start from scratch...

[YorkshireBear]

right then, imagine now there are no railways, start from scratch, you can demolish anything within reason.

To make it alot less complicated, lets do ECML just to start. Try and keep it real, and imagine all citys towns as they are now..... just no tracks

 

[MCR247]

I would have a 6 track viaduct through the middle of London across, 2 fast, 2 slow and 2 metro (crossrail) and a 4 track tunnel under it N - S, with an interchange station where both meet. The 4 track tunnel would be 2 TL and 2 express

 

[LE Greys]

Run the main line through Cambridge and cut directly accross to Peterborough. Four track all the way to Doncaster. Consider running via Leeds and Ripon rather than York (no George Hudson, remember). Also consider an inland route from Newcastle to Edinburgh, and certainly an inland route between Inverkeithing and the Tay Bridge. The result would be a 125 mph route all the way from Newcastle to Aberdeen, hopefully achieving a 5½-hour time from London.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I would have a 6 track viaduct through the middle of London across, 2 fast, 2 slow and 2 metro (crossrail) and a 4 track tunnel under it N - S, with an interchange station where both meet. The 4 track tunnel would be 2 TL and 2 express

Assuming it's roughly Old Oak-Stratford, that would allow the line to split, with one western arm going towards Manchester, the other towards Bristol. The other ends would go towards East Anglia and Kent via a faster Thames tunnel. The north-south version could fan out at roughly Finsbury Park, with one line heading for Cambridge and northwards, the other towards Bedford and the Midlands. The southern end could fan out, with Brighton and Woking being the first outward major stations.

Adding to my other ideas, all lines would be 7ft ¼in gauge and laid out with no curve tighter than 1½ mile radius, as near to dead flat as possible.

 

[asylumxl]

I've got to ask, if you were starting from scratch why would you stick to 125mph when you'd be able to design lines for far faster linespeeds?

 

[YorkshireBear]

I've got to ask, if you were starting from scratch why would you stick to 125mph when you'd be able to design lines for far faster linespeeds?

well yeah that could be said, we could start with an intergrated high speed network

 

[tbtc]

an inland route between Inverkeithing and the Tay Bridge

Good call

I'd like to see a main line running as follows:

London - Nottingham - Sheffield - Leeds - Harrogate - Darlington - Washington - Newcastle - Kelso - Edinburgh - Inverkeithing - Kinross - Perth - Dundee - Aberdeen

...plus...

London - Stansted - Cambridge - Lincoln - Hull - York - Middlesbrough - Sunderland - Newcastle to link in to the first line

Minimum four track lines (possibly to allow 24hour running) , grade separated junctions, you name it...

 

[LE Greys]

I've got to ask, if you were starting from scratch why would you stick to 125mph when you'd be able to design lines for far faster linespeeds?

Seems like a fairly convenient speed, two miles a minute and a bit more. It's usually faster than a car, but not so fast that it requires huge ammounts of energy for minimal gain. Not only that, on double-track routes, it means that you can mix passenger and freight fairly well. On the north-south routes, I would go with 200 mph for the fast lines on the four-track sections, 100 mph on the slows. Double-track routes would be at 125 mph for main lines and 100 mph for secondary and suburban lines. On the Great Western route, I would go with 200 mph for the Thames Valley and possibly the line to Bristol or Plymouth, 125 mph for the rest of the main lines (all the way to Penzance and Fishguard). Local routes, I would go for 75 mph or 60 mph. Freight speeds would be based on braking characteristics, but I would try to push some of the faster routes to 100 mph, broad gauge would help with this.

All these speeds are faster than the majority of road transport, but allow a balance of energy consumed vs speed. After all, power (rate of work done) is the square of speed, while effective time saving reduces as speed increases (60>90 saves 20 seconds a mile, 90>120 saves 10 seconds).

By the way, I mentioned the track gauge, the loading gauge would be 13ft 6 wide and 20ft high, or as wide as a Chunnel Shuttle and as high as an American Autorack. The idea is to be able to double-stack hi-cube containers and to increase freight loads, while running double-decker passenger trains on busy lines. Stick with high platforms, allowing level access to single-decker coaches, but make sure that there is enough clearance to fit full-width loads through them.

