Blot On The Landscape

[JAParticipant @ja]

My understanding is that freight trains block the running of the faster passenger services. After the Beeching cuts this was not a problem: The passenger numbers were down and freight was on the roads (except for coal trains to power stations). Now that freight is returning to the railways and passenger trains are full this problem has returned.

Before the War there here was some separation between freight and passenger routes. The main lines, as we know them, carried most of the passengers while the lines line the Settle and Carlisle and the Great Central took the freight. Marples (Beeching was only carrying out orders) believed his motorways should carry the freight so the Great Central disappeared and the Settle and Carlisle nearly followed.

What is now needed is the re-opening of the freight routes which is hardly sexy. So, in stead, we have ambitious projects like HS2.

I have to admit that the whole system outside the east and west coast main lines north of Manchester and Sheffield must be sorted out.

There is little chance of this happening (even before Corvid19), they pulled the plug on the electrification of the Great Western line because it was too difficult (difficulty = cost over-run).

JA

Edited By JA on 24/04/2020 20:00:04

[David Davies 8Participant @daviddavies8]

Marples (Beeching was only carrying out orders) believed his motorways should carry the freight so the Great Central disappeared and the Settle and Carlisle nearly followed.

Ernest Marples, as well as being Minister for Transport had his own road construction company. I wonder why he was so keen on motorways?

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

Re:Double-decking, I think a Munich based design house put forward a scheme which ran on our present

system , without serious interruption to platforms,tunnels,etc ?

[David Davies 8Participant @daviddavies8]

Double decking:

The Southern Region of BR ran two sets of DD EMUs from the early Fifties to 1971. They were not true DDs but split level to work within our cramped loading gauge. Apparently the turn around time for station work was greater as the number of doors in the stock could not be increased whilst maintaining the greater capacity.

Ironicaly the Great Central referred to above was built to the continental loading gauge. What a shame it was a victim of Beeching,s axe.

Dave

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

Memory check re:double decking, it was the Andreas Vogler group in Munich .

All designed and costed to operate on existing gauge restrictions ,'problem resolu' .

So why was it thrown out ?

[Andrew EvansParticipant @andrewevans67134]

I am in 2 minds on the value of HS2. On one hand the cost and short term environmental impact is huge. On the other hand I spent 4 weeks last year on long distance train holiday in Europe – Paris to Strasbourg in luxury, silence and comfort in a couple of hous, most of way we sat at just over 200 mph. Similar journies across Germany, Austria and from Venice to Milan although not as fast as TGV. These were not expensive tickets compared to what we are used to in this country. That showed me that the end result of these projects. To be fair the journey down from York to London on the east coast mainline was also good but wasn't cheap.

On this forum we often complain about the lack of engineering now in this country but this sort of massive project is just the sort of thing that can disprove that. John's initial post and photo shows what sites will look like during construction but I think the plan is to replant all this after its built so it is a temporary eyesore. Looking at old photos of railway line construction in Victorian times it looks like hell on earth and thousands of people died building them.

I do think there is a case to reverse some of the Beeching cuts though, and have more local lines and stations and improve the lines we already have. Maybe that would benefit more people, take cars off the road and give much better value for money.

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Boris said he would have cancelled HS2 had it not been for the mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street who lobbied hard to keep it.

You can see the attraction for Londoners to sell the 2 bed flat and swap it for a 4 bed detached and still have change for the rail fare, but travel time now is only 1hr 15 to Euston and knocking half an hour off seems hardly worth it.

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Posted by Andrew Evans on 25/04/2020 10:14:22:

… On this forum we often complain about the lack of engineering now in this country but this sort of massive project is just the sort of thing that can disprove that. John's initial post and photo shows what sites will look like during construction but I think the plan is to replant all this after its built so it is a temporary eyesore…

It was indeed a bit of a shock stumbling into this huge embryo construction site. What also surprised me was the distance it was away from the actual HS2 line. The line at Denham / Harefield is elevated above old gravel workings, now large lakes, and a suitable site for construction equipment would indeed be limited. I found the local South Bucks District Context Report just to check that this was in fact part of the HS2 project. It makes interesting reading and shows the scope of construction works and mentions in passing things like re-siting electricity substations, water pumping stations and re-routing the River Colne.

The document also manages to sneak in some information about re-siting the Heathrow Express Depot from Old Oak Common to Iver, very local to me, which is all part of the HS2 scheme.

