HS2 under review

[GoingUnderground]

Par for the course with the BBC who regularly give the likes of 'The institute of Economic Affairs' and other of the same ilk, the oxygen of publicity. This is an organization that has an anti-railway track record and l have read that it is thoroughly discredited by figures in the railway industry.

 

Typical l suppose that they would be giving the 'anti' side as it makes 'more interesting' news and they seem to particularly like the views of that unpleasant and uninformed (make up a figure) Joe Rukin from 'Stop HS2'

 

One would now like to think that it's a 'done deal', but it won't stop the usual suspects pouring out all their uninformed clap-trap.

Another example of "alternative facts" perhaps?

[2750Papyrus]

There seems to be a nasty tendency of late to allow campaign groups to quote their own wildly inflated cost figures as evidence against projects they don't like. The Trident submarine replacement is another example of this.

 

Also happened with the QE carrier programme.  Current projected cost (ie including inflation since start-up) including contingency and air group costs was compared to original programme cost excluding contingency allowance and air group - instant overspend.

[jamie92208]

Also happened with the QE carrier programme.  Current projected cost (ie including inflation since start-up) including contingency and air group costs was compared to original programme cost excluding contingency allowance and air group - instant overspend.

 

The Stop HS2 spokesman was quoting a total cost of £55bn for phase 1 which IIRC is for both phase 1 and Phase 2 and includes a fairly hefty contingency. 

 

Jamie

[Phil Parker]

Par for the course with the BBC who regularly give the likes of 'The institute of Economic Affairs' and other of the same ilk, the oxygen of publicity. This is an organization that has an anti-railway track record and l have read that it is thoroughly discredited by figures in the railway industry.

 

Typical l suppose that they would be giving the 'anti' side as it makes 'more interesting' news and they seem to particularly like the views of that unpleasant and uninformed (make up a figure) Joe Rukin from 'Stop HS2'

 

One would now like to think that it's a 'done deal', but it won't stop the usual suspects pouring out all their uninformed clap-trap.

 

The BBC and others always have to appear to show both sides of an argument. It's why you get scientists with years of research and anti-sicence loons who have read a couple of websites treated equally in interviews. Since the loons make good telly they are even more popular with broadcasters. Who needs boring old facts when there are entertaining opinions?

 

I have a feeling there people who have analysed HS2 and other projects and decided they are against who put thier head in their hands when another loon appears on telly - the equivelent of our man with a bobble hat full of badges when TV people want railway enthusiasts. Listening to the radio one day, I recognised an anti as someone I had worked with a few years earlier. They had been a pain in the backside, more interested in their own glory than working with anyone. Rules weren't meant for them etc. Even if their house isn't on the route (it isn't even very near) I'd drive the bulldozer for free just to be on the safe side.

[Vanders]

 Even if their house isn't on the route (it isn't even very near) I'd drive the bulldozer for free just to be on the safe side.

"Do you know how much damage this bulldozer would sustain if I just let it roll over you? None at all."

[Re6/6]

'Rukin'...'loon'...slips so easily from the tongue...

[lmsforever]

Usual load of rubbish on this thread.

[Ohmisterporter]

I worked with a chap who had been run over by a bulldozer. He was working on the M6 Lancaster bypass when he was knocked down and a 'dozer ran over him from feet to waist. The driver was alerted by other men and stopped, before reversing off. Luckily the ground was soft and he had been pressed into it which saved his life, though a long spell in hospital followed and he walked again with the aid of two sticks. Not something that I would wish on anyone.

This may be though of as off topic but HS2 is a giant construction site and there is the potential for things like this to happen.

Edited February 26, 2017 by Ohmisterporter

[PhilJ W]

I worked with a chap who had been run over by a bulldozer. He was working on the M6 Lancaster bypass when he was knocked down and a 'dozer ran over him from feet to waist. The driver was alerted by other men and stopped, before reversing off. Luckily the ground was soft and he had been pressed into it which saved his life, though a long spell in hospital followed and he walked again with the aid of two sticks. Not something that I would wish on anyone.

This may be though of as off topic but HS2 is a giant construction site and there is the potential for things like this to happen.

At the moment the largest construction project in the country is Crossrail and you hear very little if anythng about accidents. This means that they are either few and far between or so common that they are not worth reporting, hopefully the former.

[96701]

At the moment the largest construction project in the country is Crossrail and you hear very little if anythng about accidents. This means that they are either few and far between or so common that they are not worth reporting, hopefully the former.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/health-and-safety/#

[jjb1970]

It is one of the great achievements of our society that industrial injuries and worse are now the exception rather than the norm. When I entered the work force in 1989 the prevailing view was still very much that accidents happen, you can't do abc without having some accidents etc etc. Now the prevailing attitude is that if somebody gets hurt then something has gone wrong, find out what and make sure it doesn't happen again. I remember when it was normal to just accept awful incidents as the price of doing certain things. What is sad is that rather than being celebrated this now seems to be derided and drowned in "elf n'safety gone mad" silly stories.

