Fantasy: If you could re-design HS2 ...

[Bald Rick]

Look at the map, OOC is well connected and can be even better if Acton North is moved down the line the length of the platforms, giving a Tube-Overground interchange. Also lifts can drop down to a pedestrian tunnel to OCC mainline.

East London can get to OOC fast via the Elizabeth Line.

Thanks for the advice, I helped draw some of the map.

I also have had aaccess to very detailed models of London travel patterns. And I know some of the people buidling OOC. Euston is essential, and much better placed for large parts of London.

 

[Palmerston]

Getting from The City is quicker via the Elizabeth Line to OCC than to Euston. How well connected do you want it?

Euston Square to Moorgate will be quicker than OOC to Moorgate on Elizabeth line, even if there was a slightly quicker change at OOC.

 

[CMS1]

Stratford is the link to the whole of East London and the surrounding counties. Its like OOC but much better connected

HS2 at Stratford would also open up a lot of new cross country connectivity, e.g. the East of England has hopeless rail connectivity to the wider UK - a Stratford stop would change this, e.g. all the cities/towns along the GEML would be 1 change from Birmingham & beyond.

 

[Shrop]

No. If UK were in Schengen, some of the services that would otherwise go to Euston (or Kings Cross) would go to HS1 and Europe. Perhaps 2 an hour.

Good to hear you say this and I completely agree, not just with this as a fact, but with the value of such services too.

I agree (and hope) that there might (already) have been trains running directly on to HS1 via existing rails from WCML and ECML. Probably from MML too, and also from GWR, and of course there's the possibility, or indeed strong likelihood, that there would have also been a purpose built HS1-HS2 link.

But this leads to the next (speculative) question - namely if the UK had been part of Schengen all along (ie. before HS2 was a serious concept), where would the HS2 route have run? Would it still have run through the Chilterns, or would the very different situation have led to a very different design?

 

[Bletchleyite]

But this leads to the next (speculative) question - namely if the UK had been part of Schengen all along (ie. before HS2 was a serious concept), where would the HS2 route have run? Would it still have run through the Chilterns, or would the very different situation have led to a very different design?

I can see no reason Schengen would have any impact at all on the routing of a domestic railway, even if it might have meant the HS2-HS1 connection would have been built (though I have my doubts given that Regional Eurostar never operated in a far more Euro-friendly political environment).

 

[Shrop]

I can see no reason Schengen would have any impact at all on the routing of a domestic railway, even if it might have meant the HS2-HS1 connection would have been built (though I have my doubts given that Regional Eurostar never operated in a far more Euro-friendly political environment).

A domestic railway? That's the whole point, if the UK had embraced Schengen then it would have meant we would have embraced Europe, in which we would have been thinking much more about rail links with Europe. So in that scenario, which is what was my question was about, then I don't think it's right to dismiss HS2 as a domestic railway

 

[Bald Rick]

Thank you. With a stop in Stratford presumably?

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought the services would have had enough capacity for London passengers if some of them were diverted away.

Stratford or St P yes.

There isn’t much of a market from the main regional cities to near Europe. Perhaps a coach worth per train.

 

[Bevan Price]

One thought after reading most of the above comments. Could HS2 have gone into an enlarged Paddington rather than Euston. Both require you to change onto LT/LU to reach the West End and City, and building OOC would have been unnecessary, as Heathrrow is served from Paddington.

 

[Bald Rick]

I agree (and hope) that there might (already) have been trains running directly on to HS1 via existing rails from WCML and ECML.

It’s a certainty. With a schengen Uk, we would have had another load of the NoL sets (or similar) delivered for when HS1 opened in full. A 4h Birmingham to Paris time, or 4h30 Manchester or Leeds to Paris, would have been very sellable, and running those every couple of hours as an integral part of the National Rail timetable would have been relatively straightforward.

