I'm not sure where to come back into this thread, but there are some issues to be resolved:
1) As Virgin have pointed out, current design and budgeting for HS2 Classic Compatible services does not provide for tilting trains. Without tilting trains, any time savings made on the HS2 trackage is lost once on Classic main lines.
This effect has been accounted for in the HS2 Ltd planning documents, they propose a series of IC250-esque realignments that will reduce the time loss to less than ten minutes.
Does raise the interesting question of why we bothered with tilting trains on the northern WCML if that is all it buys us in travel time terms.
At Crewe its going to be something like 40 minutes up compared to classic trains, I find it hard to believe it could lose all that time and end up 40 minutes
slower even if it jumped into TPE stopping pattern limited to ~110mph.
That's one reason why I raised the "what if" above. The Anglo-Scottish services would be faster overall via a revamped within its established easement GCR than with HS2.
Well even if the WCML route was going to be slower than Classic, the "long way round" route via Leeds South and York would shave 20 minutes or more off the standard London-Edinburgh travel time.
Good luck beating that with a route limited to 155mph.
And a revamped GCR, along with ongoing upgrading of the ex-GWR/GCR route to Birmingham (Moor St and Snow Hill) and beyond including electrification, should provide earlier benefits than HS2 which requires a lot of tunneling.
HS2 doesn't
require lots of tunnelling, it is just that the political masters of the project want tunnelling to avoid a fight with the locals.
I think reopening the GCR would run into the same problems with regards to noise and the like. (I actually managed to lay out a route through the chilterns with no tunnelling at all.... but it involved some rather large embankments and cuttings)
In essence, it adds 2 fast main line tracks to Rugby, connecting then to the WCML north.
Even assuming you can provide a new alignment to the GCML route that doesn't require a 20 mile crawl at 50mph on the Metropolitan line, you seen to not have noticed that HS2 provides 2 fast main line tracks to Crewe, Birmingham and Manchester on the WCML and Leeds on the ECML, connecting to the WCML/ECML at
four locations.
A connection using former Midland railway trackage towards Wigston and Leicester is also a possibility to be explored. Birmingham and points north would also benefit from line speed improvements on the former GWR/GCR route via Bicester.
Line speed improvements?
Just how much do you think you can push down a two track railway that has regular stopping services on numerous different patterns/routes?
Quad tracking would cost an absurd amount.
2) HS2 currently misses Crewe. The question is: is the WCML so overcrowded north of Rugby (or forecast to be) and the easement so constrained, that new construction on a separate alignment is actually NEEDED? Or is it a case that, if Britain is going to invest in a new railway system, then it would be cost-effective for it to go north of Rugby, too. The early-implementation, lower-cost WCML relief concept would naturally service Crewe. They would need to leave active future provision for HS tracks and platforms in their proposed Crewe Railway Centre.
There is GC access track to Crew in the HS2 proposal, just that the platforms themselves will not be cleared. Classic Compatible trains will, however, be able to access Crewe station.
This is how the primary Liverpool service will be provided.
And I doubt the monstrosity you propose would be significantly cheaper since you have to retain all the London area construction/tunnelling because the original GCML alignment is essentially unusable.
It is not as ambitious as HS2, and in its modesty will cost less, be delivered earlier, and still offer the extra capacity and a significant part of the higher performance sought.
Why would it be cheaper and delivered sooner? Major upgrade projects on British Railways have a record of not being either.
Greenfield construction will always be the most efficient means to deliver new railway capacity in today's regulatory environment.
Sorry if I have covered old ground. I'm not opposing HS2, but reading the signs that the £s have just got too big - the political consensus in support might be under strain.
A major upgrade project will likely cost almost as much if it wants to deliver benefits in the same order of magnitude, and frankly I am getting sick of people using huge numbers out of context to attack infrastructure and other programmes of any kind.
Point 3) would be that at Day 1, the proposed enhanced services would operate from Old Oak Common. I will be suggesting to the Old Oak consultation that the City end of HS2 be taken off HS2 Ltd's remit altogether. That their terminus is OOC, and that London authorities with DafT funding and advice, should determine the route east from OOC and the location of station(s).
Providing for a terminal station at OOC would require an enormous complex, which would cost some ridiculous sum of money and which would be made obsolete by the extension into the city centre at the later date.
I'd rather only pay for one terminal station at the London end instead of two.
Subject to capacity on the West London Line, the idea would be that some trains run through to Waterloo International to reverse, while some run through to Paddington.
How does this help? As I understand attempting to run trains through Kent on the conventional main lines would be impossible to timetable at the present time, and would take so long that it would not be worth it.
There's a lot more detail that could be discussed, but what I'm trying to say is that there is a fallback position if HS2 is postponed, and it is not all tears into the beers.:roll:
So your fallback position is a project that costs almost as much once all the disruption costs are added in but that delivers only a fraction of the benefits?
I think tears into the beers would be appropriate really.
Two European championships to nil.