 

[BR 1979]

Everything Mag-Lev on raised concrete deck modular style.
Separate City to City and Suburban Lines.
Local Services 'Personal Transit' trains / taxi's as envisaged for New York driver-less and computer controlled.

Or lets go back to steam , re-open the pits , adopt the 7' gauge, all bask in a 'new modernist nostalgia' and solve the nations woes....

 

[imagination]

Why would we have to have an ECML?

 

[DaveNewcastle]

I've got to ask, if you were starting from scratch why would you . . . . . ?

I beleive that there's quite a few fundamental criteria to establish when asking a question such as this . . .

For example:
Are we considering a freight and/or passenger network?
How fluid do we expect our plans to be (ie do we plan for demand over 20 / 40 / 80 / 200 years?)
Are we assuming any interfaces with European / global traffic?
How deeply can we penetrate residential areas with new-build (to provide commuter & leisure travel) and How deeply can we penetrate industrial & commercial areas with new build (to provide freight/haulage & courier services)?
Do we presume standardisation across freight / passenger / long-distance / local services? And if so, to what level of compatibility between them?
What predictions do we assume for demand growth or loss over the coming century for passenger & freight travel?
What are we to assume about road (and air & ferry) developments during our working time-scale?

I don't think I can add anything more to this thread unless we had some clarity in these and other areas!

 

[jopsuk]

Right then, needs a bit of flesh, but here's a start. Using a bit of Chinese-level ambition I feel...
The network would be built, a bit like LE Greys, to a much larger gauge. I'd use a 2.25m track gauge. Loading gauge would allow stock to 6.5m high (easily allowing doublestack), and as wide as Eurotunnel shuttle.

The network shown in the image would be a 400km/h max passenger network. I'd flesh it out with a 200km/h secondary network, with 100km/h Metro and Rural routes. All 25kV overhead. The 400 network would be shadowed by 200 lines for services to intermediate towns and for freight. The two wouldn't always be on the same alignment, and freight would also gain "avoiding" routes round towns, serving major out-of-town industrial parks.

Note lines such as the London orbital and Welsh North-South. Routes are obviously just rough.

You said start from scratch...

Tunnels, Viaducts as needed and to hell with the NIMBYs.

Possible extension to Holyhead for a tunnel to Dublin.
Four more bores for the Channel Tunnel- to have a dedicated pair each for Shuttle, Freight and Passenger.

 

[imagination]

Huge diversion for Aberystwyth but nothing included to Inverness?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Oh and where can you get a decent map?

 

[LE Greys]

If I was going for a full network plan, I would start with, of all things, the Serpell Report. We don't have anything more up-to-date which goes for such a radical rethink of the network. The Option A network would form the basis for the high-speed network, although not being tied to existing routes would allow for considerable changes to allow for different traffic patterns. Additional lines from the C3 network would form the basis for the secondary routes, all of which would be designed to take 125 mph, again not necessarily following existing routes. Option D lines would also be added, but would be run at 100 mph. Extra lines would be added to serve all communities of 10,000 or more people, and to serve as many freight terminals as possible. I would also aim for a point-to-point system rather than hub-and-spoke. I like the idea of avoiding lines, and the connections to industrial estates. I would also add air freight connections, since the large loading gauge would permit vans to load ULDs (air freight containers). All major airports would serve as major junctions (like Gatwick today) while I would link the ticketing system into the airline Codeshare arrangement, allowing passengers to travel from their local station on an air ticket.

