St will be increased when all services run through instead of reversing there, some of them standing for half an hour. LNWR tried running more of their 350 Desiros through New St but it didn't work. The timetable fell apart. Perhaps they forgot to include recovery time. The prize for through running, when it's made to work, is vastly increased connectivity.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Perhaps a tunnelled Curzon Street for through services? So a doubled level station? I doubt there would be value in only going as far as Bromsgrove its either Bristol or nowt.

Yes, that's the solution I could imagine being proposed in 10-20 years' time once demand for HS2 to extend to the SW builds up. It fits in a way because - just looking at population levels, Birmingham will see many more HS2 trains to the North than it could probably support to the SW, so there will still be a strong place for the above-ground terminating platforms for Birmingham-North/London trains. And the tunnel continuing under Birmingham would nicely work around the problem of congestion and competing with metro trains on the 2-track line to Kings Norton - which is a problem that's going to have to be solved at some point anyway.

The question will be, will the (not inconsiderable) cost of all that tunneling and building - I would guess, four underground platforms - be considered good value versus running a South-Western spur towards Birmingham Interchange (probably massively cheaper to build but brings in problems of its own in dealing with conflicting moves and potentially less useful to passengers).

 

[Llandudno]

Lots of speculation, is it worth worrying about?

I can’t see HS2 ever being built, certainly the section north of Birmingham!

 

[The Ham]

Lots of speculation, is it worth worrying about?

I can’t see HS2 ever being built, certainly the section north of Birmingham!

Why do you think that?

The latest rail figures for the region's shows that rail growth has outstripped the productions to the extent that even if it takes to the opening of Phase 1 to get to 87% of the pre Covid-19 rail usage that we'd still be on track for the rail usage required to justify building phase 1.



Ah, but what about how the economy will be hit hard by this? Well that's going to impact on car usage way more than rail usage. Which is likely to result in households trying to have fewer cars. That's likely to mean that some additional journeys are undertaken by rail.

Whilst that will harm rail travel it's likely to harm road travel a lot more.

Anyway the government will be looking for infrastructure projects to build to enhance the economy. With road usage likely to be hit hard, meaning that many road schemes are unlikely to be needed, is much more likely that rail projects will get the go ahead. There are few other rail schemes which are shovel ready.

In fact chances are road schemes are more likely to be focused on better cycling/walking facilities as people realise how much nicer it is without so many cars on the roads. This is the case even though the number of deliveries being made have jumped up that the overall number of vehicle movements have dropped significantly.

Once people have been forced to accept deliveries for a lot of what they did in the past then chances are they'll carry on using them. Especially if they opt to work from home at least some of the time.

Once HS2 is built then it can be filled with passengers paying a small amount of money to pay the running costs of it.

As I and others have pointed out in the past the cost of running HS2 trains will be less per passenger than running the existing services.

This is due to needing fewer staff to run the same number services (as each service doesn't take as long to get from one end to the other). I've also shown that longer trains also don't mean higher lease costs if their journey times are shorter.

Likewise with more seats per train it means that the per seat cost is significantly less.

Also with an expected 100 million passengers a year using HS2 services over a 60 year period the cost per passenger (and that's not a true picture as some of the costs would be paid through extra taxes, as well as having an asset with a value in 60 years time which can be funded from future ticket sales) is no more than £20 (unless you start adding in other public transport schemes so that we get the best value out of HS2 without counting any of the benefits of those schemes).

 

[Llandudno]

Why do you think that?

The latest rail figures for the region's shows that rail growth has outstripped the productions to the extent that even if it takes to the opening of Phase 1 to get to 87% of the pre Covid-19 rail usage that we'd still be on track for the rail usage required to justify building phase 1.

View attachment 76573

Ah, but what about how the economy will be hit hard by this? Well that's going to impact on car usage way more than rail usage. Which is likely to result in households trying to have fewer cars. That's likely to mean that some additional journeys are undertaken by rail.

Whilst that will harm rail travel it's likely to harm road travel a lot more.

