HS2 Station Designs Revealed

[Jorge Da Silva]

So is Curzon Street a terminus or a through station or both ?

Terminus.

 

[muddythefish]

Terminus.

So how can there be Brum - Manchester / Leeds / Newcastle trains as stated earlier in the thread ?

 

[Altnabreac]

So is Curzon Street a terminus or a through station or both ?

Terminus but with services heading both north and south.

I think a concept people haven’t yet understood about HS2 is that on the main routes it is going to effectively operate a bit like an airline with services serving high demand city pairs.

This is more efficient than a through service from say London to Manchester with a stop at Birmingham. Instead you have 3 separate London - Birmingham, London - Manchester and Birmingham - Manchester services. This allows you to operate each one faster, with no dwell time, no performance pollution and separate pricing for maximum occupancy.

The more pairs HS2 can operate, the better the business case for the line. This is why Phase 2 will happen as it makes the whole Y network much more efficient and improves the occupancy and utilisation of all the lines and stations.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

So how can there be Brum - Manchester / Leeds / Newcastle trains as stated earlier in the thread ?

It is three separate services as the line goes both north and south.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Terminus but with services heading both north and south.

I think a concept people haven’t yet understood about HS2 is that on the main routes it is going to effectively operate a bit like an airline with services serving high demand city pairs.

This is more efficient than a through service from say London to Manchester with a stop at Birmingham. Instead you have 3 separate London - Birmingham, London - Manchester and Birmingham - Manchester services. This allows you to operate each one faster, with no dwell time, no performance pollution and separate pricing for maximum occupancy.

The more pairs HS2 can operate, the better the business case for the line. This is why Phase 2 will happen as it makes the whole Y network much more efficient and improves the occupancy and utilisation of all the lines and stations.

Good explanation.
Plus HS2 won’t have the issue with Manchester-London services being crammed by people getting on from Birmingham and therefor there is more capacity. It is one of the reasons why I am in favour of the project.

 

[NotATrainspott]

So how can there be Brum - Manchester / Leeds / Newcastle trains as stated earlier in the thread ?

Curzon Street is on a spur from the mainline. That spur is connected to all three directions (towards Manchester, Leeds and London) by a massive delta junction.

The problem with a link back to New Street is that you don't gain very much. The existing XC services will continue running and will almost certainly need to be 80x-style bi-modes for decades to come. Allowing HS2 services to run into New Street is only useful if they can then continue on through the city, but that would mean expensive 360km/h classic-compatibles spending most of their time trundling through Gloucestershire requiring wires to be put up all the way.

I think cross-Birmingham high speed services will only happen if there's a major investment in high speed track in the south-west of the UK. There's not a lot of point in building a Bristol-Birmingham line if it doesn't link into the Curzon Street spur somehow, but I think it'd necessitate an underground cavern station underneath Birmingham city centre. While there's not a good reason to stop London-Manchester passengers in Birmingham, the reverse will be true for cross-country passengers.

 

[muddythefish]

Terminus but with services heading both north and south.

I think a concept people haven’t yet understood about HS2 is that on the main routes it is going to effectively operate a bit like an airline with services serving high demand city pairs.

This is more efficient than a through service from say London to Manchester with a stop at Birmingham. Instead you have 3 separate London - Birmingham, London - Manchester and Birmingham - Manchester services. This allows you to operate each one faster, with no dwell time, no performance pollution and separate pricing for maximum occupancy.

The more pairs HS2 can operate, the better the business case for the line. This is why Phase 2 will happen as it makes the whole Y network much more efficient and improves the occupancy and utilisation of all the lines and stations.

Interesting, didn't realise that.

 

[edwin_m]

Curzon Street is on a spur from the mainline. That spur is connected to all three directions (towards Manchester, Leeds and London) by a massive delta junction.

The problem with a link back to New Street is that you don't gain very much. The existing XC services will continue running and will almost certainly need to be 80x-style bi-modes for decades to come. Allowing HS2 services to run into New Street is only useful if they can then continue on through the city, but that would mean expensive 360km/h classic-compatibles spending most of their time trundling through Gloucestershire requiring wires to be put up all the way.

I think cross-Birmingham high speed services will only happen if there's a major investment in high speed track in the south-west of the UK. There's not a lot of point in building a Bristol-Birmingham line if it doesn't link into the Curzon Street spur somehow, but I think it'd necessitate an underground cavern station underneath Birmingham city centre. While there's not a good reason to stop London-Manchester passengers in Birmingham, the reverse will be true for cross-country passengers.

