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The main cities of "the north of England" are generally speaking a bit over 2 hours away from their London terminus. That's actually pretty good.
Yes, if you're building a new line to increase capacity by getting the fast trains off the graph then building it to high speed standards makes sense, but actually the current journey times between the major cities and London are fine as they are. The argument for building the line at all hinges on capacity, and if the GCR hadn't closed (and the MML also remained) then there wouldn't be so much of a case to build HS2.
Of course the GCR wouldn't have been perfect for HS2, but it would certainly have provided adequate relief for the WCML, and if necessary a new link could have been built from Rugby to Birmingham to complete the capacity relief.
How would it have done this? Let's pretend the GC still exists. The section of the GC from central London to north of the Chilterns is a very busy commuter route, so you can forget that - you would have to have a new build route over that section anyway. North of there, HS2 actually follows the GC route until Brackley where it diverges westward. Instead you propose HS2 continues on the GC route to Rugby. This was a 90mph railway with curves to match. Any high speed route along that alignment would require the line to be realigned - essentially a new build. THEN, having done a dogleg at Rugby you have a new line to Birmingham which would have to somehow cut through or around Coventry. I'm not seeing the benefits tbh.
It's hard to imagine a sensible high speed rail network for the UK that avoids Birmingham. You rightly talk about rebalancing, but where exactly do you want high speed lines in the north to go? Leeds-Birmingham is one of the worst intercity routes in the country, and you're suggesting a high speed route from Leeds DOESN'T go to Birmingham?
How would it have done this? Let's pretend the GC still exists. The section of the GC from central London to north of the Chilterns is a very busy commuter route, so you can forget that - you would have to have a new build route over that section anyway. North of there, HS2 actually follows the GC route until Brackley where it diverges westward. Instead you propose HS2 continues on the GC route to Rugby. This was a 90mph railway with curves to match. Any high speed route along that alignment would require the line to be realigned - essentially a new build. THEN, having done a dogleg at Rugby you have a new line to Birmingham which would have to somehow cut through or around Coventry. I'm not seeing the benefits tbh.
I reiterate, it wasn't perfect but in the spirit of this thread, if it had been kept in full use then parts of it would have been useful towards capacity relief for the WCML, even if we assume a "dogleg" at Rugby (which is unnecessarily harsh description).
It's hard to imagine a sensible high speed rail network for the UK that avoids Birmingham. You rightly talk about rebalancing, but where exactly do you want high speed lines in the north to go? Leeds-Birmingham is one of the worst intercity routes in the country, and you're suggesting a high speed route from Leeds DOESN'T go to Birmingham?
Of course Birmingham to Leeds is in serious need of improvement, that's exactly my point about why Sunak was so fundamentally wrong to attempt to destroy all future attempts at providing such a link. But HS2 never did need to run to Leeds via Birmingham as the only route, it needed to run to Leeds as its No.1 priority, and then have a link from Birmingham running into it somewhere west of Nottingham. Parts of the GCR would have provided the WCML capacity relief to Birmingham, along with further investment which would have been a fraction of the disastrous HS2 budget. Birmingham to London is pretty quick already, high speed rail primarily benefits longer distances like to Manchester and Leeds, this focus on a new high speed route having to run via Birmingham as its first priority always was, and apparently still remains as blinkered thinking.
Would it have been possible for HS2 to have a chord allowing trains to move onto the GCML? London to Sheffield/Nottingham services could run up HS2 as far as this chord when they would continue their journey up the GCML. This could take services off the MML, but remove the need to build the Eastern Leg of HS2, but also wouldn’t interfere with all the local traffic in the Chilterns.
Would this have any appreciable advantage in terms of journey times?
By no means does this excuse the short-sightedness of closing it. Except in the eyes of the blinkered, who mistakenly believed that the car would provide the every land-based travel need for the entire population for the rest of time. This is Thatcherite thinking at it's worst, and I'm often dismayed that so many on this forum are so unsupportive of rail travel that they even entertain it.
Short-sighted? You can only judge by the standards of the time - and at the time there was route duplication, a rapidly declining use of rail and growth of motoring. It’s also worth pointing out that we have managed perfectly well in the near 60 years since without it.
