[alancalverd (OP)]

Planes, on the other hand, only ever stop where the passengers have travelled to in large numbers.

If only....
Famous old story about a man getting into a taxi at Belfast International (formerly, and more logically, "Nutts Corner").
Passenger "Why on earth did they build the airport so far from the city?"
Taxi driver  "Because that's where the planes land, sir."

But the important aspect of air travel is the old adage: A mile of road will take you nowhere. A mile of runway will take you anywhere. Just imagine: 12,000  miles, nonstop, at 600 mph, with no infrastructure. And the flight London - Sydney (including "environmental taxes") is cheaper than the first class train to Inverness. What on earth is wrong with our railways?   

[Bored chemist]

Just imagine buying a strip of land 12000 miles long...

[alancalverd (OP)]

It's been done, almost. The TransSiberian railway links up with lines running to London. But HS2 doesn't link Manchester to Leeds, which would be useful.

[Bored chemist]

But HS2 doesn't link Manchester to Leeds, which would be useful.

HS2 doesn't actually exist so...
However, once it's built, it will cut 15 mins of the journey from Siberia to Birmingham.

Now imagine having to maintain that 12000 mile strip of land.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Just imagine buying a strip of land 12000 miles long...

At £1,000,000,000 per mile, so far...…  For a mile of railway you could buy two good runways and a lot of airliners

[Petrochemicals]

Just imagine buying a strip of land 12000 miles long...

At £1,000,000,000 per mile, so far...…  For a mile of railway you could buy two good runways and a lot of airliners

Come off it  alan, 100billion is for london manchester with the branch to leeds is is not ? That must be 300 miles. 333mil a mile ! Seems quite reasonable. Plus some fancy new stations too ! ~250mil per mile~ ? Thats only 170,000 per sleeper.

[alancalverd (OP)]

There is at present no commitment to take the line beyond Birmingham. The cost estimate doubles every 3 years and the bit that everyone actually needs and wants, linking Liverpool/Manchester with Leeds and Newcastle, is not part of any proposal. I guess this is the reason for the deliberate failings of Northern Rail: eventually, it will be so awful that people will travel from coast to coast via London and Birmingham!

Still, if anyone will pay me £170k to dump a sleeper in the countryside, or at least to "consult" about doing so, I wouldn't refuse.

[Bored chemist]

There are two separate questions

Is HS2 a good idea?

Should HS2 cost roughly 20 times as  much per mile as HS1?

[alancalverd (OP)]

Three answers (it's a Jewish prerogative!)

It is certainly a good idea to invest in railways

It would be better to invest in railways north of Birmingham, and redevelop existing or Beechingised lines, than cut a swathe through virgin countryside to increase capacity where it isn't really needed

If you open the public purse and say "help yourself", people will do so. Governments should permit enterprise, not commit to paying for it.

And finally (for the time being): where public transport is concerned, speed isn't everything, affordable reliability is. Concorde was technically brilliant but was wiped out by the 747. If it takes an hour to travel from London to Birmingham at 100 mph,   you will only save 10 minutes by travelling at 120 mph, but the energy required to do so is 60% greater and the technology difference between a 100 mph and a 120 mph train is significant. The brakes have to dissipate 40% more power, the pickup pantograph imposes completely different stresses on the overhead wires, the signalling system has to be upgraded....

And it would behove transport planners to look carefully at the market. After 9 am, First Class tickets are amazingly cheap because most inter-city business travel happens between 7 and 9 in the morning. Inter-city Standard Class is packed  pretty much any time with families, tourists and students, who are more conscious of cost and availability than speed. There probably isn't a demand for a 12- or 24-hour premium nonstop service, but an awful lot of taxpayers want to go to the next village or commute a dozen miles to work.

[Bored chemist]

you will only save 10 minutes by travelling at 120 mph

Damn!.
If only someone had realised that before.
Oh, yeah- I forgot; they did.

The point of HS2 is not actually to get people from London to Birmingham half an hour quicker. That would be silly.

If memory serves that's the third time I have pointed that out.

Concorde was technically brilliant but was wiped out by the 747.

Concorde was wiped out by US insistence on it not doing the only thing it was good at- flying faster than sound.

[Bored chemist]

an awful lot of taxpayers want to go to the next village or commute a dozen miles to work.

If you have a new "fast" line then you can run the inter city traffic on it, and leave the other line for improved local services.
And that will allow them to run other local services more efficiently.

Fundamentally, if you have two lines you have a choice.
You can run a very fast service at a premium for the commuters heading to London on HS2 and run the fairly fast service as now for that same time slot.
And then you can use the HS2 link for intercity and the other line for local trains.
Or you can use both for local trains.

