Did HS2 have to go into Euston rather than another London terminal?

[Topological]

Not on HS2 on the classic great western services that are basically already at capacity going into Paddington - at least in terms of frequency.

And even with a one minute dwelling and 90 seconds for acceleration and deceleration you are still looking at a 2.5 minute stop penalty. Maybe only 2 minutes as it is fairly close to the terminus.


To Elizabeth line destinations - sure. Reading I am sure will be respectable. But elsewhere it’s more doubtful.

Exactly, 2 minutes is not a penalty, it is less than most trains currently seem to pick up on route. It is really just selfish to complain about 2 minutes being added to allow the large number of passengers who will benefit from OOC to change.

IF 2 minutes carried that much value there are many ways to find the 2 minutes elsewhere on the GWR.

I think people forget that OOC is also the best route from Swindon to Birmingham (and north), from much of the Berks and Hants to Birmingham (and North)

And as repeatedly mentioned, OOC cuts the journey time to Heathrow (a destination a large number of people on hte GWR network go to) quite substantially.

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It seems to me that whereas Euston serves inner London (huge city, main cultural centre of the country), OOC serves much of outer London (population somewhere over ten million). There is definitely a need for two! It’s normal abroad- consider Termini and Tiburtina in Rome.

Exactly, London is a much bigger place than just the centre.

If we were talking about a 10 minute penalty, or having trains go on a huge diversion to pass through OOC then that is a different matter, but we are talking about a station on the line that has multiple platform faces.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Exactly, London is a much bigger place than just the centre.

If we were talking about a 10 minute penalty, or having trains go on a huge diversion to pass through OOC then that is a different matter, but we are talking about a station on the line that has multiple platform faces.

I should have added that if top-link intercity trains can call at places Lockerbie, Penrith, Chippenham and Thirsk, to cater for the rural areas around them, and if Manchester can have trains call at Oxford Road as well as Piccadilly and Edinburgh Haymarket as well as Waverley, then London can have an outer and an inner station!

 

[MatthewHutton]

I think people forget that OOC is also the best route from Swindon to Birmingham (and north), from much of the Berks and Hants to Birmingham (and North)

Swindon-Birmingham is 1h55 via Cheltenham and slightly quicker but much more expensive via Bristol Parkway. Swindon-Paddington is currently 50-55m so you would be looking at approximately 1h45-2h05 to go via Old Oak Common assuming a 10 minute connection time.

Plus if you go via Cheltenham the fare to Birmingham is £60 return tomorrow leaving at midday which is the same as the Swindon-London fare at the same time so using HS2 would be significantly more expensive.

From Newbury the current trip time with cross country from Reading is 2h25 vs 1h45-2h05 or so via Old Oak Common. The fare is currently £78 via Reading so likely that would be cheaper via Old Oak Common only if HS2 matches Chilterns fares for OOC-Birmingham as the current ticket price is £37 from Newbury to London.

And as repeatedly mentioned, OOC cuts the journey time to Heathrow (a destination a large number of people on hte GWR network go to) quite substantially.

It cuts the journey time for somewhere you have to arrive 2 hours before your flight by 10-12 minutes, not quite substantially if you think 2 minutes is meaningless.

 

[Topological]

I should have added that if top-link intercity trains can call at places Lockerbie, Penrith, Chippenham and Thirsk, to cater for the rural areas around them, and if Manchester can have trains call at Oxford Road as well as Piccadilly and Edinburgh Haymarket as well as Waverley, then London can have an outer and an inner station!

I almost said that the Scotland trains do not use Oxford Road anymore, but I am pleased to see that they do.

Connections to London are important, and this is why it is important for the top-link trains to make calls. If you just embed the advantage of the large cities then you achieve very little of benefit.

In the case of OOC we are going to see a massive development of the area in a way that likely wouldnt be the case if it was just another suburb of London.

 

[A S Leib]

Is Old Oak Common more useful the fewer platforms Euston has? It means shorter turnaround times are necessary to get passengers on and off at Euston if there's a second London station they can use.

 

[MatthewHutton]

In the case of OOC we are going to see a massive development of the area in a way that likely wouldnt be the case if it was just another suburb of London.

That likely relies on the rest of the connections coming off. But fingers crossed!

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Is Old Oak Common more useful the fewer platforms Euston has? It means shorter turnaround times are necessary to get passengers on and off at Euston if there's a second London station they can use.

A lot of the time to get people on and off trains at a terminus is people walking up and down the platforms. That isn’t going to change much if 1/3rd of passengers get off earlier.

 

[Topological]

Swindon-Birmingham is 1h55 via Cheltenham and slightly quicker but much more expensive via Bristol Parkway. Swindon-Paddington is currently 50-55m so you would be looking at approximately 1h45-2h05 to go via Old Oak Common assuming a 10 minute connection time.

Plus if you go via Cheltenham the fare to Birmingham is £60 return tomorrow leaving at midday which is the same as the Swindon-London fare at the same time so using HS2 would be significantly more expensive.

