Great Western Coffee Shop

From the New European (https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/europe-news/boris-johnson-hard-brexit-europe-rail-8222222)

I am surprised the ERG hasn't called for the tunnel's closure.

I largely agree with the report.
I have long felt that much greater use should be made of long distance rail instead of air travel.
Fast daytime trains to the nearer parts of Europe, and sleepers to the more distant.
IMHO, International travel needs more THROUGH trains, having to change trains is a powerful disincentive to use.
A through sleeper train from say Northern England to Italy could be attractive for holidays. A service involving two changes in London, and another change in Paris is most unattractive. Every change involves trouble in carrying luggage, risk of missed connections, or hours of waiting to allow a safety margin for connections.
And if it does all go orribly wrong, then a six hour delay on a reasonably comfortable train is FAR preferable to six hours queuing in the rain outside Saint Pancras.

In view of the climate emergency, I do not feel that any public money should be spent on airlines or airports, except on a very small scale in exceptional circumstances.
I would reluctantly accept subsidy for short flights to remote islands that are not otherwise accessible, electric aircraft should be considered for such flights.

But subsidy for holidays in Spain, no way. Stay in the UK, or go by train, or pay the full NON subsidised price, including a tax on aviation fuel similar to that charged on road fuel.

European Research Group - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Group

An obvious development given the level of environmental damage apparently wreaked by short(ish)-haul air travel but my first question would be 'how many spare paths are potentially available through the Channel Tunnel?'.

My immediate reaction to Bob's post above - if there's insufficient, scrap Heathrow's third runway and build a second Channel Tunnel instead!

Or perhaps a bridge ? Not certain that another tunnel would be allowed since long tunnels are inherently vulnerable to fire. A bridge cant fill with smoke and evacuation by air or sea is possible in case of emergency.

A bridge supported on a number of artificial islands could have sufficient clearance to permit of ships passing.

Search headline:


Le Shuttle says "up to 4 trains per hour"
Eurotunnel freight for trucks "up to 7 departures per hour"
1.3 million tons of rail freight at (say) 150 tons per train is (just under) 1 train per hour
So that's 12 out of the 20 paths with trains at a 3 minute headway

Eurostar currently running 3 trains a DAY to Paris, and 1 train a day to Amsterdam

Rough guess, then, if all trains run to the same speed, of 7 paths an hour available at peak times - more when the shuttle operators (cars and trucks) are running below their "up to" level. Take 2 of those paths for re-instated core flow Eurostars - hourly to Paris and hourly to or via Brussels, and you still have five paths.   Call in 3 to allow for recovery from delays, etc, and that gives you scope for new services every 20 minutes whilst retaining a buffer of spares.  Say 40 service a day, perhaps split over 20 routes - lots of once-a-day stuff such as Holyhead, Birmingham, Reading to Koln, Berlin and Warsaw and one or two services every couple of hours such as Manchester to Malaga and Newcastle to Nice.

For some routes, a very infrequent service would still be useful, even once a week from Northern England to European holiday resorts could be popular if run at sensible time for holidaymakers.

Leave Yorkshire at say 20-00 on Friday evening and arrive next morning in Italy. Offer both package holidays and train fares only for those who wish to make their own hotel arrangements.

Given a decent sleeper train and a THROUGH service that could prove popular.

You would, though, be harking to an era where stock could do just one round trip a week.   More logical to do a Monday, Wednesday, Friday southbound and Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday northbound.   Where you say "though" - I suspect you would have no issue with though tickets from across the North East, picking up for the main train at connection points such as Newcastle, Darlington, York, Leeds and Donny.

I don’t think leaving Yorkshire at 8pm by overnight train would get you even to Northern Italy by midday next day.  Maybe you might just reach Milan as the clock strikes noon, but Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples?  Where most tourists want to go?  Forget about it.

I’m all for expanding the overnight sleeper network, and it appears that momentum is very much in that direction, but journeys have to be between major cities and no more than 16 hours to have any chance of happening IMHO.

I am afraid I do not see this happening for the following reasons:

• UK Border control operates at a very small number of stations.  Major investment would be required to process travelers at stations and then keep them segregated while in the UK.  The originally planned regional Eurostar services never started.
• Trains carry far more passengers than planes so a current 5 flights a day service with multiple departure times would become 1 train a day.  This was discussed elsewhere in great detail when the routing of HS2 to / via Heathrow was being discussed.  Many regional airports only have 1 or 2 flights a day to specific destinations.
• There is no connection between HS2 and HS1 so the UK leg of the journey would be on existing 125 MPH max lines.  Even if there was a connection the paths on HS2 have been fully allocated.
• On current pricing structures the airline is significantly cheaper.

