Could we divert HS2 to terminate at London Paddington instead.

[stadler]

Could we simply cancel the London Euston part of HS2 and divert it in to London Paddington instead. There has been so much talk that the HS2 trains will be terminated at Old Oak Common and that the London Euston section will be cancelled or open much later than the rest if it does go ahead. So this has me wondering if running HS2 in to London Paddington instead would be a better option. Old Oak Common is already very close to London Paddington so it seems a simple solution.

London Paddington has had so much more spare platform capacity since the Elizabeth Line opened. You no longer have all of those GWR suburban services as the Elizabeth Line has replaced them. Also you could easily scrap the Heathrow Express and replace it with more Elizabeth Line services which would give another two platforms to use. So it might be possible to make it work with current platforms especially if some GWR turnaround times were tightened too.

I was just talking to someone about HS2 the other day and they mentioned diverting to London Paddington could be an option so it had me wondering why this has not officially been considered as an option. So i was just wondering whether this would be possible or if there any obstacles that would make this difficult. I just thought it sounded like a very good idea considering that the London Euston plans are now paused and looking less likely. It certainly sounds like a much cheaper and easier option to ensure that HS2 still runs in to a Central London station.

 

[The Planner]

Could we simply cancel the London Euston part of HS2 and divert it in to London Paddington instead. There has been so much talk that the HS2 trains will be terminated at Old Oak Common and that the London Euston section will be cancelled or open much later than the rest if it does go ahead. So this has me wondering if running HS2 in to London Paddington instead would be a better option. Old Oak Common is already very close to London Paddington so it seems a simple solution.

London Paddington has had so much more spare platform capacity since the Elizabeth Line opened. You no longer have all of those GWR suburban services as the Elizabeth Line has replaced them. Also you could easily scrap the Heathrow Express and replace it with more Elizabeth Line services which would give another two platforms to use. So it might be possible to make it work with current platforms especially if some GWR turnaround times were tightened too.

I was just talking to someone about HS2 the other day and they mentioned diverting to London Paddington could be an option so it had me wondering why this has not officially been considered as an option. So i was just wondering whether this would be possible or if there any obstacles that would make this difficult. I just thought it sounded like a very good idea considering that the London Euston plans are now paused and looking less likely. It certainly sounds like a much cheaper and easier option to ensure that HS2 still runs in to a Central London station.

What are you assuming for "HS2" though? just phase 1 and the 7 or 8tph or the wider scheme? I don't think its safe to assume Paddington can handle that many departures with the platform capacity it has. What lines are the HS2 trains using, as they aren't going to fit on the reliefs.

 

[swt_passenger]

No. There is zero space for additional platforms, and it is not possible to link the low level tunnelled lines at OOC to the surface tracks. I’ll try and find a link to the last discussion, it came up in a few threads but here’s a concise reply from @Bald Rick:

HS2 Old Oak Common

Couldn’t a connection be built at OOC to the West London Line to allow trains access down to Waterloo, terminating at the old Eurostar platforms? Height difference is insurmountable as already mentioned in this and numerous other earlier threads. It would also require something more like a 90°...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[zwk500]

Could we simply

No. Nothing is 'simple' with HS2.

cancel the London Euston part of HS2 and divert it in to London Paddington instead. There has been so much talk that the HS2 trains will be terminated at Old Oak Common and that the London Euston section will be cancelled or open much later than the rest if it does go ahead. So this has me wondering if running HS2 in to London Paddington instead would be a better option. Old Oak Common is already very close to London Paddington so it seems a simple solution.

As mentioned in the linked thread, OOC is vertically extremely far away from London Paddington for HS2 trains. Also now the building works are already beyond the point of any major changes to the structural design being feasible.

 

[Halifaxlad]

Can Paddington handle 400m long trains ?

The most expensive bit of Euston is the tunnels, for which the TBMS are being built for I believe.

The land at Euston has already been acquired and prepared.

Really what we want to do is to build the cheapest possible platforms at Euston!

 

[Trainbike46]

During the design phase, many options for the terminus for HS2 were considered. Paddington was one of the options, which wasn't selected, and as I understand for good reason. Ever since then, it has become more complicated to change the terminus, because the land was acquired and cleared, OOC construction was started, etc.

Almost everything is possible if you throw enough money at it, but switching from Euston Paddington now would massively increase cost, reduce benefits and delay the project even further, and is therefore a terrible idea

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Interestingly I think this was BR's Intercity 250 plan for a new high-speed line from Seer Green northwards.

 

[CW2]

The combination of OOC and Euston provides a good range of onward connections to other parts of London. Euston connects into Northern and Victoria Lines covering the North-South axis. OOC connects into GWML, Heathrow, and Crossrail, i.e. primarily East-West axis.

Abandoning Euston and diverting to Paddington would lose you the North-South connections, and duplicate the East-West ones already provided at OOC.

 

[Halifaxlad]

Whats amusing if we dont tunnel towards London is that you can certainly expect a tunnel towards Manchester despite the fact tunnelling towards Euston is more value for money!

 

[Bald Rick]

The most expensive bit of Euston is the tunnels, for which the TBMS are being built for I believe.

The tunnels are cheap and relatively easy!

The most expensive bit is buidling the station itself.