There’s a mythology around the GC that isn’t supported by the reality. Enthusiasts go all misty-eyed over it, for little reason that I can see.
That could have worked, but was obviously not pursued as much as finding an alternative for St Pancras. The effect on London would have been worse too since Paddington is close to capacity without the GCR commuter trains coming in as well. I must confess I know less about the growth of GWR long distance services than those on the WCML though, so maybe there are slots that are now used by GWR long distance that could instead have been trains going onto the Great Central commuter land.
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The GCR London extension was built by a private company to compete with other private companies, and served not one single place of any significance that did not already have, and indeed still does have, a railway and a station. Once the railways were nationalised its fate was sealed.
This is the most relevant point though. As good as the Great Central route could be, it was only duplicating services that had not been at capacity at the time of closure. Therefore, whilst the line could help now it would not have helped then.
Could we keep resource on the off chance that it would be beneficial in 60 years time. Perhaps, but that is an expensive way of doing things.
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By no means does this excuse the short-sightedness of closing it. Except in the eyes of the blinkered, who mistakenly believed that the car would provide the every land-based travel need for the entire population for the rest of time. This is Thatcherite thinking at it's worst, and I'm often dismayed that so many on this forum are so unsupportive of rail travel that they even entertain it.
This confused me. Thatcherite thinking was not really a thing when the Labour Government oversaw the majority of the Beeching closures. Unless I am somehow suffering a muddling of timelines then the thought that car based travel would dominate preceded Thatcher by some way.
I can fully understand why people believed that the car would be the answer, especially since the next answer was to use the sky in hover cars. We just dont seem to have got the hover cars in mass production yet.
Rail travel has its uses, but most of those are not for the day-to-day lives of people. Rail does a great job of getting me long distances when driving may be too tiring and unproductive. Marginally rail costs less than driving a single person too. However, increase the number of passengers in the car, or move the destination far enough from the railway at the other end and even those advantages soon wither.
Would the previous network have changed the balance. Marginally, by bringing more places within the rail-served list. However, the Great Central, as noted was not adding places to the rail-served list. Of all the closures, the Great Central (or at least choosing between it and a parallel option like the Midland Mainline) makes the most sense.
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Would it have been possible for HS2 to have a chord allowing trains to move onto the GCML? London to Sheffield/Nottingham services could run up HS2 as far as this chord when they would continue their journey up the GCML. This could take services off the MML, but remove the need to build the Eastern Leg of HS2, but also wouldn’t interfere with all the local traffic in the Chilterns.
Would this have any appreciable advantage in terms of journey times?
Had the Great Central still existed then that might work. However, the benefit would be primarily in Nottingham which was on the Great Central but is not directly on either the HS2 route (as proposed), or the Derby route that can be achieved with a chord near Tamworth.
It is an interesting ponderance because in the alternative reality proposed where the Great Central hosted freight, the freight would be dwindling (relative to the coal fields) and although we would have container trains to fit in, there would still be some room for additional passenger trains on the route.
That said I think there is still a bigger gain from a HS2 chord near Tamworth.
Short-sighted? You can only judge by the standards of the time - and at the time there was route duplication, a rapidly declining use of rail and growth of motoring. It’s also worth pointing out that we have managed perfectly well in the near 60 years since without it.
There’s a mythology around the GC that isn’t supported by the reality. Enthusiasts go all misty-eyed over it, for little reason that I can see.
But there never was one set of standards that everyone agreed on, just as there isn’t today. Voices against closing the GCML were perhaps in the minority in the 1960s, but they did exist…
Short-sighted? You can only judge by the standards of the time - and at the time there was route duplication, a rapidly declining use of rail and growth of motoring. It’s also worth pointing out that we have managed perfectly well in the near 60 years since without it.
No. Saying the route was a duplication 60 years ago is exactly what short-sightedness is all about. It was clear to all forward thinking people back then, that progressive society was all about become more and more mobile, and also that not everyone would want to go by road. So the sensible thing to do (as many people advocated but were shouted down), was temporary closure but to at least preserve the route for a good few years. Has the HS2 Eastern Leg fiasco not taught people anything? Even if we go with Sunak having stopped its development in order to save money in the short term, surely as someone with a rail interest you can understand the crass stupidity of actively trying to get the route built on in order that it can never be used to build a railway on it in the future?