Anyway the government will be looking for infrastructure projects to build to enhance the economy. With road usage likely to be hit hard, meaning that many road schemes are unlikely to be needed, is much more likely that rail projects will get the go ahead. There are few other rail schemes which are shovel ready.

In fact chances are road schemes are more likely to be focused on better cycling/walking facilities as people realise how much nicer it is without so many cars on the roads. This is the case even though the number of deliveries being made have jumped up that the overall number of vehicle movements have dropped significantly.

Once people have been forced to accept deliveries for a lot of what they did in the past then chances are they'll carry on using them. Especially if they opt to work from home at least some of the time.

Once HS2 is built then it can be filled with passengers paying a small amount of money to pay the running costs of it.

As I and others have pointed out in the past the cost of running HS2 trains will be less per passenger than running the existing services.

This is due to needing fewer staff to run the same number services (as each service doesn't take as long to get from one end to the other). I've also shown that longer trains also don't mean higher lease costs if their journey times are shorter.

Likewise with more seats per train it means that the per seat cost is significantly less.

Also with an expected 100 million passengers a year using HS2 services over a 60 year period the cost per passenger (and that's not a true picture as some of the costs would be paid through extra taxes, as well as having an asset with a value in 60 years time which can be funded from future ticket sales) is no more than £20 (unless you start adding in other public transport schemes so that we get the best value out of HS2 without counting any of the benefits of those schemes).

I hear what you are saying and I agree with most of it and I think HS2 and HS3 should be built.

But after Coronavirus I don’t think there will be the political will.

Yes we will need major infrastructure projects to get the country back on its feet, but building more hospitals will gain more brownie points with the electorate...

 

[The Planner]

The last time I looked (and I haven't been near a train this year) 2 of the 3tph Avanti Euston-Birmingham ran past New St, one to Edinburgh/Glasgow alternate hours, the other a 2x5-car Voyager running on to Shrewsbury. The capacity of New St will be increased when all services run through instead of reversing there, some of them standing for half an hour. LNWR tried running more of their 350 Desiros through New St but it didn't work. The timetable fell apart. Perhaps they forgot to include recovery time. The prize for through running, when it's made to work, is vastly increased connectivity.

Shrewsbury doesn't get anywhere near that level of Avanti service. Its a token extension of a couple of trains.

 

[The Planner]

The question will be, will the (not inconsiderable) cost of all that tunneling and building - I would guess, four underground platforms - be considered good value versus running a South-Western spur towards Birmingham Interchange (probably massively cheaper to build but brings in problems of its own in dealing with conflicting moves and potentially less useful to passengers).

Would be a very deep station then unless you somehow manage to avoid New St in the process. If you extend the current HS2 line it runs pretty much directly into the New St footprint.

 

[Meerkat]

If you had that pot of gold...
Tunnel from Kings Norton to Washwood Heath area, connecting into HS2 and Classic lines.
Double ended underground station incorporating a moving walkway, connecting New Street and Curzon Street.
Would it need more than 2 platforms?
Manchester/Leeds to Cardiff/Bristol directions plus a few Hereford/Worcester to Derby/Leicester directions.
There isn’t enough capacity or business to bother sending too much southwest.....

 

[Esker-pades]

The last time I looked (and I haven't been near a train this year) 2 of the 3tph Avanti Euston-Birmingham ran past New St, one to Edinburgh/Glasgow alternate hours, the other a 2x5-car Voyager running on to Shrewsbury. The capacity of New St will be increased when all services run through instead of reversing there, some of them standing for half an hour. LNWR tried running more of their 350 Desiros through New St but it didn't work. The timetable fell apart. Perhaps they forgot to include recovery time. The prize for through running, when it's made to work, is vastly increased connectivity.

Shrewsbury is only served twice per day by Avanti services.

 

[HSTEd]

Connection from the South End of the Manchester Airport HS2 station to the Mid Cheshire line.
Combined with a short metrolink extension to Ashley it solves the Mid Cheshire line problem.