The land at Euston has already been acquired and prepared.

This was the second most expensive bit.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

No. There is zero space for additional platforms, and it is not possible to link the low level tunnelled lines at OOC to the surface tracks. I’ll try and find a link to the last discussion, it came up in a few threads but here’s a concise reply from @Bald Rick:

HS2 Old Oak Common

Couldn’t a connection be built at OOC to the West London Line to allow trains access down to Waterloo, terminating at the old Eurostar platforms? Height difference is insurmountable as already mentioned in this and numerous other earlier threads. It would also require something more like a 90°...

www.railforums.co.uk

No. Nothing is 'simple' with HS2.

As mentioned in the linked thread, OOC is vertically extremely far away from London Paddington for HS2 trains. Also now the building works are already beyond the point of any major changes to the structural design being feasible.

Correct. No is the correct answer.

Of course anything is possible with enough time, money and political will but Why?

 

[Halifaxlad]

The most expensive bit is buidling the station itself.

Only if you build a big fancy station building uneccessary.

Precast concrete sections, infill and tarmac is hardly more expensive than the 2 tunnels to it!

 

[Uncle Buck]

Only if you build a big fancy station building uneccessary.

Precast concrete sections, infill and tarmac is hardly more expensive than the 2 tunnels to it!

HS2 should have been built as an extension of HS1 and should have run under central London entirely in tunnels, with platforms underneath either King’s Cross-St. Pancras or Euston.

 

[JamesT]

HS2 should have been built as an extension of HS1 and should have run under central London entirely in tunnels, with platforms underneath either King’s Cross-St. Pancras or Euston.

Could HS1 take all the trains from HS2? Is Kent that much of a draw?

 

[JonathanH]

HS2 should have been built as an extension of HS1 and should have run under central London entirely in tunnels, with platforms underneath either King’s Cross-St. Pancras or Euston.

That wouldn't have been cheaper to build. If 18tph HS2 had happened, there wouldn't be capacity on HS1 for that number of services either.

 

[DanNCL]

Could HS1 take all the trains from HS2? Is Kent that much of a draw?

It wouldn’t need to as you’d still have had the ability to terminate trains from both directions in Central London. The main selling point of a HS1-HS2 direct link is that it would have enabled direct Paris-Birmingham/Manchester services with journey times competitive with flying; Gare du Nord - Curzon Street for example would have been doable in as little as 3 hours, and being entirely on high speed line would have been able to use just about any standardised European High Speed train without any modification to run in the UK.

 

[Bald Rick]

Only if you build a big fancy station building uneccessary.

Precast concrete sections, infill and tarmac is hardly more expensive than the 2 tunnels to it!

Can I check how many stations you have been involved in building?

HS2 should have been built as an extension of HS1 and should have run under central London entirely in tunnels, with platforms underneath either King’s Cross-St. Pancras or Euston.

Physically impossible, without demolishing a wide swathe of properties on or near the Euston Road.

 

[Uncle Buck]

We all know that the purpose of HS2 is to increase capacity, rather than speed per se. I’ve argued a number of times on this forum that high-speed lines should operate as Crossrail now does to the Tube or as the motorways do to dual-carriageway A-roads. That is, rather than try and link London and the provincial cities as quickly as possible, they should seek to connect as many main lines as possible. (The Arup plan for a line roughly following the M1 has always struck me as a better route for a high speed line for this reason).

If you accept this as the rationale for high speed rail, then why wouldn’t you want to extend this network to Dover, connecting as you would the county of Kent (population ##) and three of the main lines out of London (the Great Eastern, Chatham and South-Eastern).

For instance, at the present time if you are travelling say from Ipswich to Birmingham you either go via the scrum of central London or you trundle along slow, diesel lines to Cambridge then along more of the same to Birmingham, in a journey lasting in either case between three and four hours*. On this proposal, you would travel only as far as Stratford, switch onto a high-speed express, traverse London in an tunnel, and be deposited in central Birmingham. My route rough estimate says this journey would take about two hours** This would certainly beat driving too***.

It would almost certainly still be necessary to have expresses running northbound out of a London terminal (presumably St. Pancras) to the major provincial terminals and with even more limited stops (maybe just OOC and Birmingham only). The corresponding paths this would free up on the southbound section of the high speed line would be used by expresses to the Continent. (This would have the minor advantage of rendering un-necessary the reconstruction of Euston, which would essentially become a regional terminal).

It would indeed be possible to run Regionsl Eurostar services through this line, although I am personally sceptical of their chances of success. Perhaps more importantly, freight could be moved through this line at night, from northern England to the Continent.

I am of course aware that this is speculative and therefore as others have said it might be prohibitively expensive. Perhaps a better way of putting it might be that this is the plan that should have been chosen when HS2 was being planned about fifteen years ago. It would hardly have been any worse than what we have now!

*=according to the Trainline app
**= according to Trainline: Ipswich to Stratford 57min, Stratford to St. Pancras 7min, then 45 minutes Euston to Birmingham; then including an incredibly generous ten minutes for the section between St. Pancras and Euston.
***=2hr32 according to Google Maps- so at present driving is a no-brainer.

 

[Irascible]

Is there even any room for more tunnels under central London? I sometimes wonder how half of the place even manages to stay upright.