I would guess any Bristol-Birmingham high speed line would start from south of Birmingham Interchange where the four track section will end going towards London (extended a bit if necessary). It would then head generally south-west with possibly a stop in the Cheltenham-Gloucester area where trains for South Wales might diverge. That way trains between Curzon Street and Bristol would not conflict with those between the north and London so could be scheduled to run parallel. If cross-country HS services needed to call in Birmingham they would just reverse in Curzon Street, but the fact the initial service is viable just running into Birmingham suggests that the Bristol trains could be additional and bypass Birmingham.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I would guess any Bristol-Birmingham high speed line would start from south of Birmingham Interchange where the four track section will end going towards London (extended a bit if necessary). It would then head generally south-west with possibly a stop in the Cheltenham-Gloucester area where trains for South Wales might diverge. That way trains between Curzon Street and Bristol would not conflict with those between the north and London so could be scheduled to run parallel. If cross-country HS services needed to call in Birmingham they would just reverse in Curzon Street, but the fact the initial service is viable just running into Birmingham suggests that the Bristol trains could be additional and bypass Birmingham.

I think 'viable' is a bit of a stretch. The Birmingham-Manchester/Leeds trains are going to be pretty empty for a while. A 200m set might be 'small' in HS2 terms but it is equivalent in capacity to an entire full-length classic InterCity train.

HS2 is geared around this point-to-point model for London services. When you start to serve non-London flows, that model doesn't make as much sense. If we're building any Birmingham-Bristol line, then I don't think the cost savings of making the line approach a terminus from the complete opposite side of the city are going to be justified. If the case for the line is so weak that you couldn't justify a through route, then you're probably never going to be building it at all. The model for an underground terminus like this would be different to what was discounted for HS2 Phase 1, as there'd be no need for trains to run through non-stop. It'd just be a pair of Elizabeth line stations extended to 400m and put side-by-side. There appears to be plenty of space for a grade-separated junction to be built near the planned HS2 rolling stock depot at Washwood Heath.

 

[HSTEd]

Reversing is not that big of a disadvantage these days.

A train can approach Curzon Street from Bristol, reverse and proceed to manchester with only a few minutes lost relative to a straight through alignment.

And billions of pounds saved.

 

[Bungle965]

Any development above would just end up awful. Birmingham New Street, Barcelona Sants and New York Penn are all horrible on the platforms.

I agree, I had the displeasure of using Barcelona Sants during the summer and apart from the pain of having to queue up, get your tickets checked and go through an x-ray. You then have to contend with an absolutely stiflingly hot platform.
Sam

 

[The Planner]

They still could have given the stations royal assent.

I think you misunderstand what royal assent is, it gives them the powers to start work and start using the land within their boundaries. You are not going to have a fully signed up set of contractors with nailed down designs hanging on tenterhooks waiting for that to happen.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Trains will be 16 carriages long (400 metres), meaning 200 metres in 8 coaches. Each carriage will be 25 metres by my calculations. 9 trains per hour (as previously mentioned in this thread), 1,100 Passengers per train into Curzon Street and 300,000 Passengers per day by 2033.
All according to the document on the Curzon Street design.
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/...2_Curzon+Street_A5+Brochure_V1-compressed.pdf

 

[LLivery]

Trains will be 16 carriages long (400 metres), meaning 200 metres in 8 coaches. Each carriage will be 25 metres by my calculations. 9 trains per hour (as previously mentioned in this thread), 1,100 Passengers per train into Curzon Street and 300,000 Passengers per day by 2033.
All according to the document on the Curzon Street design.
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/...2_Curzon+Street_A5+Brochure_V1-compressed.pdf

They're expecting 109.5 million passengers using this station a year? With 9tph? Are they having a laugh? That's more than London Waterloo - absolute tosh.

As for the trains, it sounds like the plan is based on the ICE 3.

I agree, I had the displeasure of using Barcelona Sants during the summer and apart from the pain of having to queue up, get your tickets checked and go through an x-ray. You then have to contend with an absolutely stiflingly hot platform.
Sam

The station is probably the worst building in Barcelona.

 

[Altnabreac]

They're expecting 109.5 million passengers using this station a year? With 9tph? Are they having a laugh? That's more than London Waterloo - absolute tosh.

As for the trains, it sounds like the plan is based on the ICE 3.

300,000 passengers a day does sound rather a lot to me but not mathmatically impossible.

Lets assume 7tph are 400m trains and 2tph are 200m trains.

