Rail Franchises

[Ameecher]

But there is no need for it to be a complete replacement. If you do that all you do is move the problems of the WCML, combine with the problems of the ECML and generally balls up the new system.

And what are those problems?

Gross lack of capacity!

[Nawdic]

But there is no need for it to be a complete replacement. If you do that all you do is move the problems of the WCML, combine with the problems of the ECML and generally balls up the new system.

And what are those problems?

Gross lack of capacity!

Of which there will be lots of on my version of HS2

No doubt a million Pendos will be ordered...

[Ameecher]

And what are those problems?

Gross lack of capacity!

Of which there will be lots of on my version of HS2

But there's no need if you take the capacity hugging trains off the WCML there will be shed loads of paths on the WCML do whatever you want with. It's stupid to p*** a lot of money up the wall to make the ECML and WCML little more than a string of branch lines.

[Geo Ghost]

Of which there will be lots of on my version of HS2

But there's no need if you take the capacity hugging trains off the WCML there will be shed loads of paths on the WCML do whatever you want with. It's stupid to p*** a lot of money up the wall to make the ECML and WCML little more than a string of branch lines.

Here here. Agreed!
HS2 is going to take a load of the WCML anyway. HS2 does NOT need to take all the intercity services. That is just silly. Plus, how bendy would the line have to be to reach all these places and avoid other towns/villages etc.

[Geo Ghost]

Its only bendy becuase of the fact they need to avoid dealing with hostile landowners

That is silly. By far, that's not the only reason. Use your loaf boy. Come on!

[Geo Ghost]

How is that a reason for the HS2 route being so bendy and all over the place having to follow your little idea?

[Ameecher]

How is that a reason for the HS2 route being so bendy and all over the place having to follow your little idea?

I have looked at the route (that I have suggested) and it will not be bendy, it will conform to HSR standards

Yeah so long as you ignore all the topography.

But there's no need if you take the capacity hugging trains off the WCML there will be shed loads of paths on the WCML do whatever you want with. It's stupid to p*** a lot of money up the wall to make the ECML and WCML little more than a string of branch lines.

When your spending this much money, you might as well serve as many people as possible and take on as many servcies as posibble, plus notn every Intercity service on the ECML/MML/WCML is trasfering to HS2

But to add all these places and make it 4 track would make it massively more expensive, especially as your route would require a lot more tunnelling than present so you'd need twice as many tunnels if you're going for 4 track. Also in tunnels trains can't run as fast meaning you're going to create a slow high speed line. Good one.
All the services that you want to run on HS2 could more than comfortably be housed on the existing mainlines once the express end to end and headline services are transferred to HS2 which is what HS2 is all about and what it should be all about. The French LGVs are examples of this, TGVs run headline fast services from Paris to Lyon and then you can get a normal express train that makes intermediate stops on the classic lines between the two. That's what HS lines in Britain should be.

[Dave]

Also to put France as an example is not the case the LGV Sud-Est/Rhone-Alpes/Mediteranee serves the same towns and cities as the Paris to Marseille Line (apart from the smaller towns and suburbs) which is what I am suggesting for HS2 anyway.

Sorry, but the smaller towns and suburbs the LGVSE doesn't serve are exactly the same size as places like Preston, and Stoke-on-Trent, and (bizarrely) Penrith.

I mean a high speed railway serving just 4 cities for £30+ billion is not a good idea!

No, it IS good, because that's where the demand is... Scotland/Liverpool/Manchester/Birmingham-London is what everyone wants.

The reason Lichfield and Nuneaton and Tamworth don't get a regular Pendolino service is because the demand isn't there.

The one that arrives from London to Lichfield at ~7ish? Last time I was there FOUR people got off the train. On a headline service!

The reason HSR is high-speed and has as few stops as possible is to cater for those wanting end-to-end travel. That's what HSR is, was, and always will be.

