Be Excellent To Each Other

Boston to Chicago was an awesome train ride. As was Iowa to San Francisco.

It's surprisingly hard to maintain perfection, y'know.

Really? I find its quite easy.

Your avatar has a white background.

So does yours.

Blame Zardoz.

I travelled on one in France last year and the whole time thought 'why the fuck don't we have these?'.

Spend this cash on doing whatever needs to be done to the infrastructure to accommodate them.

You don't send me that much money.

The version of Beex I look at has a white background too, ta.

The version of perfect you use has a rose tinted background

I was facepalming because he didn't get it. I got it.

Innumerable bridges, tunnels, stations, other buildings, all would need to be rebuilt. Not viable, you'd be basically rebuilding everything. You might as well undo that other foolish decision from the 19th century while you're at it and relay all the tracks as broad gauge.

Do that then.

It is almost as it is was deliberate.

At least get started on it, rather than being forever stuck in the dark ages.

They are. It's called HS2.

The depot is going to be at Steeple Claydon which is about 10km from Bicester. I am intrigued to see what affect this will have on house prices.

I don't see how it's any different from the existing Chiltern line or indeed the M40. The usual NIMBY types complaining, no doubt bitching about the poor state of public transportation on the one hand and then screaming about all the displaced TB-ridden badgers when the line gets built.

No, these particular NIMBYs are the ones who hunt badgers on horseback.

Badgers can ride horses?!

But that's pointless.

You are a scamp Mr Paz. Look at you with your scampy face.

If it reduces the number of uncomfortable metal monstrosities shitting pollutants into the skies over Britain it's a good thing.

Admittedly I've not been paying much attention, but the time talk I've heard has been journey time of HS2 which is roughly the same as the flight time, Manchester-London anyway.

What it doesn't take into account is the fucking security theatre that won't be nece... what am I talking about, of course all the same shit will be "necessary" to stop the terrrists blowing up our lovely new train, won't it?

Just imagine the number of jobs created in the "standing next to a several-hundred-miles-long train line to stop the terrrists blowing it up" industry!

You want double deck trains? The Channel Tunnel and HS1 can accommodate them, HS2 certainly would too.

Whereas right now, if you include checking in at the airport, the flight and getting into London from Gatwick/Stansted/Heathrow, the train from Manchester to Euston is already faster.

No, horses can ride badgers.

I am being facetious. It's a common theme today.

Did you arrive in the UK yesterday, or something?

I fully expect the additional shallow tunnel things to be so badly specced and built that HS2 would, actually, not accommodate them at all, at the very least. God Bless the British process.
It didn't seem much different last time I did it, though that was before the WTC fell down went boom. I chose flying because it was about a fifth the price and still included a sausage sandwich.

Why would they bodge that while HS1 was built "properly" and to European High Speed and LGV specifications? Ah, because they fucking wouldn't. This could eventually lead to the north of the UK have direct rail services to Europe like was meant to happen with the Eurostar.

Because we've got a grand old tradition in government of fucking things up royally.

But what about the South West of the UK?

Malc

Don't worry about that, nobody lives there anyway.

Absolutely, that's why the Great Western Mainline is only being electrified as far as Cardiff and Bristol, not Swansea and Plymouth. Why the much vaunted Pendolino still can't do its 140mph top speed.

However, it is already confirmed it will be built to the same standard as HS1, the question is whether the trains will take advantage of this or be a UK loading gauge to pointlessly allow interoperability with the existing network.

I thought we couldn't run fast trains in this country, due to kiddies playing on the tracks or something?

The funniest part is where they say "Linking up towns as far north as Manchester and perhaps, in the future, even Scotland". Proper laugh at that one.

If you cut it as fine as realistically possible, you would arrive at Manchester Airport 45 minutes before the flight is due to leave. Then security and get to the gate. Flight time is about 40 mins to Heathrow. I assume 40 mins to get to Central London on Heathrow Express or Tube or whatever. So 45+40+40 = 125 mins.

Manchester Piccadilly -> Euston is 2 hours.

But yeah, price is the major factor. Our return flights were £62 each, return, including taxes on BMI with a checked bag. To do the same can be as little as £25, or somewhere north of £150.

If you're heading to Central London from a UK city, City Airport would make a lot more sense than any of the others.

Err - except that oddly there aren't any flights to Manchester from City. Strange.

... and if you have any luggage? Add on at least 30 minutes at heathrow to wait for it to turn up on the carousel...

There used to be, then one of the budget airlines merged and stuff. However, I agree - no matter where you are flying, from London (even West) City Airport can often give you a better travel time, even if you have to connect somewhere else as a result. As an example - Greenwich to Belgrade was a travel time of 5 hours home to Airport carousel if I flew through City via Zurich with Swiss, but 7.5 hours if I flew from Heathrow direct with BA.

40 minutes from landing at Heathrow to arriving in London is hopelessly optimistic. Even flying internally and bypassing passport control, 40 minutes from landing to getting to a train platform is more like it.

IIRC, BMI or BMIBaby used to. BAs wonderful plan to funnel everyone through Heathrow means their service from MAN to London has thoroughly beaten by BMI.



Never done it - always used LHR as a stop to Somewhere Else, so figured it was like MAN, just plane, bus, walk, out.

What was HS1?

PS.... I'm not reading 3 pages.

Isn't it the line going from Waterloo to the Channel Tunnel (and beyond)?

St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel, dedicated high speed line. Prior to that they rattled out of Waterloo on the decrepit third rail commuter network south of London. This had a speed limit of 100mph and had to be shared with local services, and was a bit of a joke.

Yes, that must be why I got confused with Waterloo, as it was the station you'd go to from Southampton and the Eurostar used to go from there. I haven't been there in about 10 years.

Once Scotland landmine Hadrian's Wall after independence, they're going to use their massive oil wealth to dig a tunnel to europe anyway.

Edit: That was a reply to a post a long way back. I forgot to click 'send'

Except we've now got their oil money, so fuck 'em.

Excellent! Now if only they'd spend our\theirs monies on something slightly more tangible than being able to get to Birmingham slight more quickly.

I suppose it might have a benefit linking Birmingham more closely to London, perhaps pulling some business towards Birmingham, although I'll probably be dead by then and everyone will have a portal gun.

Oh I'm confused then. Replace everything with HS2. Or that 350mph maglev shit. Yeah.

make a circular track and a really long train, join it up at the ends, job done.

Cameron's Folly is the only thing thats making me think that independence might be a good idea. then you can keep your stupid train and we shall LOL at you from atop Hadrians wall with our blue painted faces, live Haggi in hand.