Remember that there are 9tph arrivals and 9tph departures each hour. That gives us a theoretical passenger figure of 19,800 per hour:
7tph arrivals of 1,100 passengers
2tph arrivals of 550 passengers
7tph departures of 1,100 passengers
2tph departures of 550 passengers

An operating day of 14 hours with 9tph arrivals and departures 8am - 8pm is possible with 2 more hours of departures from 6am-8am and 2 more hours of arrivals from 8pm - 10pm gives us 16 x 19,800 per hour or 316,800 passengers.

Operating hours could well be a little longer than that as well but occupancy levels above 80% all day are likely to be very tricky to achieve. Would like to see a breakdown of where they see the 300k per day coming from. Would certainly need some competitive demand responsive off peak pricing structures to deliver anywhere near this.

 

[swt_passenger]

Just means they’ve listed the potential capacity doesn’t it? I dare say if you calculated Waterloo’s theoretical ‘all day capacity’ it would be an off the scale number as well...

 

[GreatAuk]

Indeed, looking at the Curzon Street information paper (Google 'hs2 phase one information papers stations and key locations (series H)' and the relevant .gov Page should come up), the actual predicted usage is 25k per day in 2026, and 66k in 2041 (6 years after completion of phase 2). These number might be a bit out of date now but can't imagine they've changed massively since the document was last updated in Feb 2017.

Reversing is not that big of a disadvantage these days.

A train can approach Curzon Street from Bristol, reverse and proceed to manchester with only a few minutes lost relative to a straight through alignment.

And billions of pounds saved.

I do agree that this might well be the best option, but there are other disadvantages too. The longer distance of track to go round Birmingham will add both time and cost (£100m per mile of whatever it is now?) as will any required extra 4 track, junctions etc. Reversing trains will also put more pressure on the station approach, and mean that it will take longer to clear platforms for the next train to use, putting another potential constraint on future capacity.

I just hope that any design decisions they make now don't preclude putting in a direct through link of some kind in the future (whether that's best done by tunnel, existing tracks via New Street, or some other way), preferably with the maximum possible time spend on high speed track. Particularly as there will actually be a significant amount of tunnelling already between interchange and curzon street, and they only come up to the surface a relatively short distance before the station itself.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

300,000 passengers a day does sound rather a lot to me but not mathmatically impossible.

Lets assume 7tph are 400m trains and 2tph are 200m trains.

Remember that there are 9tph arrivals and 9tph departures each hour. That gives us a theoretical passenger figure of 19,800 per hour:
7tph arrivals of 1,100 passengers
2tph arrivals of 550 passengers
7tph departures of 1,100 passengers
2tph departures of 550 passengers

An operating day of 14 hours with 9tph arrivals and departures 8am - 8pm is possible with 2 more hours of departures from 6am-8am and 2 more hours of arrivals from 8pm - 10pm gives us 16 x 19,800 per hour or 316,800 passengers.

Operating hours could well be a little longer than that as well but occupancy levels above 80% all day are likely to be very tricky to achieve. Would like to see a breakdown of where they see the 300k per day coming from. Would certainly need some competitive demand responsive off peak pricing structures to deliver anywhere near this.

Also it’s 2033 over 15 years away so numbers maybe a lot higher.

 

[The Planner]

I just hope that any design decisions they make now don't preclude putting in a direct through link of some kind in the future (whether that's best done by tunnel, existing tracks via New Street, or some other way), preferably with the maximum possible time spend on high speed track. Particularly as there will actually be a significant amount of tunnelling already between interchange and curzon street, and they only come up to the surface a relatively short distance before the station itself.

Eh? The only tunnel berween Interchange and Curzon St is a short one at Bromford, the rest is all above ground with substantial viaducts on the approach to Curzon St.

 

[GreatAuk]

Eh? The only tunnel berween Interchange and Curzon St is a short one at Bromford, the rest is all above ground with substantial viaducts on the approach to Curzon St.

Woops, had that wrong, must have been thinking of something else.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

I think 300,000 maybe the full railway.

Also 80% of passengers will head to London apparently on hs2.

 

[duffield]

Reversing is not that big of a disadvantage these days.

A train can approach Curzon Street from Bristol, reverse and proceed to manchester with only a few minutes lost relative to a straight through alignment.

And billions of pounds saved.

But this only works if you always change drivers at Curzon Street, otherwise with the 400m walk for the driver plus the usual overheads you're probably looking at 10 minutes minimum. If you change drivers it could be kept down to maybe 3-4 mins.