Probably from MML too, and also from GWR

Neither. Not least electrification issues, but also less traffic. And for MML there is a same station change on offer anyway.

or indeed strong likelihood, that there would have also been a purpose built HS1-HS2 link.

Dead cert.

But this leads to the next (speculative) question - namely if the UK had been part of Schengen all along (ie. before HS2 was a serious concept), where would the HS2 route have run? Would it still have run through the Chilterns, or would the very different situation have led to a very different design?

It would have made no difference. The market HS2 serves would still be overwhelmingly West Mids / NW city regions to/from London and beyond. But the ‘beyond’ makes no difference to the route between London and the Midlands / north.

One thought after reading most of the above comments. Could HS2 have gone into an enlarged Paddington rather than Euston.

It was looked at. No space to do so, and the Grade 1 listing of Paddington didn’t help.

 

[JamesT]

One thought after reading most of the above comments. Could HS2 have gone into an enlarged Paddington rather than Euston. Both require you to change onto LT/LU to reach the West End and City, and building OOC would have been unnecessary, as Heathrrow is served from Paddington.

Where would you put a dozen high speed platforms next to Paddington? Euston had the advantage of some space Nextdoor you could start building 400m long platforms on.
The other issue with binning OOC is you now have to disperse the entire trainload at your terminus. Does Paddington have the capacity for that? The split between OOC and Euston means neither has to cope with such a volume.

 

[NCT]

If you start telling me that Manchester is not Klagenfurt, then it does feel a bit like mansplaining (even though I am a man myself). Surely you can see that? (BTW, Manchester is not Vienna either - Greater Manchester and Greater Vienna might have a similar overall population, but the layout of the conurbations as well as the quality of "internal" transport available is so different as to render meaningful comparisons useless).



You mean straw men like the Swiss having a 1 tph base timetable, when it is 2 tph, achieved by combining two hourly routes? The problem in all of our discussions is that you are hell-bent on only one timetable model, namely the Dutch one, with a dense frequency of identical routes; and, in your iteration, with a metro network timetable structure at the expense of long-distance routes.
I do not agree with that - from there all our differences follow and I consider them irreconcilable, because whenever I write something, I get written down with no end in sight because it does not fit into your way of thinking. Unfortunately, timetabling principles are not like chemistry, or physics. There is no universal truth. The Dutch timetable model works very well for the Netherlands; the Swiss one works very well for Switzerland. Both have their merits (and presumably their drawbacks) and have evolved in quite different countries in different historical contexts. There is no reason why any of the two must automatically be the right one for the UK (or universally right), especially not for the whole of it. But whereas I respect your point of view and do not try to convert you - even agree with you where I believe you are right, you seem to think that you need to convert me. Which is why at a certain point I don't reply any more - why should I? You are not going to convert me; I *do* think things through and don't come up with them on a whim. I am also not trying to convert you - but I don't see a point in further discussing things when everything has been said at least twice either.



Another of you straw men? Manchester has lost out because they insisted on an underground station, when the truth is that phase2b was cancelled because of cost explosions on phase 1?
I actually do not have to answer your question, because you didn't ask any. You are perfectly entitled to believe the West Midlands have got themselves a good deal. But that is an opinion, not an objective truth; I therefore do not have to refute it; and I also can't, because noone can refute opinions. Do I consider that you have a point? I actually do. It might well be that the West Midlands have accepted it all because they know from experience that there would never be a better deal available - in the sense that the better is the enemy of the good. And they might also be right. But it cannot be proved what the outcome would have been if they had insisted on something different (would HS2 never have been built then? Would the government have ridden roughshot over their objections? Would they have got a different deal).

BTW, the Midlands hub at Moor Street does not prove anything, since it came after the fact, namely the Curzon Street decision as a standalone HS2 station. It *is* a clever project considering the basis of it was already fixed.



I have never criticized the HS2 planners for planning something that conforms to the political aims. They would have been very foolhardy to do this. I criticed the underlying premises.