I might have missed it, but I'm unsure what your "common-sense" approach involves doing about the existing Marylebone services which don't currently have anywhere else to go.
This confused me. Thatcherite thinking was not really a thing when the Labour Government oversaw the majority of the Beeching closures. Unless I am somehow suffering a muddling of timelines then the thought that car based travel would dominate preceded Thatcher by some way.
This isn't only about Thatcher, she just happened to be influential at the time and was well known for her dislike of railways. You could say that Labour are overseeing Sunak's HS2 sabotage, but they're actually just having to live with something that he started. That and the fact that Labour aren't much better when it comes to transport.
I can fully understand why people believed that the car would be the answer, especially since the next answer was to use the sky in hover cars. We just dont seem to have got the hover cars in mass production yet.
Rail travel has its uses, but most of those are not for the day-to-day lives of people. Rail does a great job of getting me long distances when driving may be too tiring and unproductive. Marginally rail costs less than driving a single person too. However, increase the number of passengers in the car, or move the destination far enough from the railway at the other end and even those advantages soon wither.
When would the GCR have been identified as needing to come back? 30? 40 years after closure? Rail didn't return to growth for decades after the main closure programme. And even then there's no guarantee that the GCR would link the places that actually need linking. As it turns out the existing MML service being run by relatively short trains suggests that Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield aren't actually the places most in need of a new railway. So the GCR is largely still not the right route to rebuild.
When would the GCR have been identified as needing to come back? 30? 40 years after closure? Rail didn't return to growth for decades after the main closure programme. And even then there's no guarantee that the GCR would link the places that actually need linking. As it turns out the existing MML service being run by relatively short trains suggests that Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield aren't actually the places most in need of a new railway. So the GCR is largely still not the right route to rebuild.
The point isn't to rebuild the GCR (most people accept that's not going to happen) and if you were you wouldn't build it to the standards of that time but to current standards.
I've previously jokingly said if HS2 was called GC2 then a lot of the objections from rail enthusiasts would have reduced! (How true that actually would have been I don't know).
The point I was making up thread was if the GCR still existed then rail use would likely be higher and the delivery of HS2 would have been a lower risk.
I might have missed it, but I'm unsure what your "common-sense" approach involves doing about the existing Marylebone services which don't currently have anywhere else to go.
I reiterate, the GCR was never the answer to everything, but parts of it could have been used to advantage. The chances of using parts of the GCR being more cost effective than the present HS2 route are pretty high!
When would the GCR have been identified as needing to come back? 30? 40 years after closure? Rail didn't return to growth for decades after the main closure programme.
Rail usage was at its lowest in 1982, the 14 years since the Beeching axe taking that long to stop affecting the detriment to growth. After 1982 passenger growth has continued enormously, and from around 1994 until Covid it grew year on year without ever stopping, beating the post-war high by 2006 and continuing ever since. So suggesting 30-40 years just doesn't make sense, growth was always an inevitability, and the post-Beeching growth began almost immediately, once you discount the effects of his cuts.
And even then there's no guarantee that the GCR would link the places that actually need linking. As it turns out the existing MML service being run by relatively short trains suggests that Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield aren't actually the places most in need of a new railway. So the GCR is largely still not the right route to rebuild.
Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield don't happen to lie on the fast route to Leeds, that's been the ECML almost since railways were first built. But if HS2 ran close to these cities, the story would be very different and they certainly would need linking, ie they shouldn't be dismissed.
This isn't only about Thatcher, she just happened to be influential at the time and was well known for her dislike of railways. You could say that Labour are overseeing Sunak's HS2 sabotage, but they're actually just having to live with something that he started. That and the fact that Labour aren't much better when it comes to transport.
So cars should have replaced rail altogether, and hover cars are pending? Are you on planet Earth
You sound like railways have limited use. So why has the WCML and numerous other routes been overcrowded for many years?