[Ameecher]

But to add all these places and make it 4 track would make it massively more expensive, especially as your route would require a lot more tunnelling than present so you'd need twice as many tunnels if you're going for 4 track. Also in tunnels trains can't run as fast meaning you're going to create a slow high speed line. Good one.
All the services that you want to run on HS2 could more than comfortably be housed on the existing mainlines once the express end to end and headline services are transferred to HS2 which is what HS2 is all about and what it should be all about. The French LGVs are examples of this, TGVs run headline fast services from Paris to Lyon and then you can get a normal express train that makes intermediate stops on the classic lines between the two. That's what HS lines in Britain should be.

What if the tunnels where made bigger to cope with air residence?

The Tunnels would have to be so large that they would be ridiculous. I don't know the engineering and physics calculations but the cost would far outweigh any benefit. For a start you'd have a track running down the middle of a massive tunnel.
In this diagram: (Slide 31) you can see the size of UK loading gauge train in the London tunnels of HS1, those are permitted for a maximum speed of 140mph. To get the 200mph it's not going to be a case of beign 40-50% larger I suspect. Even if that was the case you're then going to have either bore 4 of these for your 4 track mainline or 2 much larger ones that are probably going to push the limits of what is possible, especially in some of Southern England's less stable soils.

[JamieLei]

Bringing back the Japanese comparison again, the Shinkansen is a system that's pretty well known to be so full of political interfering that half of the lines effectively go to nowhere and are full of stations that serve small cities with populations comparable to Nuneaton. It's not cheap. But not even the Japanese, with all their engineering expertise have built a high speed line underneath a city (hence why all the HSR stations on the outskirts of cities are prefixed with Shin (new), eg: Shin-Osaka). There's a current debate over taking the Joetsu Shinkansen under Tokyo to terminate at Shinjuku due to lack of space to put it anywhere else, and there's so much debate over that cost benefit of that (on a system where money is thrown at lines to nowhere) that it's just too expensive.

The point for Alan: why tunnel under Birmingham, a metropolitan area of 2.5m when the Japanese themselves won't even tunnel under Tokyo, a city of 35m.

[Dave]

What I am saying is that other rahter large towns on the way to the North and Scotland are not served by the current version of HS2, other High speed lines have several stops along the way, not all servcies have to stop at each station by the way!

But the stations you propose "YOUR" version to stop at are insignificant and would do much better with a more frequent traditional rail service.

You don't seem to get that at all.

For example: You build a station at Nuneaton, and schedule one HS2 train per hour to stop there. It is underused, causes knock on delays and is a nuisance.

The alternative: Don't build a station at Nuneaton, let trains run at full speed through that location, and make three or four traditional services stop at the current Nuneaton station per hour.

Which one benefits the local population more?

[Dave]

If you look at my plan, It states there will be no station at Nuneaton, but at many large population centres (Oxford, Stafford, Liverpool, Newcastle, York etc)

Also the line will be 4 track to deal with limited stop and all-stop trains in seperate lines!

All-stop trains are NOT Intercity services, so you're not "replacing" anything from the classic lines. All you're doing is building unnecessary infrastructure and trains. if you're stopping trains at every station, just do that on the original lines, because they'll never get up to speed anyway!

As for your stations:

Nuneaton is a perfect example, but Stafford is equally as tiny. No need for a station.

Liverpool and Newcastle - I would definitely recommend stations at those. However, Oxford and York aren't big enough.

We are talking massive population centres as the only viable places for stations. In the UK, I reckon ONLY the following are big enough for HSR stations:

London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff

Please respond.

[Ameecher]

I don't know how you haven't got a sore forehead from consistently banging your head against that brick wall, Dave.

Saying that, I'm glad someone is still bothering to argue with him, otherwise he'd think he'd won.

[Dave]

I don't know how you haven't got a sore forehead from consistently banging your head against that brick wall, Dave.

Saying that, I'm glad someone is still bothering to argue with him, otherwise he'd think he'd won.

To be fair to him I get what he's saying, but he's comparing the French model with ours, when they've got a bigger country, with more big cities.

[Dave]

The stops (served by the train) can be changed to meet demand

And you'll find when you change them to meet demand, that no one will get on or off at these small locations and you would have wasted billions building an extra 2 lines and hundreds of carriages for F-ALL!!

While the TOWN of Stafford is as big as Nuneaton, the Borough has twice the population

So? It's still not big enough for a HSR station.

