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[Doctor Gollum]

Shame that the same vision wasn't applied to Ashford

Oh really?

That is why we have Ashford International Station on the HS1 coming through the town, and the South Eastern Railway original had the foresight to not only build a successful railway network, but they had their main engine building facility here as well.  Now Hitachi service their trains here as well.  So, that is vision.  All it needs is others to have the same.

Really... HS1 doesn't have the capacity for truck trains... And the sheer inability to adequately plan for growth is staggering.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Shame that the same vision wasn't applied to Ashford

Oh really?

That is why we have Ashford International Station on the HS1 coming through the town, and the South Eastern Railway original had the foresight to not only build a successful railway network, but they had their main engine building facility here as well.  Now Hitachi service their trains here as well.  So, that is vision.  All it needs is others to have the same.

Really... HS1 doesn't have the capacity for truck trains... And the sheer inability to adequately plan for growth is staggering.

Yes, I agree with you on that one because if the governments of this country got away from the road haulage lobby they would build the HS lines to carry high speed freight.  But no, when the HS 1 line was planned it was all about passenger traffic, which actually has increased nicely with the line being shared by South Eastern Javelin Trains alongside Eurostars.  The political masters of the day accepted that freight lorries would travel through the Chunnel on trains, but then unload at Folkestone to drive up the M20.  Fxcking stupid!

The only saving grace is that because passenger capacity is available on the HS1, freight has more pathways on the old lines.

So yes, this is a good example that you have raised of how minds must change to avoid such diabolic short term planning!

[Rods2]

Wait on, driverless trains, better signalling and more trains per hour. Ive seen the future ( well i cant sleep)


In 1980 i remember they had damn fine driverless underground trains in Russia.

Likewise, the Docklands Light Railway has been driverless since it opened in 1987. It is also much safer where there is a platform barrier with doors that only open when a train is on the platform.

[Varche]

Yep they had them in either Leningrad or Moscow. Very mpressive.

With better signalling could you run double the number of trains?

[TheBoy]

that is why we have "experts" and people with real vision, who then kick the politicians into action.

Which is exactly why HS2 is going ahead...   ...because by their own admission, its the "experts" who make a dollop of cash, and secure their futures.


Every "expert" I spoke to at the various HS2 events I went to pretty much said that, unprompted, after I ran circles around their figures and business plan (which was, even to the stupid, non university educated village idiot like me, randomly made up statements to get the figures so they only needed a 60-70% running subsidy from the taxpayer).


So, once you accept the "experts" have completely different agendas to the general good of the country, and make wild shit up randomly to try to justify it, you will understand all you need to understand to see its a woefully wasteful idea.

[TheBoy]

I was sitting in a Chevette HS, looking out the side window while steering it on the throttle. They were definitely happy days. 
Liverpool docks to Colchester in in 3 hours 20, when the last 100 miles from the M1 to Colchester was all single carriage way.
We don't just think it was better in the old days. It was better. 

Oh, and I had hair. Lots and lots of hair. Now have a 9 inch centre parting. 

When I lived in Aylesbury, and had my Fifi van, whose top speed as 100mph, never a mph more, I used to go to Colchester 3 times a week. Took a shade over an hour to do a shade under 100 miles. Clearly not much slowing down.

But then the dear lord invented 2 things that really oppsed the world up

1) The MPG chasers
2) Those "badge" drivers who think its prohibited to use the inner lanes.

[Doctor Gollum]

And why everything ends up being a half arsed, cost doubling and generallynotcomingclosetomeetinganyobjectives compromise 

[TheBoy]

Of course they are still considering building a 3,000 lorry park on lovely green fields for when "Operation Stack" is required. 

...

There must be a better way, and that is the railways!

The same railways that want to destroy far more land through the Chilterns AOB, and even more of our green and pleasant land further up to provide a service which, lets be honest, is of no use to anybody at all.

Yeah, that's common sense. Not.

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Yup. HS2 is a Cameron / Osborne vanity project that Theresa doesn't have the balls to cancel.
Once someone deems themselves "an expert", I usually stop listening to them at that point. 
I still think that stupid people who cant drive (in all class of vehicles) should be banished to rail travel. Therefore, we need a lot more trains.

[TheBoy]

Yup. HS2 is a Cameron / Osborne vanity project that Theresa doesn't have the balls to cancel.
Once someone deems themselves "an expert", I usually stop listening to them at that point. 
I still think that stupid people who cant drive (in all class of vehicles) should be banished to rail travel. Therefore, we need a lot more trains.

Actually, a Blair/Brown production. That's when the plan was made and the "experts" (that being HS2 Ltd, so no conflict there then!) were assembled.

[Lizzie Zoom]

Of course they are still considering building a 3,000 lorry park on lovely green fields for when "Operation Stack" is required. 

...

There must be a better way, and that is the railways!

The same railways that want to destroy far more land through the Chilterns AOB, and even more of our green and pleasant land further up to provide a service which, lets be honest, is of no use to anybody at all.

Yeah, that's common sense. Not.

There were diehards like you TB before the railways dramatically increased the output and length of the Industrial Revolution. Like then, the building of new lines will create 100's of thousands of new jobs, boost local economies, and build new opportunities for British Industry along their routes.

With Brexit apparently happening I think we need this marvellous opportunity to boost our industry, and what we do not need is short sighted NIMBY's like some of the aristocracy in Victorian Britain who blocked railways going over their precious lands and spoil their view with riff raff travelling far and wide. Others made fortunes by being positive, going along with it and taking full advantage of the opportunities.

In other words people in this country are either "little Englanders" or have a global horizon.

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

I suspect it will allow a lot of people from Birmingham to travel to London for work, if it works as well as its supposed to.
For the life of me, I cant see it working the other way round.

[Lizzie Zoom]

I suspect it will allow a lot of people from Birmingham to travel to London for work, if it works as well as its supposed to.
For the life of me, I cant see it working the other way round.

e

The answer is that hopefully more firms will move out of hyper expensive London and workers who like living there will commute in the other direction. Other firms will spread their centres of business and their workers will commute backwards and forwards to that work.

The new routes will open up many possibilities

[Doctor Gollum]

Won't have started HS2 before Brexit

And I would wager that Gatwick has it's second runway open before the first passenger uses HS2

[Nick W]

Lizzie, the difference between now and the Victorian era is that trains are one of several means of moving bulky/heavy freight, not just two - the other being canals and rivers.


So we need some joined up thinking to combine ALL methods in an efficient way. Britain is too small for trains to be the answer to general distribution as that's what road freight is best at. Rail is excellent for commuting into and between big cities, but it needs to be subsidised to be affordable which it certainly isn't now. We don't need more roads or tracks, we need to use what we have better.


And even if a motorway has all the lanes full of slow moving traffic it is still working.


I wasn't driving in the seventies, but all of the common trips we used to do are now possible in under a third of the time they used to take. And it's now perfectly possible to have a day trip to the NEC(for example) and still have dinner in my favourite restaurant at home.