Look, I find what you write very interesting, which is why I continue to read it and sometimes reply, when I disagree with it. I do find it funny though that while you seem to be a hundred percent certain that the Vienna Hbf through station was a gigantic mistake, you cannot accept me offering a rather tiny, and obviously perfectly subjective, criticism of the way the HS2 interfaces to the classic network have been planned.

I don't know why you take difference in views as a personal attack ...

Nobody is trying to convert anyone. This is a forum - if a point is made it's not unreasonable to be asked to substantiate that claim, or be asked to 'show your working'. If people expect to broadcast their views without being challenged then this ceases to be a forum, and you are far too clever an individual to be a broadcaster.

As for 'writing pages and pages' - might I just point out that your posts 86, 103 and 112 had rather higher wordcounts than the bits of my posts you quoted.

Taking specific technical points:

The whole of Netherlands is basically a "day return" network. Not so Britain.

I disagree. Under the full Y - HS2 effectively 'shrinks' much of Britain to the size of the Netherlands in journey time if not in distance.

https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2013-1298/P2C37_Journey_times_and_frequencies.pdf

With the exception of Edinburgh and Glasgow, all those times are similar to journey times from Utrecht to other major Dutch cities. The majority of comparable to Utrecht - Zwolle (50 minutes). Even Newcastle is similar to Utrecht - Maastricht / Groningen.

Existing Bristol - Birmingham and Reading - Birmingham are 1h20 and 1h30, again within Dutch norms.

With full Y, cross Birmingham journeys are essentially extremely similar to cross Utrecht journeys. HS2's target cross-Birmingham journeys will be no less 'day return' than cross-Utrecht journeys in the Netherlands.

Also, too much emphasis is put on frequency.

Where in HS2's plans, particularly in relation to Birmingham services, do you consider there is too much emphasis on frequency?

Going back to your original post

Not treat it like UK Shinkansen. Make sure Curzon/Moor Street works as the new central station of Birmingham, with possibilities to run Bristol/Reading - B‘ham - HS2 - Crewe/Leeds or London - HS2 - B‘ham - Wolverhampton/Worcester etc.

What would the timetable structure look like? On the basis that Bristol - Birmingham and Reading - Birmingham will be restored to the pre-Covid frequency of 2tph, do you envisage a 2-hourly cycle delivering combined half-hourly frequencies on segments? Would you have simultaneous station dwells to provide Swiss-style interchanges? If so, how many simultaneous station dwells will there be? What proportion of interchanges will be cross-platform? How long would trains need to dwell for to ensure non-cross-platform interchanges can be reliably honoured? How many platforms would such a 'new central station of Birmingham' have? Would all trains run through, or would there be a mix of through and terminating trains? If so how would such a mix be accommodated?

How would you orient such a station? Where would the main station entrance be, and where would it be in relation to platform centres? Would one or both station throats be under existing prime parts of the city centre? What would be the construction method? Would the station and approach tracks resemble Wien Hbf or Stuttgart 21?

 

[Energy]

The Euston/Old Oak Common setup works well. Having only Old Oak Common connected to the Elizabeth line means those from Canary Wharf, Bond St, etc., will go via OOC, reducing the load at Euston.

The idea of a "mega-interchange" sounds great for connectivity, but the station would be extremely busy; building a single station capable of dealing with that many people would be very difficult.

I'd prefer a 4-6 platform thru station with trains carrying on and terminating at a super-Stratford-Intl to provide connectivity to east London, Essex etc. However, I'm aware that other posters have said that a site capable of enough platforms would be difficult to site.

 

[NCT]

Two station set ups are common in European Cities. Long-distance trains from Berlin Hbf stop at Spandau, Sudkreuz, Ostbahnhof or Gesundbrunen depending on direction. Long-distance trains from Wien Hbf towards the west or south all stop at Meidling (I can't think of any exceptions), though Meidling is rather close to Hbf.