Are you beginning to see what HS2 is for, or are you just going to repeat that stuff about clipping ngeligible time off the london to B'ham time?

[Petrochemicals]

There is at present no commitment to take the line beyond Birmingham. The cost estimate doubles every 3 years and the bit that everyone actually needs and wants, linking Liverpool/Manchester with Leeds and Newcastle, is not part of any proposal. I guess this is the reason for the deliberate failings of Northern Rail: eventually, it will be so awful that people will travel from coast to coast via London and Birmingham!

Still, if anyone will pay me £170k to dump a sleeper in the countryside, or at least to "consult" about doing so, I wouldn't refuse.

I bet if we got the chinese to take it over they could bring it in under 50 billion for the whole thing to manchester including the 20 billion already spent !

Before beeching did not the west coast mainline have 4 tracks, that would give the extra capacity ? The rolling stock  guage could be updated to european (and hs1) standards lots cheaper, that is the real sticking point about transeurope rail, our bridges are smaller and rollingstock narrower, we cannot run double deckers !

[Bored chemist]

The rolling stock  guage could be updated to european

The UK has decided to join the rest of the world in driving on the right hand side.
The change will be introduced gradually.

But it's actually slightly stupider than that
"A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in). The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge after George Stephenson, International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe.It is the most widely used railway track gauge across the world, with approximately 55% of the lines in the world using it. All high-speed rail lines use standard gauge except those in Russia, Finland, Portugal and Uzbekistan. "

From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway

Europe already upgraded to use our rail gauge.

[alancalverd (OP)]

Not the track gauge, but height and width clearances.

Given that there is no commitment to extend HS2 beyond Birmingham, what is the true market demand for the actual proposal? As I've pointed out, First Class is pretty much empty most of the day, and from the point of view of a Standard Class shopper or tourist, there's not much to choose between the first and second cities - certainly nothing that would require frequent commuting. Am I subsidising matinee theatregoers, or just speculative construction and operating companies (the trains will run at a loss, just like all the others) ? Football specials - there's the market! Now if they added stops at Edgbaston and Twickenham, there might just be some money to be made.

[Bored chemist]

Not the track gauge, but height and width clearances.

That's not what Petrochemicals actually said.

If the track could be built for a penny would you accept that it's a good investment?

[alancalverd (OP)]

With one reservation, that the trains are either not subsidised, or wholly nationalised. And given that pretty well every train company in the world loses money, I'd need to see a damn good public service case for its existence before they tear up the countryside.

I had a friend years ago who, after a career with British Railways, was called in to advise rail authorities all over the world. After studying their data, his advice was almost always to scrap the computers and sell paper tickets, thus minimising their inevitable operating loss, then nationalise it so the government had control over the cost of providing a public service.   

[alancalverd (OP)]

Quote from: alancalverd on 13/02/2020 21:55:03Concorde was technically brilliant but was wiped out by the 747.Concorde was wiped out by US insistence on it not doing the only thing it was good at- flying faster than sound.

Not true. The once-profitable NYLON route always flew supersonic, as did Paris - Rio, over the Atlantic. True, there was no internal US or Australian market and it never acquired the range for Pacific routes, but QANTAS dropped their options as soon as the 747 flew.   

[alancalverd (OP)]

Quote from: alancalverd on Today at 11:42:53Not the track gauge, but height and width clearances.That's not what Petrochemicals actually said.

Oh yes it was! He said "rolling stock gauge" which, as you remember from your Hornby catalogue, refers to the superstructure, not the bogie.

[Bored chemist]

So the issue is not whether it's a good idea or not, but how much it costs.
Now, does anyone know why it's so insanely expensive?
HS1 cost  £5.8 bn and is 67 miles in 2007 (about £8 bn in today's money).
HS2 is expected to cost about £100 bn and is 140 miles or so.

Twice as long, but 12 times the price.
To me that looks like evidence of criminal activity.

[Bored chemist]

Quote from: alancalverd on 13/02/2020 21:55:03Concorde was technically brilliant but was wiped out by the 747.Concorde was wiped out by US insistence on it not doing the only thing it was good at- flying faster than sound.

Not true. The once-profitable NYLON route always flew supersonic, as did Paris - Rio, over the Atlantic. True, there was no internal US or Australian market and it never acquired the range for Pacific routes, but QANTAS dropped their options as soon as the 747 flew.   

Even the US wouldn't claim jurisdiction over the whole of the atlantic.
But, where the US had any say- that is for flights over the US, they forbade supersonic flight.
You could get to the edge of the US, but you couldn't get any further.