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Agree with your maths - though it felt as if most of them were on board the Anglo-Scottish train I travelled on earlier this week! According to HS2 itself, "HS2 is expected to carry over 300,000 passengers a day – around 100 million a year, when fully operational." My point - in response to...

What's all this talk of "passenger load"? Last week a certain Mr Farage, head of the Brexit Party, said that it wasn't worth spending north of £100 billion on HS2 as "hardly anybody will use it". Last Sunday during a leaders debate he clarified his views stating "only a few thousand people would...

Not just "narrow country lanes" but single track lanes in places. As you rightly say "Madness".

West Coast Express Line - WCEL? Hopefully eventually leading to an East Coast Express Line ECEL and a Great Western Express Line GWEL.

Thinking this through reasonably logically and in very simple terms.... The only realistic way that the WCML will be able to cope with expected future traffic flows is to increase the number of tracks from 2 to 3 in each direction. Given that, there are two options: a) rebuild the existing...

Sorry but I disagree. The problem is that investing whatever HS2 eventually costs into upgrading the classic WCML again will almost certainly result in a far smaller uplift in capacity. i.e. not cost effective.

Worst case estimates of £85 billion refer to the whole project (not just London to Brum) - though the current budget is actually £56 billion. I think the original estimate for Phase 1 for just the infrastructure was around £17 billion. The point is, its not as if the UK has had no experience of...

But since the first 44 miles of High Speed One was delivered for a relatively modest £1.9 billion, how is the 350 mile High Speed Two network going to get anywhere near £100 billion?

I know that parts of the popular press are talking about £100 billion plus, but perhaps there is need for a reality check. The 44 mile Section 1 of HS1 was delivered for £1.9 billion despite having to get through the "Garden of England". Section 2 was more costly involving extensive tunnelling...

Similar to what I've been thinking. What I don't understand about the TPRU is that it is deemed acceptable to close the route for 9 months for each of the 5 years it will take to complete the work. After all, if the route is important enough to justify £3 Billion being spent on it now PLUS...

I don't think it is an actual plan, rather a suggestion from Network Rail for dealing with traffic growth in the 2040's. The 2 TPH bit is to be welcomed but their proposal can easily be improved by running both trains to Cheltenham via a Gloucester Parkway.

Appears to cover all the bases. Impressed!

Thank you for raising this very important point. If a new Gloucester station on the main Bristol to Birmingham line is ever to be approved, then not only will it need a robust business case but it will also need the backing of the City Council. This may be problematic. I may be wrong but from...

With the very small proviso that technically Cheltenham is a town and not a city, totally agree with you. Effectively both the City of Gloucester and Cheltenham Town are very similar both population wise and economically. GCHQ is based in Cheltenham and that alone means that there is a need for...

In order to improve rail services in the Gloucester Area – and the number and range of ideas posted on this forum clearly suggests that the need is widely recognised – then I think that the alternatives are either to accept the constraints imposed by the existing infrastructure, but compensate...

I think the reason it’s a long term aspiration is that Network Rail forecast that it will take until around 2040 for demand to reach a level to justify 2 TPH. However, I suspect that there might actually already be a lot of suppressed demand. Alternatively, imagine if Gloucester has a station...

Perhaps I’m too optimistic but personally I think that in the medium term at least there is a very good chance of a new station at Gloucester on the main Bristol to Birmingham line – as that is the only realistic way of significantly improving Gloucester’s rail service. As a seasoned rail...

Should have been more precise - yes I did mean a new Gloucester station on the Bristol to Birmingham mainline. Very interesting point about Gloucester being on the Paddington to Cardiff mainline though before the Severn Tunnel was built! I don't claim to have the answer about how to improve...

Welcome though all these improvements will be - I'd still much prefer to see a new station on the Mainline.

The distance between track centres on French LGV's is 4.5m for a design speed of 350 km/h. For HS2, with its 400 km/h aspiration, track separation will be up to 5.0m So, with good aerodynamics, strong construction and generous track spacing, on HS2 the "hammer effect" should be a thing of the...