These issues (except point to point passenger volume) could be managed by government planning and significant taxation to raise the cost of short haul flying but I cannot see a UK government doing this in the next 10 years minimum.

I will now shelter from the bricks.

I was not proposing that the STOCK would make only one round trip a week, A weekly service one one route could see the stock used on other international routes on other days.
A through service from two or three major stations should be the aim, that not precluding connecting trains from other stations in the same general area.
Most passengers would much prefer a through service. Each connection increases the chances of c0ck ups.

London to Barcelona/Madrid, Liverpool/Manchester to Amsterdam, London to Marseille, Glasgow/Edinburgh/Newcastle to Paris.

They would be a few suggestions from me.

exPassengers rightly highlights some major obstacles though.  Especially border controls.  I’ll be surprised if anything happens within 10 years, other than possibly something from London.

Fair comment - though huge care is needed in selecting the co-operative services running during the rest of the week.  Friday and Sunday afternoons / evenings are peak for most leisure and business long distance flows and running a leisure peak-only journey, with the stock doing something else the rest of the week, could doom that "rest-of-week" service to being a tough thing to market with it only running away from the time / day most people want it.

I recall that we did not encourage (luke warm response only) TransWilts improvements that would have given us middle-of-the-day trains while still having nothing at peak commuter times (train in use elsewhere)

The sad fact is Dollands Moor International Rail Fright Yard was planned to see 24 trains each way per day, this has never happened. 

Eurotunnel are committed to this rail freight capacity and have no plans to remove that capacity, there is some freight that use HS1 principally to Food at Dagenham

However Eurotunnel do need to earn revenue so there are a third party plans for a new rail fright to road transfer facility at Dollands Moor which were very well developed pre pandemic.   The compound effects of Covid and Brexit has slowed down this project; it is very much on the agenda to happen though.

Why a road / rail facility and not just keep it as per rail freight, in 25 years the per rail business has not materialised possibly due t the lack of investment in rail / road freight transfer facilities elsewhere in the UK, and our loading gauge does not allow for piggy back (road trailer on rail waggon)

An investment loading gauge improvements would make subsequent electrification schemes cheaper. 

"Just a dream", I fear ... but I can see freight traffic coming through the tunnel, on the purpose built line from the tunnel to London, then linking to the other new line currently under construction from London via Birmingham to various points in the North.  Containers on or off truck loading in Paris, Brussels and Hamburg ... coming off the train for local distribution from Birmingham, Kegworth, Barnsley and Manchester

What loading gauge is HS2 (and was HS1) being built to?

What an excellent question ....

And the answer is apparently UIC GC gauge which is about the largest normally used on the European mainland.  It is 3.150 m   wide by 4.650 m high. 

Thank you! And apparently, although I would have guessed otherwise, that is high enough for piggy-back trailers:
And the height of GB and its sub-classes is 4.320m, so less than that used on HS2. (according to Wikipedia)

The problem here is that most intra-European freight transport uses semi-trailers or, at the most, swap bodies. Containers are almost exclusively used for deep-sea transport as they are designed to be stacked some 10 high on the big container ships. This increases their tare weight so making them less efficient for simple road or rail transport where they are not stacked.

The cost of operating transfer stations and the delay in the transit they would cause makes it very difficult to justify their use. A two hour delay in movement would see a lorry 100 miles nearer its destination - it may well have arrived at its destination before a similar container has even left the depot. And there will be two such transfers on each journey. This is quite apart from the need to identify and build suitable transfer sites - the land requirements will be quite large which in itself is not eco-friendly.

In spite of considerable work by various parties on the continent such road-rail-road transfer only occurs in a very few cases - mainly for trans-Alpine transits where special considerations apply. Even with the German government tipping the playing field towards the railways by banning all heavy goods traffic from the Autobahnen on Sundays[1] nobody has yet found a more efficient way[2] to ship goods than by HGV.

Much as I would like to see more freight traffic on the railways one has to appreciate that the current arrangements for moving freight have evolved over many years and adequately meet the requirements of the parties involved - which include the end consumer. Any changes which come about through carbon taxes and similar will be evolutionary - not revolutionary.



[1] With the exception of perishables but including all international transit traffic.
[2] 'Efficient' is a figure of merit for a combination of speed, reliability, flexibility, ability to make very quick changes in originating and end points as well as routing, reduction in pilfering, financing costs of goods in transit, and so on.