[Kelly]

It is one of the great achievements of our society that industrial injuries and worse are now the exception rather than the norm. When I entered the work force in 1989 the prevailing view was still very much that accidents happen, you can't do abc without having some accidents etc etc. Now the prevailing attitude is that if somebody gets hurt then something has gone wrong, find out what and make sure it doesn't happen again. I remember when it was normal to just accept awful incidents as the price of doing certain things. What is sad is that rather than being celebrated this now seems to be derided and drowned in "elf n'safety gone mad" silly stories.

In the aviation industry generally speaking, finding out went wrong and making sure it can never happen again has been the case since the 50s/60s.

[jjb1970]

In the aviation industry generally speaking, finding out went wrong and making sure it can never happen again has been the case since the 50s/60s.

Aviation led the way in crash investigation, but their industrial safety culture with respect to work place injuries seems to have been pretty well aligned with other industries. A standard case study on many courses is the RAAF F111 fuel tank and fuel exposure health damage.

[Ohmisterporter]

There have certainly been serious accidents on Crossrail including fatalities. When compared with rates in building the Victorian railways the accident figures are miniscule; though each serious injury and fatality is a disaster for the family involved. No room for complacency, stay safe all.

[pete_mcfarlane]

What is sad is that rather than being celebrated this now seems to be derided and drowned in "elf n'safety gone mad" silly stories.

I bet those same newspapers who run 'elf n safety gone mad' stories are much safer places to work these days as a result of 'elf n safety'. 

[APOLLO]

40 odd years in the Gas industry taught me that you can't have enough Health & Safety at the sharp end, i.e on the job.

 

I remember the very start of it back in 1974, HASWA (Health and safety at work act).  It made sense back then, little or no paperwork, meaningful supervision, sharp eyed safety officers out on the job etc.

 

Where it broke down (for me) in later years i.e. elf n safety gone mad was the incessant frivolous meaningless paperwork & reports, and the constant flow of it. Quite often filling in the paperwork, reports, safety cases etc would keep me from my proper job of engineering planning /  supervision on the actual job. Management started to rely on these aspects to replace supervision, with consequences.

 

Brit15

[Steve K]

"Do you know how much damage this bulldozer would sustain if I just let it roll over you? None at all."

 

Always nice to see Douglas Adams quoted on a thread...

[PhilJ W]

Having been trained to assess health and safety, by my union. I'm surprised that many employers allocate health and safety matters to managers that have had little or more often no health and safety training. Its no wonder that we then get these 'health and safety gone mad' stories.

Edited February 26, 2017 by PhilJ W

[jamie92208]

Having been trained to assess health and safety, by my union. I'm surprised that many employers allocate health and safety matters to managers that have had little or more often no health and safety training. Its no wonder that we then get these 'health and safety gone mad' stories.

 

It's exactly the same in many voluntary bodies and many of the people who get the task have absolutely no concept of risk and taking responsibility.  Thus they usually go for the easy solution of banning everything so that there is no come back on them.

 

Jamie

[runs as required]

Par for the course with the BBC who regularly give the likes of 'The institute of Economic Affairs' and other of the same ilk, the oxygen of publicity. This is an organization that has an anti-railway track record and l have read that it is thoroughly discredited by figures in the railway industry.

Typical l suppose that they would be giving the 'anti' side as it makes 'more interesting' news and they seem to particularly like the views of that unpleasant and uninformed (make up a figure) Joe Rukin from 'Stop HS2'

 

I have to admit that my brain fogs over when any 'evidence based' lobby group gets air time on the media.

I always get diverted into wondering "Who are all these 'think tank' institutes and who funds them?"  I found a  Wikipedia inventory here

 

In this era of Fake News, whenever quoted they should be referred to along with their funder.

 

dh

[The Stationmaster]

It's exactly the same in many voluntary bodies and many of the people who get the task have absolutely no concept of risk and taking responsibility.  Thus they usually go for the easy solution of banning everything so that there is no come back on them.

 

Jamie

 

A few years back I gave a little bit of assistance to charity and we visited the house where I was going to help and the organiser, rather in fear and trepidation, produced a form and said 'and now we have to do a risk assessment, this is going to be awful as these things are really difficult I find'.  I told her to sit down at the table with her pad and pen and write what I dictated then ran through all the risks involved in building a model railway (yes, it really was helping a charity) plus the mitigations to make every single one of them ALARP.  It took a little while obviously but even so it took her longer to write it down that it did me to run through them and she looked at me with a sort of weird admiration until I explained that I was used to doing RAs and had been trained on what was involved.