There have been some suggestions about have a HSR station at Oxford and as for York, it is well linked to other servcies and thus make it a good idea to have a station there (plus it big enough)

No, York is not big enough when it is surrounded by Newcastle to the north and Leeds to the south. People from York can travel to either station to catch a HSR train.

If you look at the list I provided, each of these named cities is in the middle of a huge metropolitan area. York is not in that category.

Bristol and Cardiff would need its own HSR line

No s*** sherlock!

My point is that HSR should largely serve places served by Intercity services

And my point is that Intercity services are already serving less and less stations because it is THE MOST VIABLE PLAN for intercity operators.

Have you thought about who will use the expensive High Speed Network? Will it be your average commuter from Stourbridge to Birmingham? No. Will it be a family of four going on holiday? No.

The main user of the HSR network will be the business commuter - and it is PROVEN that they travel from big city to big city. No businessman goes to frigging York! (Sorry Kevo00)

[Dave]

In that case why are ther Intercity servcies to York, Stafford and Stoke etc?

Anyway if York is big enough for Intercity services

Because companies are FORCED to stop there - have you noticed that Virgin operate 9tph through Stafford but only ONE (YES, ONE!) stops there?

It IS viable to stop services at these stations on CLASSIC lines, but you would waste so much money building a redundant high speed classified line for these places.

Also the same people who use Intercity services (including business commuters) will use this service

No, sorry mate, you're totally clueless if you think that. I travel from Birmingham-Preston on a monthly basis. I am a semi-regular leisure traveller. I would NOT pay a premium to travel by High Speed Rail, I would (like most people) take the SENSIBLE option and get on the classic intercity Birmingham-Scotland route, which takes 74 minutes and doesn't cost me the earth.

[Kevo00]

The main user of the HSR network will be the business commuter - and it is PROVEN that they travel from big city to big city. No businessman goes to frigging York! (Sorry Kevo00)

On the OPRAF statistics in the 2010-11 year, York had 7,173,016 entries and exits, which is almost as many as Newcastle 7,500,338.

Though given Leeds has 24m, I get your drift. Its still the case that York is one of the main ECML destinations, by a long way.

[Dave]

The main user of the HSR network will be the business commuter - and it is PROVEN that they travel from big city to big city. No businessman goes to frigging York! (Sorry Kevo00)

On the OPRAF statistics in the 2010-11 year, York had 7,173,016 entries and exits, which is almost as many as Newcastle 7,500,338.

Though given Leeds has 24m, I get your drift. Its still the case that York is one of the main ECML destinations, by a long way.

Well alright, have your station at York haha.

[Dave]

Because companies are FORCED to stop there - have you noticed that Virgin operate 9tph through Stafford but only ONE (YES, ONE!) stops there?

By who?

THEIR FRANCHISE AGREEMENT YOU SPOON!

It IS viable to stop services at these stations on CLASSIC lines, but you would waste so much money building a redundant high speed classified line for these places.

Still it is less than building only 4 stations on a line that cost £30+ billion

No, you're wasting more money by quadrupling a High Speed Railway to run trains that will never even reach optimum speed.

No, sorry mate, you're totally clueless if you think that. I travel from Birmingham-Preston on a monthly basis. I am a semi-regular leisure traveller. I would NOT pay a premium to travel by High Speed Rail, I would (like most people) take the SENSIBLE option and get on the classic intercity Birmingham-Scotland route, which takes 74 minutes and doesn't cost me the earth.

Sadly for you, there will not be much in terms of Birmingham-Preston-Scotland Intercity services and with fares today, they are already high!

I pay £30.70 from Stourbridge-Preston, which is reasonable if you consider the fact I don't have to travel at either end.

I would be charged a premium that is probably more than the fare to go by HSR to save 20 minutes. Why would I do that? No leisure traveller will do that.

There will be a Brum-Scotland Intercity service long into the future because your stupid plan is about as likely to come off as I am likely to become Prime Minister WHICH BY THE WAY IS MORE LIKELY THAN YOU!

[Kevo00]

Well alright, have your station at York haha.