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From the Times today, suggestion from the chairman of High Speed 2 company that Old Oak Common depot would make a nice spot for a London terminal.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article5955710.ece (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article5955710.ece)

Right - out comes my biro! ;D

(a) The article says: "Double-deck trains carrying up to 800 passengers would depart every four minutes"

Hmmmm: 800 x 15 = 12,000 people per hour.

Do 12,000 people need to travel between Birmingham and London? And how many car parking spaces would the new parkway station need with this kind of service? Outlandish statement - not thought through.

(b) Is building yet another "hub" going to slow down any more FGW trains out of Paddington? Also: bad connexions with Heathrow and the Tube, etc.

(c) Re "suburban stations" If you have to change twice to get from Central B'ham to Central London - people will stick with VT/CH. Come on - let's use a bit of common sense here!

(d) The article says: "the line would allow tens of thousands of homes for long-distance commuters to be built between London and Birmingham"

I thought the trains weren't stopping! Or do they expect everyone to drive to "London Parkway"? And again - commuters won't want to have to change....

(e) I like the way they causally talk about "reducing the cost of the line" - a 100+ mile 4 track 225 mph line built through land which is not flat (Chilterns, according to the article). Hmm - cheap...

(f) So residents of the Chilterns won't like the line cutting through their countryside. But I doubt the residents of Shepherds Bush will appreciate Wormwood Scrubs going under concrete much either!

Ok - rant over. I feel better now. :D

To me this highlights the invalid case for the HSx lines as proposed, which would give more benefit to the consultant and contractor lobbies than to the traveller or taxpayer.

Three factors are against new high speed lines; the short distances in the UK, the density of settlement and the speed potential of existing lines.

Thus most UK business centres are already within a day trip of London, the cost, disruption and planning exercise for new Lines (remember HS1?) would be prohibitive and UK main lines have c50% suitable already with another 25% reasonably upgradeable (in contrast to French classic main lines).

High speed lines can have cliff-like gradients (1:12!) but need gentle curves (5km radius, that's 250 chains in BR-speak). Freight lines may have the opposite.

The biggest InterCity demand is of course the WCML; this needs some expensive new sections and curve-easing to allow 300km/hr (186 mph) but would c20 minutes off the Manchester Pendolino time be worth it?

The greatest absurdity (to me) is the new route to the West - I bet it goes through Berkshire not Oxfordshire!

What might be sensible is to start select HS services from St Pancras I (Londres Midi?) as they could serve the 3 main routes and Paris.

 OTC

i think that it would make more sense to build some new freight routes instead of high speed passenger lines.  They would be lower speed and therefore cheaper and could be built to the European Loading gauge or even allow piggy-back lorries.  With the freights out of the way you could then incrementally improve the existing passenger railway which has the huge advantage that it already runs into city centres.  Upgrade 75 mph lines to 90 mph, 90 mph lines to 110 mph, 110 mph lines to 125 and a few key 125 mph lines to 140 or 155 mph and you would see significant journey time cuts (in some cases with existing rolling stock) and with slower freight out of the way you could increase passenger train frequency.  The benefits would be more fairly spread around the country and the costs would be lower.  HS Rail will only benefit a minority of people who want to go from major city to major city.  Contrast this with for example, building a tram-line out of Bristol Temple Meads to Parkway, Filton and severn Beach and transfering the small stations to the tram - you could then speed up the XC and cardiff-Pompy expresses by 5 minutes and give North Bristol a great local service.  Do the same in Birmingham, and other cities and gradually you start knocking appreciable amounts of time off intercity journeys at a much lower cost than building HSx.

if you want to build high speed brand new passenger lines then stick them in the Scottish boarders and North and West of England where land is cheaper stations fewer and link it into the existing network (I recall Virgin's ECML and a previous First GWML bid had such proposals in it).

The one thing a HSL does not need is to go via Heathrow.  Surely the advantage of a rail jounrey should be that you don't need to get to an airport.

The part of this island with enough population to justify HS rail is fairly small so going for 186 mph is hardly worth it.  A 140 mph service from existing city centre stations with great connections and high frequency is going to give better or equal door to door journey times anyway at much lower energy and construction costs. 

Of course you could gain significant modal shift on certain routes (Leeds-Bristol or Manchester-London) simply by running longer trains and dropping the fares without needing to build a singe bit of new track. 

There is a lot of aspirations coming out of the HS2 team, I would not expect anything else as they are to a degree fishing for views and opinions on concepts.  I did read somewhere that the concept at the moment is to build the track bed for 4 track but I think the initial plan is for 2 track the view being to safeguard the right of way now as it would be more difficult to do later, as for double decker's why not build it from the start to have that capacity last thing we would be thanked for by the passengers in 20 years time when they are sitting busses or slow diversions while the railway is rebuilt for double decker's, like wise build in the future capacity of a train every 4 mins its easier now than in 20 years

I would say that OOC would make an ideal location for several reasons, most of the land around there is industrial or rail; it has the potential for connections to the NLL, WLL to link into the Southern and hence the ex Channel Tunnel station at W'loo and potentially around the old channel tunnel route to the SE and Kent, WCML, MML and potentially the ECML and further east and of course the Chiltern route; there is enough rail land between OOC and Westbourne Pk for dedicated lines to link into the cross rail tunnels.

OOC was destine to go under the original Crossrail link through to Neasden, if the GWML was place in a cut and cover tunnel OOC and North Pole makes a huge area.

It would be a sad day when OOC goes as I did my apprenticeship there but the railways must progress

I agree - let's modernise the WCML, ECML, GWML to 140 - 155 mph where possible. Use tilting trains for hilly parts of UK and electrify.

