There is a lot of kerfuffle going on as TDATS finally realise what a mess this is.

To fully understand what is happening, I am afraid we need to be serious and even do a little history.

So, if you want fluffy kittens, look elsewhere.

Steam engines started being used in 1712. They were static engines used for pumping water and so on.

Around 1800, it was realised that the damn thing could be put on wheels and used to pull cargo or people in trucks.

It is very important to realise that this was on a prepared track, not a normal road. This is vital to understanding what comes next.

At that time, the competition for moving stuff and people was pretty much either a gee-gee, ridden or pulling a cart, or a boat on a river or canal.

Canals had been alive and well since, well forever really, but usefully from about 1600, give or take.

Canals had a big advantage and a big disadvantage.

• The advantage is that you can move an enormous amount with just one gee-gee. All Dobbin has to do is slide the barge through the water, he doesn’t have to lift anything. Provided he goes at a steady pace, it’s a nice day’s walk.
• The disadvantage is that you need to dig a canal first. That takes time and if you want to go up hills, you need locks and stuff, or dig tunnels straight through the hills.

So, along comes that steam locomotive and, Wow! It’s faster than a horse and can keep going all day.

You need to also remember that the roads weren’t up to much either. Even though the road traffic was only horses, wagons, and coaches, or maybe because of that, there was no real coordinated highway system.

Railways became the big thing. The way they could whizz people and goods about and breakneck speed was amazing.

The railway boom took off.

Very quickly, a network of railways was created throughout Britain. It was indeed a triumph of engineering and organisation, producing a very good infrastructure for the movement of goods and people.

Considering the competition.

Let’s look at the competition.

Horse transport, both ridden and draught, continued. But only for short haul journeys.

Canals also continued, but began to lose out to the speed of the railway system.

Now, we have three communications networks.

• Roads and Highways. A network sprung from ancient times, connecting centres of population and resources, developing, and shifting as the demographic of the land changed. It should be noted that this was a relatively flexible system, new tracks appeared as people wandered about, getting more care and maintenance as they became more used.
• Canals. A network of canals was put in place, connecting centres of demand to centres of supply. Restricted to freight traffic and not really much used for personnel transport. But, if the associated river system is included, then more personal transport can be included.
• Railways. A system put in place to connect centres of population, supply, and demand throughout the country.

The Road/Highway network is the most flexible. It can adapt to changing demographics relatively easily. A new village springs up, the route to it gets more used, gets maintained and upgraded as the village develops to township and so on. Until relatively recently, this was done on a local scale, not through a centralised authority. In the 18^th century there were more than 20,000 miles of maintained roadways in the country. And in 1914, the Road Board was set up to build and maintain roads. This is the beginning of a centralised control of the network.

But, Canals and Railways have several very big problems:

• Neither is very good at going up and down hills. This means the practical solution for both is the tunnel, a very time consuming and expensive operation. The Box Tunnel on the Great Western railway is 2.94Km long, nearly 2 miles, and took 3 years to dig. This is a real problem and in some cases has restrained the development of the network.
• Both require expensive and permanent “tracks”, whether steel or water, which cannot be moved or easily modified if the demographics of population centres alters.
• Both only run point-to-point. There is no possibility of extending or modifying either network to give full door-to-door transport for the user.

There are two other problems that face the railway:

• Corners. Trains are not very good at going round corners. They need long, steady bends. If the speed goes up, giving better performance as transport network, then the bends have to get more gentle. Otherwise Gordon the Express falls off.
• Stopping. Trains take a long, long time to stop. Obviously, the faster the longer stopping time. But we’re talking in miles here for a controlled stop and not much less in an emergency.

BOO!!

Just wanted to make sure you were still awake.

In 1886, Carl Benz threw a spanner in the works with the manufacture of the first series-produced practical motor car. Trundle boxes had been around since the late 1600s, powered by steam and even electric motors, but they were not the beginning of the motor era.

Now there’s a new kid on the block.

Cars, motorcycles, buses, trucks, tractors start streaming out of the factories.

Why?

When there were three communications networks, plenty of horses, trains, and barges, why the motor vehicle?

Because it offered a speed and flexibility that could not be matched by the railways or the canals.

It offered end-to-end, door-to-door transport on a scale that railways could not match.

They could not match it then, they can not match it now. And they never will.

To make matters worse:

Now, there’s a new kid on the block.

Did I just say that?

The electronic communication era in all its obnoxious glory is with us. Now we have a communications network that is not merely door-to-door, it’s couch-to-office and worse. And it’s pretty much instantaneous.