From Newbury the current trip time with cross country from Reading is 2h25 vs 1h45-2h05 or so via Old Oak Common. The fare is currently £78 via Reading so likely that would be cheaper via Old Oak Common only if HS2 matches Chilterns fares for OOC-Birmingham as the current ticket price is £37 from Newbury to London.


It cuts the journey time for somewhere you have to arrive 2 hours before your flight by 10-12 minutes, not quite substantially if you think 2 minutes is meaningless.

I fear you may be adding quite a bit to journey times via OOC here.

Swindon to OOC 40 minutes + 15 minutes connection + 40 minutes for OOC to Birmingham = 1 hour 35 (and therefore 20 minutes quicker than via Cheltenham)
Newbury to OOC is a similar 40 minutes so that is also 1 hour 35 minutes.

These are significant time savings.

Further, you are arguing that fares will be more expensive. However, that is yet to be seen and we must remember the competition is CrossCountry who price high to reduce demand on their routes.

I am entirely unsure where you get 10-12 minutes from. Birmingham to Heathrow would be cut by massively more than that.

 

[A S Leib]

Swindon to OOC 40 minutes + 15 minutes connection + 40 minutes for OOC to Birmingham = 1 hour 35 (and therefore 20 minutes quicker than via Cheltenham)

Is the 15 minutes connection at Old Oak Common assuming the minimum connection time and that there'll be no longer of a wait for a Birmingham / Swindon train?

I am entirely unsure where you get 10-12 minutes from. Birmingham to Heathrow would be cut by massively more than that.

I thought they meant it would cut times from the Great Western Main Line to Heathrow by 10-12 minutes; 5 minutes each way to / from Paddington cut (in which case I'd increase the time cut a bit as OOC would probably have a shorter connection time than Paddington as well).

 

[MatthewHutton]

Swindon to OOC 40 minutes

Swindon-Paddington is 50-55 minutes right now depending on the train and Old Oak Common is 4.5-5 minutes from Paddington at speed. Realistically 46-51 minutes including stopping time.

I think I got the timings for the HS2 bit wrong so yes 1h36 to 1h56 assuming ten minutes minimum to change.

Agree that would be decently faster for Newbury over the status quo.

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I am entirely unsure where you get 10-12 minutes from. Birmingham to Heathrow would be cut by massively more than that.

Birmingham, agree. But places on the great western network won’t see those benefits. For them it’s 10-12 minutes.

 

[Topological]

Is the 15 minutes connection at Old Oak Common assuming the minimum connection time and that there'll be no longer of a wait for a Birmingham / Swindon train?

I thought they meant it would cut times from the Great Western Main Line to Heathrow by 10-12 minutes; 5 minutes each way to / from Paddington cut (in which case I'd increase the time cut a bit as OOC would probably have a shorter connection time than Paddington as well).

I think 15 is reasonable, though even if you increase it the balance is still towards OOC being faster. Swindon has 2 South Wales, 2 Bristol and a Cheltenham per hour, so you don't need to add much.

OOC is likely to be a lot quicker to connect as at Paddington everyone has to go to the buffers and then back (unless travelling light and using the footbridge, and having done that more than enough I am much happier with the idea of OOC). There is also the point that OOC to Elizabeth Line is easier. Paddington to Elizabeth Line is more of a connection with suitcases waiting for the lifts (see suitcase shaming on the escalators).

As mentioned for so many people we are talking about connections from HS2 to Heathrow and that means more than just a change at Paddington. Those connection changes are truly transformational.

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Swindon-Paddington is 50-55 minutes right now depending on the train and Old Oak Common is 4.5-5 minutes from Paddington at speed. Realistically 46-51 minutes including stopping time.

I think I got the timings for the HS2 bit wrong so yes 1h36 to 1h56 assuming ten minutes to change.

Agree that would be decently faster for Newbury over the status quo.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Dec 2025 ==


Birmingham, agree. But places on the great western network won’t see those benefits. For them it’s 10-12 minutes.

I got the Swindon time from googling, I can see that some trains do indeed take longer. Taking the 0800 from Swindon (origin Cheltenham), that passes OOC at 08:49 currently.

Given that we have now got agreement that there are benefits from many GWR stations to Birmingham via HS2, the benefits to Manchester and other Northern cities become enormous.

Then as you rightly note, HS2 to Heathrow is transformational.

Essentially not accepting the need for trains to provide this interchange for the sake of 2 minutes seems mad.

 

[Technologist]

It cuts the journey time for somewhere you have to arrive 2 hours before your flight by 10-12 minutes, not quite substantially if you think 2 minutes is meaningless.

The two hours thing is ridiculous advice, it's based on the time to get to some obscure gates at an handful of old complicated airports. Nothing like that much time is really needed at most airports or terminals.

