Leide nicht.
Trains in Germany and the UK for main-line running both use 1435mm gauge. UK trains are not a custom size.
Trains in Germany and the UK for main-line running both use 1435mm gauge. UK trains are not a custom size.
They were trying to run trains faster than typical continental high speed lines, which meant custom design work that needs loads of additional testing and certification. Rather than just use the Spanish or French high speed designs.
This is a project with a 200+ year shelf life. Designing to 300 or less would have been short sighted, and many of the changes to accommodate such high speeds actually reduce costs in the long term (slab track, headroom to catch up delayed services, ability for one trainset to operate more services per day etc).
The cost overruns of HS2 are primarily from plain old poor project management, complex planning law and constant political meddling, not engineering decisions.
Air resistance is a killer as you go faster. So for trains 300 is usually about the best compromise between energy use and speed. If you want to go faster a jet at altitude is going to be much faster at a better fuel efficiency. High speeds make sense for long distances.
The vast majority of the tunnelling for HS2 has been either to get in and out of dense urban areas without too much demolition, or to reduce the political cost of driving a building site through Tory heartlands (Chilterns AONB).
That's already been reduced to 320 km/h under this year's "HS2 reset". Which I imagine in reality will be 300 km/h normally at most, with even lower speeds seen day to day
Interestingly the written report to the government stated "However, no railway in the UK, or globally, is currently engineered for 360 kph". Are you incorrect or did they forget to include China in their research?
Anyway, I thought these were last decade's talking points? I thought it was all about capacity now, not speed? Except I thought there were also rumblings about reducing capacity from the previous announcements? Hard to keep up...!
Indeed, which has eroded trust. That along with huge cost revisions, you can see why some people are incredibly pessimistic about the entire project
It was all planned lies: high speed rail is sexy. It sold the project.
> Consistently high average speeds increase capacity - I wish this had been actually communicated.
Show us the numbers then ;) And the cost benefit of higher speed vs longer stations and trains