And in to this, we have now thrown the already rotting corpse of HS2.

It has been claimed that there has been no major railway construction project from new in this country for a hundred years.

There’s a good reason for that. Railway Time has gone.

The route network, with some minor amendments is more than adequate. “Minor adjustment” means changes to the routes, the paths on the map. It does not underestimate the complexity or the engineering that will be required to achieve that.

The railway system, after the appalling depredations of one Dr Beeching, is basically a radial network centered on London. It has been obvious for decades that the route upgrades required are the addition of lateral connections and the strengthening of the existing radial system.

When it was first announced, HS2 was touted as “Joining North and South, crossing the North South Divide, Levelling up and Curing Lumbago” plus a whole load of other things.

There was another item on the agenda, the only item which has survived. It wasn’t published but it was evident in the barely concealed smirks on the faces of the rabid Left Wingers who supported it. The thought of driving a great, big, nasty, smelly railway, preferrable with dirty diesel trains, right through what they perceived as the Soft Southerners’ Tory Heartland was so beguiling they could scarce keep their hands from their throbbing loins. Many of you will not be aware of this. It’s a real “you had to be there” thing, to hear the inflexion in voices, to see the look on the faces. This was something they thought of as revenge for all their troubles.

Of course, there was a lot of political posturing and posing. It would bring jobs to – well, to whom exactly? To date, apart from the landowners, property speculators and the rest of their unholy tribe of moneygrabbers, it has only brought jobs to those currently involved in wrecking great swathes of countryside, massacring countless trees and entire woods, obstructing traffic with HGVs and breaking up the surface of trunk roads throughout Southwest England.

The difficulty is that having sworn allegiance to the holy standard of HS2, there is no way for politicos of any tribe to renege. It would be seized upon as a betrayal of the poor suffering North and a surrender to the rich poshos of the South.

HS2 is another sacred cow, useless and untouchable.

To put it more precisely, there is no valid business case for HS2.

This railway will connect either London Euston or Old Oak Common to Birmingham Curzon Street.

There is hardly anyone living within walking distance of either location wanting to go to a destination within walking distance of the other terminus.

The vast majority of journeys will require the following stages:

• Drive to your local station and pay to park, or take a taxi – you can’t rely on buses, and what about the luggage?
• Take a train to a London terminus.
• Catch one or maybe two underground trains to reach Euston/Old Oak Common
• Wait for a train.
• Take the train to Birmingham Curzon Street
• Either
  • Take a connecting train to your final town or local station.
  • Take a taxi to New Street, Moor Street or Snow Hill and then wait for a train to your final town of local station.
• Take a taxi to your destination.

By now you will have spent a minimum of 4-5 hours, IF the trains are on time, and spent a whole S-load of money.

When you have finished whatever you came for, you can do it all again in reverse. And probably have a parking sticker on your windscreen as decoration when you get back.

Or

You could jump in your car and drive there in half the time, or get online and be finished in an hour.

If you’re not going for business, then luggage will be the deciding factor. Either that or managing a brood of little ones while having to pay a fare for each member of the entire carload. Except the baby, provided you didn’t leave her in the carpark.

Now, I said there was no business case. Well, there is a business case. The extraction of a very large amount of money from the taxpayer, that’s us, and transfer of lorryloads of wonga into some already very well stuffed wallets.

And, of course, the lucrative contracts, pretty much for the same contracting companies, for repairing the wrecked roads and infrastructure, drainage pipes, mains, etc. in the surrounding country.

In fact, the only things running on this railway is The Gravy Train and The HS2 Bandwagon.

Those are the only bits that make sense.

You may have noticed that France, Germany, and other countries have high speed rail networks. These are much larger countries. Paris to Marseille is 410 miles the journey time is just over 3 hours. It makes a bit of sense in a country that has routes that long. The USA, on the other hand does not have transcontinental high-speed routes. They are at the other end of the scale. The distances are too far. High speed tracks have to be maintained to very high standards. This means that over such large distances, the frequency of interruption for track “events” would be too high to compete with air travel.

Oh, and just by the way.

The Great Western Railway started off at a company meeting in 1833. It was completed in 1851 and covered 152 miles. The whole thing, from start to finish was project managed and more or less designed by IK Brunel. (It damn near killed him)

HS2 was kicked off in 2009 with the formation of HS2 Ltd. It is intended to build and operate 140 miles of track to Crewe by 2029.

Brunel took 18 years for 152 miles, HS2; 20 years for 140 miles. And Brunel didn’t have bulldozers, trucks, laptops of smartphones. He just did it, and those that worked with him were that good as well.