 

[Halish Railway]

With all the talk about the inability to path Eurostar trains to Birmingham and Manchester, as well as the debates about how many platforms the rebuilt London Euston should have, I do wonder whether too much was being asked of the Birmingham Interchange to London Euston section of HS2.

Ideally given the level of demand there should be two London the Midlands / North / Scotland high speed lines, but then there's the question of how running high speed services from Birmingham to Yorkshire and the North East could be delivered.

If there was a way in which a Welwyn North diversionary route could be built and Huntingdon to Peterborough fully four tracked, then I wonder if a new high speed route could be built from Peterborough to East Midlands hub. This route could become the main route from London to Edinburgh, rather than the route via the WCML which looks increasingly impractical and difficult to deliver.

Unfortunately platforms 2-8 at King's Cross are just short of 300 meters, so can't quite fit a hypothetical 12 carriage HS2 train, but the station is an incredible asset with incredible connections from the underground station and St Pancras International across the road, so the most should be made of the station.

Whilst we're at it I'd suggest:
- Reinstating the stop at Meadowhall.
- Building a branch to Bristol / Cardiff branching off at Birmingham Interchange and following the M42 and M5 and rejoining or running alongside the existing line near Worcester and electrifying the entire way to Plymouth.

 

[A S Leib]

With all the talk about the inability to path Eurostar trains to Birmingham and Manchester, as well as the debates about how many platforms the rebuilt London Euston should have, I do wonder whether too much was being asked of the Birmingham Interchange to London Euston section of HS2.

Ideally given the level of demand there should be two London the Midlands / North / Scotland high speed lines, but then there's the question of how running high speed services from Birmingham to Yorkshire and the North East could be delivered.

There's currently ~10 intercity tph from Euston, 4 from St. Pancras (Midland Main Line) and ~7 (including open access) from King's Cross; I don't think a second London to Midlands line would have been necessary unless aiming for Peterborough or city centre Nottingham or Doncaster stations.

 

[Austriantrain]

Stratford or St P yes.

There isn’t much of a market from the main regional cities to near Europe. Perhaps a coach worth per train.

That is not what I meant - I meant „losing“ 2 HS2 tph serving Euston (obviously, if they instead serve St P, that is almost equivalent for London. I didn’t understand that the HS2-HS1 link would have permitted this).

In my wilder crayonista dreams - in a UK in Schengen world - I would have planned a Euston-HS2 station - HS1 chord, so that trains coming from HS2 towards HS1 could serve the usual London HS2 station, but that would probably not be feasible, even with lots of money.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Bit late to the thread considering these are my favourite types of threads. My high speed plan I detailed here a few years ago: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...nners-hsr-masterplan-no-one-asked-for.273573/

In short, I’d call it HSGB instead of HS2 (High Speed Great Britain) in preparation for a full network. I’d start of by building a London to Manchester spine with a through station at Birmingham Moor Street. I estimate you’d need between 5-6 Manchester trains an hour to mop up the demand. I’d have a flat fare for the route. And emphasise connections at Birmingham for the cross country network. So when the Birmingham passengers get off, they’re replaced with Bristol/Cardiff/Oxford passengers.

The goal would be to create a new economic megalopolis corridor from London-Birmingham-Manchester. I would view mass transit improvements in these cities as part of HSGB rather than separate projects entirely. Doing so would mean moving between 200 miles of economic corridor no harder than moving about a single city.

I’d build a new route from HS1 down to Heathrow and onto the South Western, to allow Javelins to run through to the South West. This will connect Hampshire and Dorset to HS2 at OOC.

I’d build HS2 East and the transpennine route as a single project which id name HS3.

I’d position Manchester Airport as the secondary hub airport for Britain. About 20 million people would be less than 2 hours from the airport by high speed train. I’d have through airline ticketing to draw demand away from regional airports to Manchester. Hopefully you’d get less Amsterdam/Dubai connecting flights from everywhere and increase demand for more point to point flights from Manchester.