With HS2, The Heathrow Express Depot and the third runway at Heathrow all within a few miles I am feeling oppressed. I will have to get a larger "Nimby Hat"

John

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

I wonder if we would have had an industrial revolution if they had met the opposition we put up to every form of progress? The luddites certainly started something.

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 25/04/2020 11:35:45

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

The Luddites are still about but now we call them Unions

John

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I spent the best part of 20 years, on and off, in negotiation with the Envronment Agency to get a huge area of flood plane, pools and ancient woodland transferred over to the Wildlife Trust as a nature reserve, Park Hall. It was mostly a failed flood alleviation scheme with woodland on the slopes up to the M6. We got longhorn cattle grazing it, there were loads of birds, amphibians, orchids, otters all right on the edge of Birmingham. We were working with the EA to move the canalised river tame back on to its old, winding course which would have vastly benefited widlife and helped address flooding downstream (a bit).

When HS2 was coming in initial discussion we looked at accepting a cutting through the ancient woodland and a line across the site in return for infrastructure improvements, land in compensation for what was lost and the river (which they have to move over anyway) restored to its original course. Not perfect but acceptable.

Plans changed, the promised compensation and investment in the site came under pressure from budget reductions. The site will now be used as a huge storage area during construction. HS2 'took possession' years ago and now it is unmanaged and waiting to be trashed.

I don't know how many similar stories are along the route.

http://www.bbcwildlife.org.uk/park-hall

Neil

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Oh dear. I must apologise to readers of this thread for posting "fake news". The image in the first post has, I'm afraid, nothing to do with HS2. An error on my part as my unerring sense of direction had indeed erred and trying to verify that the site was part of the HS2 project, the remaining aged brain cell misread Hollow Hill Lane (where there will indeed be an HS2 compound) for Hollybush Lane (where the picture was taken).

The scene of devastation is in fact being carried out for a good reason. It is remedial work to properly cap an old landfill site, active from 1950 to 1990, where the site was badly run and the covering has failed allowing the content to come to the surface. The current scheme aims to cover the old tip with some 2m of inert material mainly chalk and clay. Re-contour the land, install proper drainage and return the land to agricultural use. Protection of the 3 nearby SSSI's is written into the planning consent, which document I eventually found.

My apologies once again for the duff info but the ensuing discussion regarding the merits or otherwise of HS2 was very interesting. In mitigation, it may even be the case that some of the tunnelling spoil from HS2 gets used at this site in the future.

John

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

As we are now well off on a tangent, it was reported that somewhere foreign (Holland I think) they are opening up old landfill to recover the recycle-able material

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Posted by duncan webster on 26/04/2020 09:44:11:

As we are now well off on a tangent, it was reported that somewhere foreign (Holland I think) they are opening up old landfill to recover the recycle-able material

Further off on the tangent…
My Dad bought a plot of land and built his house on the edge of what had been an old quarry and landfilled and turned to amenity fields. The old garage owner in the village recalled that crates of war surplus stuff had been dumped in part of that. He claimed to have recovered all sorts of tools back at that time. He also claimed to have seen whole spitfire engines and the like still in their crates being dumped. So if digging up old landfills gets populatr UK there may well be historic treasure to be found.

pgk

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

I know this post is a little long in the tooth but I was out again today on the trusty velocipede and rode past this:-

This truly is HS2 works under way for the construction of the South Portal to the Chiltern Tunnel. The site is MUCH larger than the one I erroneously started the thread with.

John

[Brian OldfordParticipant @brianoldford70365]

Posted by Journeyman on 07/05/2020 17:03:45:

. The site is MUCH larger than the one I erroneously started the thread with.

John

That said, it will look far better once its landscaped. I don't suppose the WCML or the GWML looked too pretty during construction.
Nowadays they are considered part of the English landscape.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

If anyone proposed building a railway up Ribblesdale, across the wild Pennine moors and then down the valley of the Eden they would be condemned by all and sundry. However when it was proposed to close the Settle and Carlisle and let it revert to nature there was an even bigger outcry resulting in it being kept open. Many people seem to have a deep seated aversion to change of any kind, but we don't realise that in the UK there is very little 'natural' landscape, it is all managed in some way or other. If we let nature take it's course there would be no fields, no hedgerows, impenetrable forests and many hundreds of square miles of rank bogs

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