You would still be hard pressed to align Thatcher, or thinking inspired by Thatcher, with the closure of the Great Central. Labour have no more to "live with something Sunak started" than they do with the winter fuel allowance.
I do not think I said replace cars all together. I will repeat that the growth of the car as a dominant form of transport was well in place in the 1960s. It was logical that something so ideally suited to individuals heterogeneous journey requirements would come to dominate. The hover car appears to be a real "vision of the future" in the 1960s, though I am not old enough to confirm if it made it beyond TV shows. There have been many prototype flying cars though.
Railways have a strong use for people who are making journeys not suited to cars. There is no way the road could compete with the journeys between the UKs biggest cities (London, Manchester and Birmingham are all connected by the WCML). Commuting is also a good use case for rail because it allows you to rest after a hard days work in a way driving does not. There is also a business motivation from being able to work on the train.
It is not about 100% replacement of rail, just that the percentages change and rails gets smaller to the point that certain lines do become expendable. Other flows like HS2 go the other way to increase rail. The job of planners is to ensure that dynamic needs are met.
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When would the GCR have been identified as needing to come back? 30? 40 years after closure? Rail didn't return to growth for decades after the main closure programme. And even then there's no guarantee that the GCR would link the places that actually need linking. As it turns out the existing MML service being run by relatively short trains suggests that Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield aren't actually the places most in need of a new railway. So the GCR is largely still not the right route to rebuild.
Not always true, but there are hours when there are more carriages doing Sheffield to Derby as part of a CrossCountry service than doing the same journey as part of a London service.
This point gets tripped up by carriage capacity and the number of missing "Newcastle" to "Reading" services, and the number of "Edinburgh" to "Plymouth" that are not double voyagers.
However, most routes would expect to see much more capacity on the London service. The contrast with Manchester to Stoke-on-Trent respective provisions is clear.
It was clear to all forward thinking people back then, that progressive society was all about become more and more mobile, and also that not everyone would want to go by road.
So the sensible thing to do (as many people advocated but were shouted down), was temporary closure but to at least preserve the route for a good few years.
This surely cannot be a sensible way to run public infrastructure. When something is out of date it is usually disposed of. We can disagree over whether it should have been closed but surely once closed it should have sold off.
Has the HS2 Eastern Leg fiasco not taught people anything? Even if we go with Sunak having stopped its development in order to save money in the short term, surely as someone with a rail interest you can understand the crass stupidity of actively trying to get the route built on in order that it can never be used to build a railway on it in the future?
No. Saying the route was a duplication 60 years ago is exactly what short-sightedness is all about. It was clear to all forward thinking people back then, that progressive society was all about become more and more mobile, and also that not everyone would want to go by road. So the sensible thing to do (as many people advocated but were shouted down), was temporary closure but to at least preserve the route for a good few years. Has the HS2 Eastern Leg fiasco not taught people anything? Even if we go with Sunak having stopped its development in order to save money in the short term, surely as someone with a rail interest you can understand the crass stupidity of actively trying to get the route built on in order that it can never be used to build a railway on it in the future?
Ah, so you are shifting from closure to protecting the route i.e. closure but not building over the infrastructure. That's a bit of a shift of the goalposts. I'll repeat what I said: that we have not had a need for the GC in the intervening 60 years (other than some enthusiasts' wet dreams) means it was a rational decision. How "forward thinking" would you expect people 60 years ago to be?!
There were two routes: one served significant places such as Kettering, Wellingborough, Bedford and Luton. The other went through areas populated by three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named Colin, and a small hen in its late forties.
I reiterate, the GCR was never the answer to everything, but parts of it could have been used to advantage. The chances of using parts of the GCR being more cost effective than the present HS2 route are pretty high!
Rail usage was at its lowest in 1982, the 14 years since the Beeching axe taking that long to stop affecting the detriment to growth. After 1982 passenger growth has continued enormously, and from around 1994 until Covid it grew year on year without ever stopping, beating the post-war high by 2006 and continuing ever since. So suggesting 30-40 years just doesn't make sense, growth was always an inevitability, and the post-Beeching growth began almost immediately, once you discount the effects of his cuts.
Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield don't happen to lie on the fast route to Leeds, that's been the ECML almost since railways were first built. But if HS2 ran close to these cities, the story would be very different and they certainly would need linking, ie they shouldn't be dismissed.
To be fair there was a major strike in 1982 over 'flexible rostering' that went on for weeks. BR came very close to issuing compulsory redundancy notices for drivers. I went on a continental rail holiday in the June that year and had take a coach from Victoria to Dover in lieu of the boat train. Rail travel had been increasing with electrification and HSTs.
Saying the route was a duplication 60 years ago is exactly what short-sightedness is all about. It was clear to all forward thinking people back then, that progressive society was all about become more and more mobile, and also that not everyone would want to go by road.
Did those forward-thinking people know, and say, in 1966, that we may not need the GCR now, but in 60 years time we might be able to use part (only) of the route for a brand new railway between London and the north?!! I'm not so sure....
Railways absolutely do have limited use! They are for example incredibly efficient at moving large numbers of people into, and between, cities and towns; And very good at moving heavy or long distance freight. They are not good at serving small scattered populations or delivering small quantities of goods to multiple locations. Plus they are expensive to build, maintain and operate, most routes today requiring subsidy. Not every closed line, or proposal to rebuild such, can be justified.
Railway lines do well serving scattered settlements they pass close to, but not other scattered settlements.
No line is built based on scattered settlements. The Cumbrian Coast is about Barrow, Workington, Whitehaven and Carlisle (with apologies to any others missed out) and the stations in other villages are on the route.
I doubt anyone would build the Cumbrian Coast line if it did not exist.
Did those forward-thinking people know, and say, in 1966, that we may not need the GCR now, but in 60 years time we might be able to use part (only) of the route for a brand new railway between London and the north?!! I'm not so sure....
It's just bad practice to close a rail route without proper assessment of the likelihood of it ever being used in future years. When mobility was on a huge increase, as it was in the 1960s and the 1970s, it made no sense to dispose of the route, what would have made more sense was to close it but to protect it and periodically re-assess the transport growth that was huge at the time.
Railways absolutely do have limited use! They are for example incredibly efficient at moving large numbers of people into, and between, cities and towns; And very good at moving heavy or long distance freight. They are not good at serving small scattered populations or delivering small quantities of goods to multiple locations. Plus they are expensive to build, maintain and operate, most routes today requiring subsidy. Not every closed line, or proposal to rebuild such, can be justified.
I worded it badly, yes their use is limited, but I was responding to the comment that "most of those [uses] are not for the day-to-day lives of people", a comment which I thought was too dismissive of them.
It is not about 100% replacement of rail, just that the percentages change and rails gets smaller to the point that certain lines do become expendable. Other flows like HS2 go the other way to increase rail. The job of planners is to ensure that dynamic needs are met.
Yes of course some railways became unfeasible, however I'm a long way from being convinced that the GCR was one of them. But could you address my point about the huge increase in people mobility that was clearly evident in the 1960s? This increase has continued ever since, as evidenced by our hugely congested roads, as well as our overcrowded trains on many routes. The cries about the WCML being in serious need of capacity improvements have been clear for a good couple of decades now, and this was foreseen by many in the transport industry a great many years before that.
As an example of one of many crazy decisions by "Experts", the Wrexham by-pass was opened in 1989, only a few years after the low point of rail passenger usage. Some of us predicted rail passenger growth and tried hard to fight what we thought was a crazy decision to reduce the railway to a single track, which was done in order to accommodate the by-pass. We said rail use would expand in the future and the road should be built in a manner which would leave the railway as twin track. Can you seriously say that singling this line was the right decision, and that there haven't been countless times when it might have been useful to leave the twin tracks in use? Just look at the amount of train delays along this section over the years since, due to trains waiting for the single track to become clear in order to pass the other way. This isn't hindsight, it was strongly expressed at the time, but over-ruled by our experts. Or to use your description, our "planners", whose job is to ensure that dynamic needs are met
I reiterate, the GCR was never the answer to everything, but parts of it could have been used to advantage. The chances of using parts of the GCR being more cost effective than the present HS2 route are pretty high!