 

That is the big difference - basically I think I knew what I was doing, lots of people involved in safety management haven't got the first idea (like the two safety assessors who came across a fold down point lever and pulled it to see if it presented a risk - and in doing so changed the points underneath a raft of wagons - you can guess what happened next; that pair were so ignorant of safety matters and training requirements that they didn't even realise they shouldn't have been there - private industrial site).

[bensanchez43310]

Not sure if its been raised before, haventhad time to read up on HS2, but will it be built to berne gauge(i think it is?) like HS1 with a logical connection to HS1 for ongoing freight up england?

[frobisher]

Not sure if its been raised before, haventhad time to read up on HS2, but will it be built to berne gauge(i think it is?) like HS1 with a logical connection to HS1 for ongoing freight up england?

I think the one thing you can safely say is that HS2 won't be carrying freight.

[phil-b259]

Not sure if its been raised before, haventhad time to read up on HS2, but will it be built to berne gauge(i think it is?) like HS1 with a logical connection to HS1 for ongoing freight up england?

 

HS2 is being built to the mandated EU structure gauge for high speed lines (as laid down in various EU agreements designed to remove in-built barriers which hamper cross border rail services and 'open access' free market principles) so like HS1 (which is to all intents a carbon copy of the French TGV lines) Berne gauge double deck trains, etc will be able to be accommodated.

 

HOWEVER.....

 

In Roger Fords forthcoming Modern Railways column, he reveals that the specification for the classic compatible trains required for phase 1 say that bidders should assume platform heights as 950mm (nominal) for stations on the current rail network, but 1000mm (1m) on HS2. Now not only does a 1m platform height prevent ordinary freight trains (which is why such platform heights have thus far been restricted to things like the East London Line & Crossrail core sections where no freight traffic is permitted), but high platforms also prevent proper continental style double deck trains as any 'high platform' significantly restricts the width of any passenger accommodation at the lower level. How this circle will be squared is not yet known.... but given the DfTs previous attempts at trying to design detailed rolling stock specifications and the end results, they probably haven't twigged they are in the process of significantly hob-nailing HS2 from the start

 

Also you should note that there will NOT  be a direct connection between HS1 & HS2 - it was dropped a year or so ago as not representing good value for money particularly as it would have required a certain amount of property demolition in Camden and required an politically unacceptable loss of capacity on the North London line where one of the tracks would have been removed to facilitate the link which would have been sparsely used. There are also no plans to add any other links - and given it dives into a tunnel before it reaches the top of Camden Bank plus has its own dedicated Euston terminus (probably with nothing more than a 'maintenance siding' to link HS2 & WCML like the one that physically links HS1 and the MML at St Pancras) then simply getting freight on to it will be nigh on impossible. In some ways however since the abandonment of the HS1 - HS2 link that doesn't matter as Bernie Gauge vehicles won't be able to access HS2 anyway and UK gauge freight will benefit from the transfer of some service away from the WCML

Edited June 20, 2017 by phil-b259

[bensanchez43310]

HS2 is being built to the mandated EU structure gauge for high speed lines (as laid down in various EU agreements designed to remove in-built barriers which hamper cross border rail services and 'open access' free market principles) so like HS1 (which is to all intents a carbon copy of the French TGV lines) Berne gauge double deck trains, etc will be able to be accommodated.

 

HOWEVER.....

 

In Roger Fords forthcoming Modern Railways column, he reveals that the specification for the classic compatible trains required for phase 1 say that bidders should assume platform heights as 950mm (nominal) for stations on the current rail network, but 1000mm (1m) on HS2. Now not only does a 1m platform height prevent ordinary freight trains (which is why such platform heights have thus far been restricted to things like the East London Line & Crossrail core sections where no freight traffic is permitted), but high platforms also prevent proper continental style double deck trains as any 'high platform' significantly restricts the width of any passenger accommodation at the lower level. How this circle will be squared is not yet known.... but given the DfTs previous attempts at trying to design detailed rolling stock specifications and the end results, they probably haven't twigged they are in the process of significantly hob-nailing HS2 from the start

 

Also you should note that there will NOT  be a direct connection between HS1 & HS2 - it was dropped a year or so ago as not representing good value for money particularly as it would have required a certain amount of property demolition in Camden and required an politically unacceptable loss of capacity on the North London line where one of the tracks would have been removed to facilitate the link which would have been sparsely used. There are also no plans to add any other links - and given it dives into a tunnel before it reaches the top of Camden Bank plus has its own dedicated Euston terminus (probably with nothing more than a 'maintenance siding' to link HS2 & WCML like the one that physically links HS1 and the MML at St Pancras) then simply getting freight on to it will be nigh on impossible. In some ways however since the abandonment of the HS1 - HS2 link that doesn't matter as Bernie Gauge vehicles won't be able to access HS2 anyway and UK gauge freight will benefit from the transfer of some service away from the WCML

 

Yeah thanks for the info bud, wasn't too sure on any of it, haven't really been following HS2