The HS2 Manchester approach will have plenty of capacity and a bi-modal unit with relatively good electric performance could run the trains via the Airport station rather than the long traipse through Stockport and the problematic section through Altrincham that can be rationalised.

I think it would also be time competitive with the normal Manchester-Chester route, which means that the ATW service acn be diverted off the Castlefield corridor without sacrificing an Airport connection.

 

[Meerkat]

The HS2 Manchester approach will have plenty of capacity

Not if it is part of NPR....

 

[HSTEd]

Not if it is part of NPR....

Even then it is unlikely to saturate capacity on the route.
The proposal for only a two platform NPR station pretty much guarantees that.

 

[ABB125]

My first thought for a south-west extension of HS2 would be to build a sort-of "high speed Camp Hill line", ie trains reverse out of Curzon Street onto a new line that roughly follows* the Camp Hill route. Indeed, perhaps if there are going to be through services prior to the construction of a new line, a similar connection could be build to the existing Camp Hill line.
The suggestion of a new line from the south west meeting HS2 at Birmingham Interchange initially seems like a large dog-leg, but having looked at the map it doesn't actually appear to be.
My other suggestion would be for the eastern branch to split into two, somewhere south of Sheffield, with one branch ending up joining onto the ECML to the north of Doncaster (for HS2 trains to York and beyond), which would receive targeted upgrades (am I right in thinking that the Selby bypass is built for speeds greater than 125mph (perhaps 160mph?), so would be easy to upgrade?). The other branch would become part of NPR and go through central Sheffield on a new (expensive!) alignment and on to a new station in Leeds (with the ability to continue on to York and beyond).

*Obviously, detailed design would be needed, and no doubt following the Camp Hill line would be difficult.

 

[6Gman]

I hear what you are saying and I agree with most of it and I think HS2 and HS3 should be built.

But after Coronavirus I don’t think there will be the political will.

Yes we will need major infrastructure projects to get the country back on its feet, but building more hospitals will gain more brownie points with the electorate...

But hospital patients don't pay fares.

 

[JonathanH]

But hospital patients don't pay fares.

Maybe people would be prepared to pay 10 pence in the pound extra in tax for those hospitals.

 

[LesF]

Notice to proceed with HS2 has been issued today.

 

[D365]

Notice to proceed with HS2 has been issued today.

Does that mean that we can finally end the “My Idea For” discussions about HS2 Phase 1?

 

[BayPaul]

My first thought for a south-west extension of HS2 would be to build a sort-of "high speed Camp Hill line", ie trains reverse out of Curzon Street onto a new line that roughly follows* the Camp Hill route. Indeed, perhaps if there are going to be through services prior to the construction of a new line, a similar connection could be build to the existing Camp Hill line.

This does seem a strange omission from the plans. A connection from the line into Curzon Street from the Camp Hill lines across the western end of the freightliner depot looks relatively straightforward, and need not be high speed, as it is only a few hundred metres from the station, so the curve could be relatively tight. It is difficult to see the levels, but it looks possible for a line to fly over everything in the space available. By my measuring on rail map online only around 600m of additional double track railway would be needed, plus obviously junctions at both ends. Even with rail construction budgets, it can't be more than a few hundred million surely?

In my mind there are two major benefits. Firstly, the planned Birmingham - Manchester / Scotland / Leeds / Newcastle / Liverpool terminators could be extended into the Cross Country paths to Bristol / the South West / Bournemouth / Cardiff - giving much faster journey times than currently possible for these journeys. Obviously faster times than today would still be achievable with a change, but given it would include a change of station (admittedly only a short walk), the benefits would be less significant. Politically, this would be a big win, adding the South West and South Wales onto the HS2 (classic compatible) map, and would also be a genuine major competitivity improvement vs road / air times - Exeter to Manchester would be around 3h15 mins (2h30 classic lines to Birmingham, 5 mins in Curzon St, 40 mins HS2 to Manchester)

Secondly, and probably more importantly from a business case point of view, this change would have the potential to remove almost all long distance high speed services out of Birmingham New Street, leaving it and its lines clear for a major increase in the local and regional service network. It would also mean that services for example Birmingham - Stoke - Manchester could be optimised for these mid-distance semi-fast flows, rather than also needing to provide the intercity element.