 

[Mikey C]

With the size and capacity of those trains, I hope the Curzon Street station Wetherspoons is a decent size

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

With the size and capacity of those trains, I hope the Curzon Street station Wetherspoons is a decent size

LOL!!!
Curzon Street seems to be a decent size.

 

[Dougal2345]

I agree, I had the displeasure of using Barcelona Sants during the summer and apart from the pain of having to queue up, get your tickets checked and go through an x-ray. You then have to contend with an absolutely stiflingly hot platform.
Sam

I can't really agree with that. The concourse of Sants is light and airy, despite having a hotel on top of it. The layout is a little confusing and I can never quite work out which way I'm facing though, when leaving I always end up heading out of the wrong side! The x-ray/ticket check section is much more open and better laid out than the scrum at St Pancras. The platform level is bright with everything painted white. Ok, it's ferociously hot in summer but then that's Barcelona for you.

The Curzon street images look nice, but I don't like the way the trains are hidden under the concourse.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I can't really agree with that. The concourse of Sants is light and airy, despite having a hotel on top of it. The layout is a little confusing and I can never quite work out which way I'm facing though, when leaving I always end up heading out of the wrong side! The x-ray/ticket check section is much more open and better laid out than the scrum at St Pancras. The platform level is bright with everything painted white. Ok, it's ferociously hot in summer but then that's Barcelona for you.

The Curzon street images look nice, but I don't like the way the trains are hidden under the concourse.

Is that so the access is in the middle of the platform and people don't have to walk potentially nearly 400m to board?

 

[Ianno87]

Is that so the access is in the middle of the platform and people don't have to walk potentially nearly 400m to board?

I'd imagine so, yes. The inevitable consequence is platform over concourse, or concourse over platform! Modern design will let plenty of natural light through anyway (think London Bridge concourse).

 

[sprinterguy]

I'd imagine so, yes. The inevitable consequence is platform over concourse, or concourse over platform! Modern design will let plenty of natural light through anyway (think London Bridge concourse).

The impression I get is that the main concourses will actually be below the platforms: That's certainly where the taxi drop-offs will be. The above platform concourse at the Moor Street end seems more of a mezzanine, though I don't know how that will work with the Moor Street entrance no doubt being the primary access point for the majority of passengers. Duplication of facilities, perhaps.

 

[B&I]

Curzon Street is on a spur from the mainline. That spur is connected to all three directions (towards Manchester, Leeds and London) by a massive delta junction.

The problem with a link back to New Street is that you don't gain very much. The existing XC services will continue running and will almost certainly need to be 80x-style bi-modes for decades to come. Allowing HS2 services to run into New Street is only useful if they can then continue on through the city, but that would mean expensive 360km/h classic-compatibles spending most of their time trundling through Gloucestershire requiring wires to be put up all the way.

I think cross-Birmingham high speed services will only happen if there's a major investment in high speed track in the south-west of the UK. There's not a lot of point in building a Bristol-Birmingham line if it doesn't link into the Curzon Street spur somehow, but I think it'd necessitate an underground cavern station underneath Birmingham city centre. While there's not a good reason to stop London-Manchester passengers in Birmingham, the reverse will be true for cross-country passengers.

Doesn't this illustrate how many missed opportunities arise from failing to upgrade other lines to take advantage of a core high speed network (or even to bring them.up to something approahing 21st century standard) ?

 

[NotATrainspott]

Doesn't this illustrate how many missed opportunities arise from failing to upgrade other lines to take advantage of a core high speed network (or even to bring them.up to something approahing 21st century standard) ?

But what do you mean 'upgrade'? The problem we've found is that meaningful upgrades are often as difficult and expensive as full-blown new lines. The Birmingham-Bristol line needs separation between fast and slow services before you can meaningfully talk of speeding up existing fast trains, and the only practical way of doing that would be to build a totally new pair of tracks along most, if not all, of its length. Therefore, you're really talking about a new high speed line as part of an even larger national network.

I think there should definitely be wider consideration of our trunk InterCity network in future. Even if it will take decades to build and no concrete route options have been identified, there's still benefit from a planning perspective. If the original HS2 reports had also considered what to do about the TransPennine corridor (rather than just listing it as a nebulous upgrade programme) then we might have much more clarity on what junctions or passive provision HS2 Phase 2b needs to include.

The right way to do this is to be expansive rather than restrictive. It means seriously considering the future of lines that we're currently in the process of upgrading, like the GWML. I think any Birmingham-Bristol high speed line would definitely need to be considered alongside a new Bristol-London line, as they'd certainly share the expensive infrastructure in and about Bristol and any further extensions into the West Country.