This will provide more benefits than a non stop 225 mph Lon - Bir line! (and cheaper)

What about implementing passing loops on Main Lines so High Speed Services can overtake Slow Services.

Would be handy for Bristol > W-S-M > Taunton as an example. If the XC Fast service is running slightly late, Sometimes the signaller will allow the FGW Slow service to leave first, which is fair enough because nobody wants 2 late trains. However the consquences of the decision made by the signaller are that you get stuck behind it with the stop start motion right the way through to Yatton or W-S-M!

Having passing loops would prevent this. However I doubt very much that it would be practical or cost effective. Also there is the planning permission and existing infrastructure to content with. The costs of reconfiguring the signalling system AFAIK would be huge!

I've answered my own question there really...! ;)

In practical terms there's a nice empty depot for maintaining high speed trains nearby, one careful owner...

Would that be at Flax Bourton by any chance...?

Or have I completely missed the point of that comment... :D

Would it not be North Pole (where Eurostar used to maintain their fleet)?

The major impact that trying to upgrade the WCML recently, remember that has taken 10 years and it is still not finished, has lead to major upheaval on the WCML and we still only have a 125 railway.  Often on this forum people moan that not enough is being done to improve rail services this is a golden opportunity first time in 100 years that we have a new main line railway planned for the core routes in the UK modernising the current mainlines will be very expensive WCNL just in Network Rails 6 or 7 years has cost ^9 Billion there were the RT days to add on top of that

Or we can just take some stops out of the existing services to speed up trains to the far west! with NO infrastructure costs at all! units for small stations HST's for main stations!!

Well, as D_M suggests I was thinking of North Pole.

But I'm intrigued to know where you were going with the Flax Bourton thing (especially as I lived just down the road from there for 15 years!)

Wot - not Nailsea ?? ;) :D ;D

Not Nailsea, but not far from there! It was Abbots Leigh (on the road from Bristol to Portishead, just before you get to Pill).

I was going to post something similar re loops. It's not a new idea the last main line (no not the GC) but the GWR and GWR and GC joint line from Old Oak to Anyho had 11 passing places where there were loops mostly at staions although quite a long stretch of 4 track from South Ruislip (where the GC joined via a burrowing junction) past West Ruslip.

Not sure OOC is good place for a hub it's out in wilds for London passengers, it might make an interchange station, but then that defeats the objective of having  a  high speed line to London. Any HS line will have to use one of the exisitng London terminii. Even the French use Lyon, Nord and EST and the conventional lines for the last few clicks from the end of the LGV lines into Paris.

I was looking at a road atlas with a table of distances between major towns. it's amazing how close some are to each other. Basically if you say have staions every hundred miles then you only have three staions between London and Glasgow namely  Birmingham Manchester and Carlisle. Or London Edinburgh, Birmingham/Leicester Leeds Newcastle.

Every 50 miles and you might serve Milton Keynes/Bedford  Stafford/Nottingham or Sheffield but not both,  Preston or Lancaster/York. But no station in Scotland.

As others have said we are really too small with too many towns too close together to justify a dedicated HS passenger line.

I would suggest three ways od meeting demand for rail travel. Tram trains serving on street in towns and sharing lines out to the edge of town. Bristol is ideal, Portishead to Severn Beach Filton and Yate with one loop through Temple meads the other through the docks and town centre joining line North of Temple meads. This could apply to many provincial towns.

As for the mainlines, increased line speeds and provision for overtaking both freight and stoppers.  Thus you could run a stopper from Penzance overtaken by a fast at Plymouth, the stopper continues to Newton Abbot where it is overtaken by an  Up Torquay fast and connects with a down Torquay. it then proceeds all staions to Exeter where it's overtaken by the next Up fast from Penzance/Plymouth so on up the line.

Passengers from iall stations  get a through train to their nearest big town where they can change for fast to Birmingham ot London. Big towns get a regular limited stop service to London and any one wanting to go from Liskguard to Totnes will have a through train admittedly with short await at Plymouth. If the changes were cross paltform then so much the better.

But as the trout says boiling frogs would probably make this solution far too expensive that it could be cheaper to build a dedicated  HS line from scratch.

We are not the right sort of country for HS lines. And building HS lines WOULD cause disruption.

Ok - if we built London - Glasgow, with stops every 100 miles at Bham, Manchester, Carlisle and Glasgow, what would happen to the VT service?
 
There would not be enough pax to justify the current timetable. So extra stops would be introduced; so regular travellers from places like Lancaster, Preston, Wigan, Warrington......would all have extra stops and a slower service.

The country's demographics have changed - people live in these cities because of the fast rail links. Even more will be moving to places like Warrington due to the VHF timetable. We can't just throw all that away.

The solution for the Glaswegians is to make more modest journey times reductions (which make the times bearable, and still v competitive with air) by 155 mph-ing the tracks south of Crewe. For Edinburgh & Aberdeen - ditto plus tiling beyond the border. For the West, electrification and tilting beyond Bristol/Exeter.

In all truth I misread your post and hence, misunderstood it :o

However there is a rather large siding at Flax Bourton, However I believe it has been disconnected from the Up Main. Stancombe Quarry were planning to use it as an intermodal site to transport stone to places throughout the UK using a conveyer belt from the quarry down to the sidings. However this was highly opposed by local residents and the plans were shelved. Shame really because it would have taken an awful lot of lorries off the roads. However that is a different kettle of fish and I do not want to start a huge debate regarding the shelved plans.

As it stands though the siding is there and could be used to stable/maintain some stock. You can clearly see it on Google Maps if you look around station road ;)

That's a very topical comment - and there are some very interesting developments proposed for that particular site: see http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=4470.0