As has been already been pointed out, parts of the GCR route ARE being used by HS2.
Also, the major cost of HS2 is getting from north of the Chilterns into central London. This section could never have made use of GCR as it's already providing busy commuter services into Marylebone.
I can't see where the cost savings relative to HS2 would come from.
Yes of course some railways became unfeasible, however I'm a long way from being convinced that the GCR was one of them. But could you address my point about the huge increase in people mobility that was clearly evident in the 1960s? This increase has continued ever since, as evidenced by our hugely congested roads, as well as our overcrowded trains on many routes. The cries about the WCML being in serious need of capacity improvements have been clear for a good couple of decades now, and this was foreseen by many in the transport industry a great many years before that.
As an example of one of many crazy decisions by "Experts", the Wrexham by-pass was opened in 1989, only a few years after the low point of rail passenger usage. Some of us predicted rail passenger growth and tried hard to fight what we thought was a crazy decision to reduce the railway to a single track, which was done in order to accommodate the by-pass. We said rail use would expand in the future and the road should be built in a manner which would leave the railway as twin track. Can you seriously say that singling this line was the right decision, and that there haven't been countless times when it might have been useful to leave the twin tracks in use? Just look at the amount of train delays along this section over the years since, due to trains waiting for the single track to become clear in order to pass the other way. This isn't hindsight, it was strongly expressed at the time, but over-ruled by our experts. Or to use your description, our "planners", whose job is to ensure that dynamic needs are met
There was a huge increase in mobility, facilitated by the motor car. Whether you believe the decisions were short sighted, there was limited reason at the time the motorways were opening to believe that they would be constraints in the 1990s or later. The original motorways have all been widened many times and the networks have extended greatly.
Indeed the motorway ambitions were not all realised. See the plans for motorways in Manchester on the link below. However, it is clear where people saw the future of mobility. Cars could provide the mobility if capacity was larger than was created.
I am not sure therefore what point you feel I have not addressed. The motor car had the potential and the flexibility to truly support mobility.
For the Wrexham case, that does seem short-sighted. I can see now that there are constraints imposed on the route by the decision to single. However, the trains are still only a few carriages long meaning that longer trains can be added if capacity is needed. IF the argument is that the bypass prevents turn up and go then that would be possibly true. However, it is a big leap to think that there is so much suppressed demand actually on the route. How long is the maximum delay that a single track can add? A bypass route that allowed two tracks would clearly have been beneficial so there must be a very good reason why railway land was needed.
By no means does this excuse the short-sightedness of closing it. Except in the eyes of the blinkered, who mistakenly believed that the car would provide the every land-based travel need for the entire population for the rest of time. This is Thatcherite thinking at it's worst, and I'm often dismayed that so many on this forum are so unsupportive of rail travel that they even entertain it.
I don't think it is particularly car-brained to believe that GCR was unnecessary duplication.
The only towns of any note that lost all rail services were Brackley, Lutterworth and Deepcar/Stocksbridge – and apart from northbound journeys from Aylesbury and a direct connection from Rugby to Leicester and other MML stations, the route doesn't even facilitate a whole lot of journeys that couldn't easily be made on lines that remained open.
With the vast majority of GCR passengers still able to make their journeys by train, the need to retain the route was small.
Of course the GCR wouldn't have been perfect for HS2, but it would certainly have provided adequate relief for the WCML, and if necessary a new link could have been built from Rugby to Birmingham to complete the capacity relief.
It always seems odd that when proposing a new high speed railway, people quickly pop up to say "Ah but it was mainly about WCML capacity relief". But these people keep ignoring the rebalancing need for the UK, which needs better links to the north. Such links are far more suited to high speed rail than the short London to Birmingham section is. HS2 does NOT rightly go to Birmingham.