I’d push the line through to Scotland. Have trains call at Birmingham and Manchester Airport to pick up only. I probably wouldn’t have any Scotland to Manchester/Liverpool trains. I’d make them change at the airport to fill up the London trains.

I’d go on. But I reccomend looking at my old thread if interested further.

 

[Shrop]

There's currently ~10 intercity tph from Euston, 4 from St. Pancras (Midland Main Line) and ~7 (including open access) from King's Cross; I don't think a second London to Midlands line would have been necessary unless aiming for Peterborough or city centre Nottingham or Doncaster stations.

You should be VERY careful thinking that the present figures for intercity tph out of St Pancras and Kings Cross are good indictors for what the UK needs for any new railways.

Compare for example, the first stations over 150 miles from London, which just so happens to be about the minimum distance where high speeds trains really start to have major time savings over the UK’s present maximum speed of 125mph. (Yes, I know they go slightly faster in Kent, but that’s only because they use HS1).

So we’re comparing Sheffield and Doncaster which are almost exactly the same distance from London. Both have a major station roughly half way to London, namely Leicester and Peterborough. Then for the sake of this post, let’s consider the biggest population centres in between, that have rail stations, namely Nottingham and Derby, vs Grantham and Newark.

Now, ECML carries many passengers who are travelling beyond Doncaster. In fact if you look at https://trainslive.uk/odm/station.php?mode=origin, and take the first 25 destinations (as an approximate comparator), you’ll see that for 2023/24 (latest data on this site), Kings Cross has 8.2m passenger journeys, of which 4.3m or 52% travel beyond Doncaster.

Then if you make a similar comparison for MML from St.Pancras for the first 25 destinations (excluding stations towards Brighton and in Kent to make the comparison fair), there are slightly more passenger journeys at 8.4m, but NONE of these go beyond Sheffield. This says clearly that MML is grossly under-used in comparison with ECML.

You could also compare trips to the four stations on each route as mentioned above. The four stations on MML have 1.5m trips serving a combined town/city population of 1.3m, whereas ECML has 2.0m trips serving a combined population of just 370,000. It's simply down to ECML having had a much faster service for many decades.

Go back 5 years and the figures were even more pronounced, when MML had just 1.0m trips to the same four stations, whereas ECML has dropped from their figure of 5 years ago, which was 2.2m.

There is little doubt that these changes can be largely explained by improvements to the MML service, accompanied by a transfer of passengers away from ECML. Eg. London to Nottingham today by direct train when many used to go via Grantham because it was faster, and similarly many used to go from London to Sheffield via Doncaster, but the faster trains on MML today have drawn passengers to that route.

This post is long enough already, but it demonstrates that the importance of the MML corridor has been grossly understated for decades, and that there is a massive latent demand for greater use of this route. Of course there are more ways of looking at all this, but I hope this provides an indication of how we can misunderstand existing data.

 

[growse]

Unfortunately platforms 2-8 at King's Cross are just short of 300 meters, so can't quite fit a hypothetical 12 carriage HS2 train, but the station is an incredible asset with incredible connections from the underground station and St Pancras International across the road, so the most should be made of the station.

Are we sure that we're not already making the most of KGX? I thought one of the reasons why the Welwyn bottleneck is a red herring is the lack of platform capacity at KGX.

 

[Matt P]

You should be VERY careful thinking that the present figures for intercity tph out of St Pancras and Kings Cross are good indictors for what the UK needs for any new railways.

Compare for example, the first stations over 150 miles from London, which just so happens to be about the minimum distance where high speeds trains really start to have major time savings over the UK’s present maximum speed of 125mph. (Yes, I know they go slightly faster in Kent, but that’s only because they use HS1).

So we’re comparing Sheffield and Doncaster which are almost exactly the same distance from London. Both have a major station roughly half way to London, namely Leicester and Peterborough. Then for the sake of this post, let’s consider the biggest population centres in between, that have rail stations, namely Nottingham and Derby, vs Grantham and Newark.