This gives you a series of radial routes in the high-speed network

• Cardiff-Bristol-Reading-Heathrow-London W/E-Ipswich-Norwich
• Portsmouth-London S/N-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough-Lincoln-Doncaster-York-Darlington(-rejoins Brighton-Edinburgh)
• Brighton-London S/N-Leicester-Nottingham-Sheffield-Leeds-Harrogate-Ripon-Darlington-Newcastle-Edinburgh
• Channel Tunnel-Chatham-London E/W-Birmingham-Manchester(-Liverpool branch)-Carlisle-Glasgow
• Plymouth-Exeter-Basingstoke-Heathrow(-joins Cardiff-Norwich)

There would be a series of extensions where station spacing negates the advantage of 200 mph running, so run at 125 mph (or 120 if you ignore my affection for the HST). These would take in Southampton, Portsmouth, Eastbourne, Margate/Ramsgate/Dover, Penzance, Blackpool and so on.

Notice I'm working entirely in Imperial. Napoleonic measurements would not be used in my idealised Britain. Converting everything into knots would be even better, but would be even worse for conversion, so I abandoned the idea.

 

[jopsuk]

Huge diversion for Aberystwyth but nothing included to Inverness?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Oh and where can you get a decent map?

I'd put Inverness on the 200 network- that's still 125mph. The Aberystwyth bit was to give Wales a North-south link and make certain Welsh people on the board happier :P

The map was, um pieced together using Google Maps screeshots and the free image editing program GIMP (it's like a poor man's Photoshop).

I go with Metric units, as it is what I was taught at school (in common with everyone else for the last thirty or more years). It's a logical system, unlike the mish-mash that is Imperial.

next LE Greys will be claiming that Prussian temperature unit is in fact English... mindyou, we should use Kelvin instead, that's British...

Also, as far as air goes- with a seriously quick rail network, I'd ban most domestic air travel- reducing it to pretty much just to the Islands. This would then reduce the number of airports a bit.

 

[DarloRich]

Why would we have to have an ECML?

Becasue it would serve the regenerated "capital of the railways" - Darlington

 

[LE Greys]

next LE Greys will be claiming that Prussian temperature unit is in fact English... mindyou, we should use Kelvin instead, that's British...

Personally, I'd go for the nautical mile as the basis (one minute of latitude at the equator, meaning that the Earth is precisely 21,600 miles in circumference). 10 cables to a mile, 100 fathoms to a cable, 2 yards to a fathom, 3 feet to a yard, 12 inches to a foot. It's much more flexible than metric (what is one third of a metre?). Unfortunately, that would mean lengthening the inch by 0.08439 inches, which would confuse the hell out of engineers, because a nautical mile is 6,076 Imperial feet, not 6,000.

If you want to know why I don't like Napoleon and everything he stood for, ask the Spanish.

 

[jopsuk]

Just beacuse a person does many bad things doesn't mean they don't have some good ideas. You might as well avoid Volkswagons because of Hitler... which would be ridiculous. But that's not really on topic. notice you din't quite bite on Farrenheit.

 

[LE Greys]

Just beacuse a person does many bad things doesn't mean they don't have some good ideas. You might as well avoid Volkswagons because of Hitler... which would be ridiculous. But that's not really on topic. notice you din't quite bite on Farrenheit.

Which was actually invented to deal with temperatures in the Human body anyway. With temperatures, I generally use whatever unit is most convenient at the time, depending on what I want to calculate.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Right then, needs a bit of flesh, but here's a start. Using a bit of Chinese-level ambition I feel...
The network would be built, a bit like LE Greys, to a much larger gauge. I'd use a 2.25m track gauge. Loading gauge would allow stock to 6.5m high (easily allowing doublestack), and as wide as Eurotunnel shuttle.

The network shown in the image would be a 400km/h max passenger network. I'd flesh it out with a 200km/h secondary network, with 100km/h Metro and Rural routes. All 25kV overhead. The 400 network would be shadowed by 200 lines for services to intermediate towns and for freight. The two wouldn't always be on the same alignment, and freight would also gain "avoiding" routes round towns, serving major out-of-town industrial parks.

Note lines such as the London orbital and Welsh North-South. Routes are obviously just rough.

You said start from scratch...

Tunnels, Viaducts as needed and to hell with the NIMBYs.

Possible extension to Holyhead for a tunnel to Dublin.
Four more bores for the Channel Tunnel- to have a dedicated pair each for Shuttle, Freight and Passenger.