The full plan for HS2 was for 17 trains per hour from Euston, of which 13 would be 400m sets. A mixed traffic GCR would make very little dent in that, and would do little to relieve traffic on the busiest flows where more capacity is desperately needed – London to Birmingham wasn't served at all, and it wouldn't be remotely competitive with WCML or ECML services to Manchester, Liverpool, Scotland, Leeds or Newcastle by dint of being much slower. What was a decent alignment in the days of a 4-4-2 Atlantic is nothing like what we would need for a high speed route today. This all means it would offer minimal capacity and negligible appeal to relieve the overcrowded mainlines. Every single bit of HS2 would be just as necessary today if GCR had remained open throughout as it is now.
If the Great Central had survived (and, of course, one can define the GC in different ways) it would presumably have carried a regional-style semi-fast service (think Marylebone-Birmingham) to Sheffield (?).
This may well have sought to compete on price for travel to London from Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester and Rugby undercutting EMR and Avanti.
Would this would have had any impact on MML and WCML service patterns? Probably not. (IMO)
Let's see. Now the WCML is at capacity, which is the main justification for proposing HS2 in the first place, apparently. So how many trains use the WCML fast lines each way in a daytime hour? 10 or maybe 11? So this leaves three options, namely that I have miscalculated (or misread the timetable), or that the WCML isn't actually anywhere near capacity at all, or that HS2 stood no chance of running 17 trains per hour. Where is the error in this?
Let's see. Now the WCML is at capacity, which is the main justification for proposing HS2 in the first place, apparently. So how many trains use the WCML fast lines each way in a daytime hour? 10 or maybe 11? So this leaves three options, namely that I have miscalculated (or misread the timetable), or that the WCML isn't actually anywhere near capacity at all, or that HS2 stood no chance of running 17 trains per hour. Where is the error in this?
Are you asking how more trains at the same speed, with fewer intermediate stops, can be run on a two-track railway?
Assuming everything stops at Old Oak Common then it is only Birmingham International that poses any constraint. Compare that with the WCML at Watford Junction, Milton Keynes, Rugby.
The full plan for HS2 was for 17 trains per hour from Euston, of which 13 would be 400m sets. A mixed traffic GCR would make very little dent in that, and would do little to relieve traffic on the busiest flows where more capacity is desperately needed – London to Birmingham wasn't served at all, and it wouldn't be remotely competitive with WCML or ECML services to Manchester, Liverpool, Scotland, Leeds or Newcastle by dint of being much slower. What was a decent alignment in the days of a 4-4-2 Atlantic is nothing like what we would need for a high speed route today. This all means it would offer minimal capacity and negligible appeal to relieve the overcrowded mainlines. Every single bit of HS2 would be just as necessary today if GCR had remained open throughout as it is now.
Let's see. Now the WCML is at capacity, which is the main justification for proposing HS2 in the first place, apparently. So how many trains use the WCML fast lines each way in a daytime hour? 10 or maybe 11? So this leaves three options, namely that I have miscalculated (or misread the timetable), or that the WCML isn't actually anywhere near capacity at all, or that HS2 stood no chance of running 17 trains per hour. Where is the error in this?
The big difference is stopping patterns. The WCML can manage 10 or 11tph with some trains stopping at Watford Junction, some trains stopping at Milton Keynes, some trains stopping at Rugby, some sections of the line shared between 125mph intercity and 110mph regional trains and some flat junctions. HS2 would have had all trains stopping at Old Oak Common and Birmingham Interchange where there would have been 2 platforms in each direction, and nowhere else in between before they fanned out to Curzon Street, the North West and the North East. The less variation you have in service patterns, the more trains you can run on the line. No problem at all running trains at 4 minute separation even at high speed, when they aren't ever going to catch up with the train in front – that isn't the case on mixed traffic lines.
The big difference is stopping patterns. The WCML can manage 10 or 11tph with some trains stopping at Watford Junction, some trains stopping at Milton Keynes, some trains stopping at Rugby, some sections of the line shared between 125mph intercity and 110mph regional trains and some flat junctions. HS2 would have had all trains stopping at Old Oak Common and Birmingham Interchange where there would have been 2 platforms in each direction, and nowhere else in between before they fanned out to Curzon Street, the North West and the North East. The less variation you have in service patterns, the more trains you can run on the line. No problem at all running trains at 4 minute separation even at high speed, when they aren't ever going to catch up with the train in front – that isn't the case on mixed traffic lines.
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