Now, ECML carries many passengers who are travelling beyond Doncaster. In fact if you look at https://trainslive.uk/odm/station.php?mode=origin, and take the first 25 destinations (as an approximate comparator), you’ll see that for 2023/24 (latest data on this site), Kings Cross has 8.2m passenger journeys, of which 4.3m or 52% travel beyond Doncaster.

Then if you make a similar comparison for MML from St.Pancras for the first 25 destinations (excluding stations towards Brighton and in Kent to make the comparison fair), there are slightly more passenger journeys at 8.4m, but NONE of these go beyond Sheffield. This says clearly that MML is grossly under-used in comparison with ECML.

You could also compare trips to the four stations on each route as mentioned above. The four stations on MML have 1.5m trips serving a combined town/city population of 1.3m, whereas ECML has 2.0m trips serving a combined population of just 370,000. It's simply down to ECML having had a much faster service for many decades.

Go back 5 years and the figures were even more pronounced, when MML had just 1.0m trips to the same four stations, whereas ECML has dropped from their figure of 5 years ago, which was 2.2m.

There is little doubt that these changes can be largely explained by improvements to the MML service, accompanied by a transfer of passengers away from ECML. Eg. London to Nottingham today by direct train when many used to go via Grantham because it was faster, and similarly many used to go from London to Sheffield via Doncaster, but the faster trains on MML today have drawn passengers to that route.

This post is long enough already, but it demonstrates that the importance of the MML corridor has been grossly understated for decades, and that there is a massive latent demand for greater use of this route. Of course there are more ways of looking at all this, but I hope this provides an indication of how we can misunderstand existing data.

I'm not suggesting HS2 shouldn't have been built at all, but this data would suggest to me that a programme of investment in the MML (and WCML and ECML) would have been a good idea, alongside a HSL project?

I think it definitely is a bit of a Cinderalla route compared to WCML and ECML but I must confess, it also a Cinderella route when it comes to my knowledge, particularly when it comes to capacity constraints. What are the MML's main capacity constraints that would inhibit further growth, particularly to Sheffield and the East Mids?

 

[Bald Rick]

What are the MML's main capacity constraints that would inhibit further growth, particularly to Sheffield and the East Mids?

Sheffield, Derby, Trent Junctions, Leicester, the stopping patterns south of Leicester, and the Thameslink service on the fast lines south of Harpenden (which in terms of revenue earned per unit of cost is near the top of the table for the whole network).

 

[Shrop]

Sheffield, Derby, Trent Junctions, Leicester, the stopping patterns south of Leicester, and the Thameslink service on the fast lines south of Harpenden (which in terms of revenue earned per unit of cost is near the top of the table for the whole network).

That sounds like you're highlighting constraints along the existing route. I was thinking more about the under-served population centres along this corridor which would benefit from an enhanced service running somewhere near to it, but not necessarily directly along all of it.

We could also think of another scenario, given that HS2 is already under construction.

In my previous post (#228) I showed that in the year 2023/24 ECML generated 2.0m trips which served a combined population of just 370,000 (for the four stops Peterborough, Grantham, Newark and Doncaster).

MML has four comparable stops in terms of distance from London (ie Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield), but these have a combined population of 1.3m. If the ECML number of trips was scaled up according to the population differences, we would be talking of around 7m trips.

Of course the differing attractions of these centres could be argued, and I don’t doubt that my offering of 7m trips could be countered, but it does depend on how this is modelled, so let me offer one way of looking at it.

MML roughly duplicates the M1 as a route, which we know is very busy a lot of the time. We also know that a lot more people travel by car than by train. So, perhaps there actually is a huge latent demand for a new rail corridor along the M1 corridor, in addition to the present HS2. Some 7m possible trips (to these four stations alone) plus the latent demand from people who are fed up with delays on the M1 suggests that it might be worth further thought.