 

[BeansOnToast]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned
I’m truly using my imagination here but I wonder if a connection with HS1 and HS2 was ever feasible? It would be cool to see Eurostar trains at Birmingham (or even at Manchester! But that is definitely unlikely) going to Paris or Amsterdam. I’ve had a look at the proposed HS2 route to Euston, which I believe is currently under review/paused, and a connection to St Pancras via tunnel certainly seems possible.

Has anyone ever seen any proposals for this, or your thoughts on it?

 

[edwin_m]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned
I’m truly using my imagination here but I wonder if a connection with HS1 and HS2 was ever feasible? It would be cool to see Eurostar trains at Birmingham (or even at Manchester! But that is definitely unlikely) going to Paris or Amsterdam. I’ve had a look at the proposed HS2 route to Euston, which I believe is currently under review/paused, and a connection to St Pancras via tunnel certainly seems possible.

Has anyone ever seen any proposals for this, or your thoughts on it?

It was looked at in one of the earlier reports - can't remember the details but I believe it was a separate tunnel from Old Oak which then joined the North London line somewhere, which would have been re-built to UIC gauge and access St Pancras via the connecting viaduct added (without track I think) as part of the 2000s rebuild.

It would have compromised the usefulness of the North London Line, and having regard to the cost and the low number of passengers (see posts above) it was later deleted from the scheme. Improving the route for passengers between Euston and St Pancras is a much more suitable solution.

 

[Mgameing123]

The canal itself isn’t useful for this, and the offices around the basin are private developments. I’d be interested in a proposal for a surface HS2 from OOC to east Paddington anyway.

Crossrail 2 was meant to take people from Euston, not free up mainline termini platforms. The decision not to build it will come back as bottleneck.

What if the Europeans were asked in the HS2 planning process and we have what they wished they could have?

I think the best solution would have been to follow the European model and effectively start HS2 from Watford. This would be achieved by separating the fasts from the rest of the WCML and treating them as the first section of HS2. There would then be a 4 track WCML (Slows+DC line, which might mean that freight has to use the DC line in areas, and would be a bit of a squeeze for the residual WCML passenger service, but not entirely unacheivable. However this might mean that stopping patterns are meaner, with no non-DC lien trains stopping south of Watford.

Euston station would be split into 8 High-Speed platforms, of which at least 5 could cope with 400M trains, and 8 conventional platforms. While platform utilisation would be tight, it would not be entirely unfeasible.

Starting HS2 from Watford would be a terrible idea. The section between Watford and Euston is one of the bottlenecks HS2 is meant to solve.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned
I’m truly using my imagination here but I wonder if a connection with HS1 and HS2 was ever feasible? It would be cool to see Eurostar trains at Birmingham (or even at Manchester! But that is definitely unlikely) going to Paris or Amsterdam. I’ve had a look at the proposed HS2 route to Euston, which I believe is currently under review/paused, and a connection to St Pancras via tunnel certainly seems possible.

Has anyone ever seen any proposals for this, or your thoughts on it?

This has been raised quite extensively by some posters and the consensus is usually that there isn’t a big enough market for it; from Manchester it is quicker to fly than take a hypothetical high-speed train and the Birmingham market isn’t big enough; also it would erode the reliability of the service. Personally I think they should have been linked anyway with some services running from Kent to the north but then again I would have built a completely different line, with a completely different route and a completely different purpose, so what do I know?

 

[William3000]

Given the current situation Euston is probably the 'least worst' option. In an ideal world Kings Cross redevelopment would have left space for future rail expansion including new build rail lines, and would have opened up future options to run through services to the continent as well as possibly Birmingham - Ashford cross London high speed services calling OOC, Stratford and Ebbsfleet. However that is now history.

I do think the Kings Cross - Euston walking route needs sorting properly, its not that far, it needs a level route, preferably covered and well lit, which is also permitted for luggage trollies and a 24/7 security presence to curb anti social behaviour. Its not far, but really not passenger friendly at the moment.

As for other terminals, 'South' facing ones are a no, tunnelling under central London would be hugely expensive, with no real benefit. Paddington, connectivity is much poorer than Euston and I dont see any benefits, Assuming you treat Euston, St Pancras, Kings Cross as one large interchange then the '1 change' journey possibilities are much wider.

Agreed it could do with a well signposted underground ‘travelator’ linking King’s Cross St Pancras with Euston and then a short extension to Euston Square - as well as probably renaming Euston Square underground station to Euston

 

[edwin_m]

Agreed it could do with a well signposted underground ‘travelator’ linking King’s Cross St Pancras with Euston and then a short extension to Euston Square - as well as probably renaming Euston Square underground station to Euston

TfL wanted Crossrail 2 funded, partly to help with distributing HS2 passengers away from Euston. The protected route includes a station with access from Euston at one end and St Pancras the other, and this could possibly have included an underground walking route. Transfer between Euston and the KXSP complex also enables a huge range of domestic stations to access HS2, so would need considering even if there was a HS2-HS1 link.

The plans for Euston HS2 station included a subway to Euston Square, shorter than the existing walking route as the current entrance is at the far end of the platforms. I hope this survives in whatever (if anything) gets built.