Obviously the 1st advantage only really comes into play once Phase 2 is complete, but the second advantage would be relevant from Phase 1.

Sadly, the disadvantaged location would once again be Coventry, as rather than getting the 2nd Cross Country service re-routed in that direction, it is quite possible that it would make sense for both Reading services to go via Solihull and onto the Camp Hill line into Curzon Street, though there would be space for improvements to its local/regional services instead. If necessary, potentially a connection could be added towards Coventry as well as to the Camp Hill Line.

Obviously all trains would need to reverse in Curzon Street, but I don't see this as being a major disadvantage. Presumably the northern 2 or 3 platforms would be dedicated London platforms, leaving 4 southern platforms for 'through' services (and a few terminating if there are more services to the north than there are paths to the south). Assuming that bi-mode classic compatible high-speed trains were not an option, the obvious solution would be to loco-haul the sets south - the locos could sit at the inner end of the platforms in Curzon Street, so there would be minimal extra time to connect them if everything was designed with this in mind. There is obviously a capital penalty from running an expensive high-speed train in this way, but I suspect that the additional cost would be minor compared to the benefits, and by the time the extra trains are needed, it will be about the right time for replacement of Voyagers anyway.

For well under 1% budget increase for HS2, the benefits seem to be much bigger than the costs.

 

[BayPaul]

Does that mean that we can finally end the “My Idea For” discussions about HS2 Phase 1?

Oops - I guess my post kind of broke that one. Perhaps my idea can be HS2 Phase 1c??

 

[edwin_m]

This does seem a strange omission from the plans. A connection from the line into Curzon Street from the Camp Hill lines across the western end of the freightliner depot looks relatively straightforward, and need not be high speed, as it is only a few hundred metres from the station, so the curve could be relatively tight. It is difficult to see the levels, but it looks possible for a line to fly over everything in the space available. By my measuring on rail map online only around 600m of additional double track railway would be needed, plus obviously junctions at both ends. Even with rail construction budgets, it can't be more than a few hundred million surely?

In my mind there are two major benefits. Firstly, the planned Birmingham - Manchester / Scotland / Leeds / Newcastle / Liverpool terminators could be extended into the Cross Country paths to Bristol / the South West / Bournemouth / Cardiff - giving much faster journey times than currently possible for these journeys. Obviously faster times than today would still be achievable with a change, but given it would include a change of station (admittedly only a short walk), the benefits would be less significant. Politically, this would be a big win, adding the South West and South Wales onto the HS2 (classic compatible) map, and would also be a genuine major competitivity improvement vs road / air times - Exeter to Manchester would be around 3h15 mins (2h30 classic lines to Birmingham, 5 mins in Curzon St, 40 mins HS2 to Manchester)

Secondly, and probably more importantly from a business case point of view, this change would have the potential to remove almost all long distance high speed services out of Birmingham New Street, leaving it and its lines clear for a major increase in the local and regional service network. It would also mean that services for example Birmingham - Stoke - Manchester could be optimised for these mid-distance semi-fast flows, rather than also needing to provide the intercity element.

Obviously the 1st advantage only really comes into play once Phase 2 is complete, but the second advantage would be relevant from Phase 1.

Sadly, the disadvantaged location would once again be Coventry, as rather than getting the 2nd Cross Country service re-routed in that direction, it is quite possible that it would make sense for both Reading services to go via Solihull and onto the Camp Hill line into Curzon Street, though there would be space for improvements to its local/regional services instead. If necessary, potentially a connection could be added towards Coventry as well as to the Camp Hill Line.