Ah, if only HS2 hadn’t led to so much overspend and bad feeling among the general public!

 

[Bald Rick]

MML roughly duplicates the M1 as a route, which we know is very busy a lot of the time.

The M1 is busy London to Rugby, and again from Kegworth to Sheffield. It’s not so busy Rugby to Kegworth (save around the Leicester urban area at certain times).

This is because a lot of the traffic on the busy sections is headimg to / from / via the West Midlands.

 

[Shrop]

The M1 is busy London to Rugby, and again from Kegworth to Sheffield. It’s not so busy Rugby to Kegworth (save around the Leicester urban area at certain times).

This is because a lot of the traffic on the busy sections is headimg to / from / via the West Midlands.

So "only" three quarters of the M1 between London and Sheffield is busy then?

 

[Palmerston]

If HS2 East was built even as far as the East Midlands hub, plus if the MML was electrified to Sheffield, this would allow for faster journeys and more capacity to London, albeit not from Leicester (I presume).

In other words, if you want to invest in the MML, build HS2, or at least part of it.

 

[Bald Rick]

So "only" three quarters of the M1 between London and Sheffield is busy then?

The point beng little of the traffic is going London (area) to E Mids / Sheffield area.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

The Euston/Old Oak Common setup works well. Having only Old Oak Common connected to the Elizabeth line means those from Canary Wharf, Bond St, etc., will go via OOC, reducing the load at Euston.

The idea of a "mega-interchange" sounds great for connectivity, but the station would be extremely busy; building a single station capable of dealing with that many people would be very difficult.

I'd prefer a 4-6 platform thru station with trains carrying on and terminating at a super-Stratford-Intl to provide connectivity to east London, Essex etc. However, I'm aware that other posters have said that a site capable of enough platforms would be difficult to site.

It can’t call itself a super interchange whilst the Overground sails by overhead without stopping.

I do wonder if you could somehow divert the WCML slows via OOC…

 

[Bletchleyite]

It can’t call itself a super interchange whilst the Overground sails by overhead without stopping.

I do wonder if you could somehow divert the WCML slows via OOC…

There was a plan to put the Trings and possibly the MKC stoppers onto Crossrail, but it wasn't very popular (because it would split the service) and would be quite costly.

 

[Shrop]

The point beng little of the traffic is going London (area) to E Mids / Sheffield area.

My previous post (#232) was offering that the M1 corridor has a lot of potential in addition to the present HS2.

Yes, I started this thread to discuss what might have been for HS2 with hindsight, but I think we’re getting towards the end of what people want to say about that. So it could now be worth airing the way forward after HS2. If sufficient interest in that takes off then I’m happy to start a new thread, but for the time being I’ll comment on this thread as follows.

I maintain that there is great potential for a new rail route along the M1 corridor. I suggested previously that when comparing populations of the main urban areas served by stations on ECML between Peterborough and Doncaster, with those on MML between Leicester and Sheffield, there could be 7m rail journeys per annum that need catering for, compared to just 2m on ECML.

Remember that over half of all passengers travelling from London to Doncaster on ECML are actually continuing further, whereas very few of those travelling from London to Sheffield go any further. This suggests that there is great value in developing a new rail route in some form from London to Sheffield, which of course could continue northwards from there, whilst also serving the population centres I have mentioned.

Much depends on how this is considered, and I'd happily discuss the potential and practicalities of a route. However I'm a little reluctant to do so when so many on this forum are so ready with their "crayonista" comments before actually thinking more seriously about it.

In summary not everything is about London to Birmingham, and in any case HS2 is now doing that job.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

There was a plan to put the Trings and possibly the MKC stoppers onto Crossrail, but it wasn't very popular (because it would split the service) and would be quite costly.

I meant moving the existing services. Rather than another Crossrail branch

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Feb 2026 ==

but I think we’re getting towards the end of what people want to say about that.

No one’s said anything about my post yet!