To get back to the subject, I like the point-to-point nature of a network such as this. It saves a lot of time and energy if you can go direct to you destination instead of diverting through some other place, especially if it is London and you have to make a Tube journey to get through.

 

[jopsuk]

That's one of the things I was aiming for- yes, have the hub and spokes, but have lines connecting those spokes further out.

The vast underground central London terminal of doom is another matter.

 

[LE Greys]

That's one of the things I was aiming for- yes, have the hub and spokes, but have lines connecting those spokes further out.

The vast underground central London terminal of doom is another matter.

Call it London Central. I'd place it somewhere near Holborn Viaduct, with a semi-radial underground network going out from it (like the Moscow Metro). There would still be a Circle Line, but it would be closer to a true circle, cutting straight between Baker Street and Victoria. Also perhaps a Middle Circle (roughly North London Line route, but cutting direct from Old Oak to Clapham to Croydon to Stratford, all of which would continue to be major junctions. Finally, an Outer Circle, roughly following the M25, but via Heathrow and Gatwick. This would be broad gauge, also carrying freight around London, to avoid clogging up the two central tunnels.

As for London Central, it would actually be two through stations. The underground bit would be very like Grand Central, while the upper part (possibly on a viaduct) would be more like Leeds, with Holbon Viaduct and Farringdon Street between the two, giving space for car parking and a bus interchange. I'd expect ten platforms for each layer (through station, remember) all bi-directional and long enough for a potential sixteen coaches. On the suburban platforms, it might be worth having double-deck boarding to speed things up. This means tearing down a large section of London, but I think that it would be worth it.

 

[YesToHS2]

I took the liberty of designing a new network. Based roughly around the current network but with some major additions. The largest addition being a fully integrated HSR network with an semi high speed network serving major commuter routes. There would also be a "London bypass" taking passengers from north to south without having to change at London and I would extend crossrail from Oxford to as far as Colchester.

Red = HSR 250mph+
Blue = TASS up to 140mph (Long distance)
Green = up to 125mph (medium/long distance)
Brown = up to 100mph (medium/local commuter)
Yellow = full London/southern area cros rail from Oxford to Colchester.

 

[BR 1979]

I took the liberty of designing a new network. Based roughly around the current network but with some major additions. The largest addition being a fully integrated HSR network with an semi high speed network serving major commuter routes. There would also be a "London bypass" taking passengers from north to south without having to change at London and I would extend crossrail from Oxford to as far as Colchester.

Red = HSR 250mph+
Blue = TASS up to 140mph (Long distance)
Green = up to 125mph (medium/long distance)
Brown = up to 100mph (medium/local commuter)
Yellow = full London/southern area cros rail from Oxford to Colchester.

No reinstatement of the S&D ? I am disappointed

 

[imagination]

Nothing to Barrow-in-Furness either.

And the vast majority of Scotland and part of NE England has vanished completely

 

[YorkshireBear]

only one pennine route aswell?

 

[MCR247]

I would do a map if I could find a decent one

 

[YesToHS2]

Version 2

Thinking doing a Scotland and central London map separately.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Version 2

Thinking doing a Scotland and central London map separately.

good but i still feel sheffield needs a good manchester link which is the missing TPE route i was referring to...

Also no link from sheffield to cleethorpes and east coast? i cant comment much more as i dont know areas

 

[MCR247]

Where are people getting these maps?

 

[LE Greys]

Also no route west from Cambridge. Baldock-Cambridge is my most frequent journey. I'd go for (roughly) Cambridge-Stevenage and Milton Keynes-Oxford as effectively a single route. Boston-Peterborough-Northampton would get a lot of use as well.
The people of Penzance must be a bit annoyed to be left off the map, but I presume that they still have a route running west from Truro.
However, I like the idea of Hitchin being on a line that swings west then goes north. The biggest failing of the ECML is lack of access to the Midlands without going via London, and this would solve it.

 

[jopsuk]

MCR247- YestoHS2's map looks similar to mine- stitched together from screenshots. Should have held on to my base map before scrawling on it, could have left it blank for others to daub their lines on.