Obviously all trains would need to reverse in Curzon Street, but I don't see this as being a major disadvantage. Presumably the northern 2 or 3 platforms would be dedicated London platforms, leaving 4 southern platforms for 'through' services (and a few terminating if there are more services to the north than there are paths to the south). Assuming that bi-mode classic compatible high-speed trains were not an option, the obvious solution would be to loco-haul the sets south - the locos could sit at the inner end of the platforms in Curzon Street, so there would be minimal extra time to connect them if everything was designed with this in mind. There is obviously a capital penalty from running an expensive high-speed train in this way, but I suspect that the additional cost would be minor compared to the benefits, and by the time the extra trains are needed, it will be about the right time for replacement of Voyagers anyway.

For well under 1% budget increase for HS2, the benefits seem to be much bigger than the costs.

Would the levels for this curve actually work though? The line would have to cross the curve from Water Orton direction into New Street, which diverges off the Camp Hill line slightly to the east. You can't fly over this unless you also fly over the Coventry line which both other lines go under, in which case I think a new connection would struggle to get down to the Camp Hill Line before its next road overbridge. The alternative of joining it east of its junction with the curve into New Street would create more conflict - and note also that local aspirations are for more services on the Camp Hill line in future.

Anything going from HS2 towards the south-west would require electrification at least as far as Bristol. This may be one reason it apparently hasn't been seriously considered.

 

[BayPaul]

Would the levels for this curve actually work though? The line would have to cross the curve from Water Orton direction into New Street, which diverges off the Camp Hill line slightly to the east. You can't fly over this unless you also fly over the Coventry line which both other lines go under, in which case I think a new connection would struggle to get down to the Camp Hill Line before its next road overbridge. The alternative of joining it east of its junction with the curve into New Street would create more conflict - and note also that local aspirations are for more services on the Camp Hill line in future.

Anything going from HS2 towards the south-west would require electrification at least as far as Bristol. This may be one reason it apparently hasn't been seriously considered.

For the levels, I don't know at all; my gut feel is that something would be achievable even if not exactly as I suggested but I agree it looks a bit tight. I guess I'll need to see if I can find suitable maps to I can work out some gradients. For the electrification - it would be ideal to electrify as far as Bristol, but I have proposed a loco-hauled solution that I can't see any fundamental problems with if bi-mode high-speed classic compatibles are not an option.

 

[Bald Rick]

Would the levels for this curve actually work though? The line would have to cross the curve from Water Orton direction into New Street, which diverges off the Camp Hill line slightly to the east. You can't fly over this unless you also fly over the Coventry line which both other lines go under, in which case I think a new connection would struggle to get down to the Camp Hill Line before its next road overbridge. The alternative of joining it east of its junction with the curve into New Street would create more conflict - and note also that local aspirations are for more services on the Camp Hill line in future.

Anything going from HS2 towards the south-west would require electrification at least as far as Bristol. This may be one reason it apparently hasn't been seriously considered.

For the levels, I don't know at all; my gut feel is that something would be achievable even if not exactly as I suggested but I agree it looks a bit tight. I guess I'll need to see if I can find suitable maps to I can work out some gradients. For the electrification - it would be ideal to electrify as far as Bristol, but I have proposed a loco-hauled solution that I can't see any fundamental problems with if bi-mode high-speed classic compatibles are not an option.

The levels will work, but....

1) The HS2 viaduct is high, very high. About 20 m above ground level as it passes the Freightliner depot. There isn’t enough space from the end of the ‘throat’ for such a curve to dive down, as the bridge over the Aston line and the River Rea are constraints. Therefore the connection must go up and over.

2) it would need to start almost exactly as the line crosses the Aston Line, and swing up to maximum gradient immediately in order for the ‘SW bound’ track to get sufficient height to cross HS2 itself. (Unless, of course, it is to be a flat Junction?)

3) this viaduct would be around 30m above ground level, then start curving round to cross HS2, the Freightliner depot and cranes (interesting challenge that, not sure if its even possible), then transition to maximum gradient down whilst crossing the Derby line, the WCML and the Camp Hill line before dropping down to meet it somewhere in the region of St Andrews. It would need the permanent closure of Garrsion Lane, St Andrew’s St and Emmeline St plus extensive demolition of residential property and probably (hopefully) St. Andrews itself.

It would be a bit easier if it was a flat junction at the Curzon St end, but still need residential demolition.