On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, John Rowland wrote:

John B wrote:
On 22 Nov, 23:14, JL wrote:

What they should get rid of... are the Absolutely Stupid Short-Haul
flights.

This is why routing HS2 via LHR would be a Very Good Idea.

When you said that, did you know Arup were about to suggest exactly that?
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle2982649.ece

Funnily enough, i was thinking about that myself last night. I was
pondering a variety of high-speed routes on from London, and was thinking
that one to the west, along the GWML, should go via Heathrow, so you could
do Cardiff - Heathrow - London - Europe. Plus, with a route to the north
along the WCML and a triangular junction around Old Oak Common, you could
do The North - Heathrow, which you'd need to replace short-haul flights
within the UK. It didn't occur to me to actually run the north-south route
through Heathrow, which is a brilliant idea - simpler, allows trains from
the North to serve both Heathrow and London (and Europe!), means you can
do it before you build the western HSL.

I wonder if they're thinking about a station actually at Heathrow, in
which case i assume a new tunnel is called for, or a 'Heathrow
International' station on the GWML, where it's a bugger to get to.

How will they get from the GWML to the CML? Tunnel again? Hang on, this is
the proposed Central Railway route, isn't it? IIRC, there's a plausible
all-surface route, along the M25. Splendid.

I'll be interested to see how they deal with going through (or under?)
Birmingham.

In my scheming, i was thinking of an HSL up the Midland mainline, coming
off the WCML at Rugby and going to Leicester via a new route. I suppose
you could still do this with the Chiltern route, but you'd want the link
to run from Leamington Spa to Leicester (along the Fosse Way, nice and
straight!). Or from Birmingham to Derby/Nottingham; that might make more
sense either way.

tom

--
Every moloch that tends the great Machine down here in the darkness of the
Lower Shafts has a number. If a moloch is destroyed or decommissioned,
his number is given to another who is sent down from Above to take his
empty place. This is the normal procedure.