‘Nimby’ – proud boast or grave insult?

There is an existing route through the Chilterns, built in 1906 to a high speed alignment with long straight sections, no level crossings and grade separated junctions. It was built jointly by GWR and GCR, to Berne Gauge in readiness for the expected delivery of the Channel Tunnel. There is a supreme irony in the reason for this railway. For the GWR it provided the direct main line route to Birmingham, cutting the time for this journey, such that it was the route for the premier Blue Pullman service in the 1960's. For the GCR it provided a faster route but mainly provided much needed capacity to by-pass the commuter congestion South of Verney Junction (Milton Keynes in new money) wher the track was shared with the Metropolitan Railway. Land and route was bought and laid out for a 4 track wayleave from Northolt Junction to Bicester, although not completed to 4 tracks throughout, and at one stage the line was reduced to a single track until Chiltern delivered their Evergreen programme. Now Evergreen 3 is delivering a London-Birmingham journey in under 90 minutes, with a modest budget that raised the line speed to 100mph for much of the distance, and uses trains capable of 125 mph to deliver this, with free wifi and an upgraded standard in place of conventional first class for business users in its first 4 months of operation peak services have seen a 65% growth in patronage. A 125mph line speed would have triggered a significant step-up in costs for signalling and track, but transferring the WCML performance (trains AVERAGING 105mph to Warrington and Preston) an affordable use of the existing route with proven technology would deliver a 65 minute London to Birmingham journey arriving at a station which was directly served by other rail services in the city centre. The GW/GC route is 113 miles from Marylebone to Moor Street matching the 113 miles from Euston to New Street, and both 27 miles shorter then the 140 miles for HS2 (without going via Heathrow), so a high speed upgrade to the existing railway cut through the Chilterns with a wayleave and existing railway bill for a 4 track railway would require a 138 mph AVERAGE speed to deliver a 49 minute journey, compared to the 171 mph required by the new line. Add in the 2 stops and catch up acceleration to maintain the average speed with say a 4 minute reduction in the time spent moving and you get a hugely increased energy bill, and a hugely increased waste of that energy slamming on the brakes, for that extra 33 mph gain in average speed to grasp a 49 minute station to station journey time, which in Birmingham delivers you to a place almost twice as far from New Street as the existing Moor Street, where the advised time to get between trains at different stations is 20 minutes. Thus being extremely generous, unless you are travelling to an office in Curzon Street Birmingham, you would be equally fast using the old services. Those focussing on speed are blind to the fastest and cheapest way to slash travelling times - by eliminating the waiting times and personal travelling to the train when you cannot do anything productive. The added benefit of not building an isolated high speed line is that the existing route has (with a bit of a fiddle) provided a diversion when the WCML is shut, and a fully integrated parallel route would permit alternate services via Milton Keynes or Banbury, and a London terminal of Paddington or Euston, deliverig a robust railway that would no longer stop completely (as it does at present when WCML fails) and a 7-day operation that can close one route or London/Birmingham terminus to carry out engineering work. I've seen the benefit of this around Birmingham and Manchester, even today a fatality at Tamworth and the Virgin services get sent via Stetchford avoiding the long wait for the lines to be cleared. Finally using the old routes effectively re-integrated with the WCML could restore rail services to Daventry, Brackley, and Buckingham, three major towns with substantial potential new traffic which would welcome the benefits of London in 50 minutes or less, and connecting to Birmingham in 30-40 minutes.

- 15 January 2012 - S N Barnes