What’s the future of long-distance transport?

Yes, it can be done, but from the outset HS2 was planned to link just the major conurbations since there are paralell routes serving intermediate points which are capable of 100 mph or 125 mph running. They should have additional capacity when HS2 opens and the premium longer distance traffic transfers to that line.

Personally I am indifferent to whether there should be intermediate calling points on HS2 but I can see that more than two between London and Birmingham would start to cause a significant capacity drop unless loops were provided at the stations to allow non-stopping trains to overtake.

The situation in Kent was quite different. Very few of the classic lines are capable of speedy operation and follow very sinuous routes making places 60 miles apart seem hours away. The HS1 line opened up new journey and speed opportunities which have had significant economic benefits.

Two well-separated commuter towns on the London-Birmingham route are Aylesbury and Banbury. The fastest trains currently into London are 55 min (40m/h) and 51 min (70m/h) respectively. I’d suggest these would have been sensible intermediate stations with loops. I am not promoting commuting but suggesting that when we provide new and expensive transport links we should consider others than Londoners.

What – and change the entire modus operandi of the government? 🙂

The cost of providing additional station loops and car parks on HS2 could possibly be justified by potential additional traffic, but to achieve that would probably require Aylesbury and Banbury to expand extensively beyond their existing planning boundaries into superb open countryside thus further invoking the ire of the objectors to HS2.

For commercial viability reasons I suspect only a few trains a day would call at such stations, not every passing high speed service. To curb additional commuting to London it would be desirable to limit the morning peak southbound service to just one or two trains with a similar return arrangement in the evening peak, but that would further undermine the commercial case for such provision.

This shows what a short-sighted decision it was to wipe the northern section of the LNER’s Great Central Railway main line off the railway map.in the 1960’s.

Possibly, Phil.

Being the last main line built in Britain, the Great Central was constructed to the continental loading gauge so would have allowed for higher speeds and greater clearances. It duplicated many other routes and stations which was seen as a disadvantage in the 1960’s when the railways were in decline but today would have provided the capacity we require without the expense, upheaval and time delay of constructing HS2.

HS2 passes directly on the western edge of Aylesbury and not far from Aylesbury Parkway on the Chiltern Line. O calculate it will pass within around 5,5 miles of Banbury. So two towns in commuter areas that could directly use a service – if one were provided.

GC could have met the need, designed to run from Sheffield – a major industrial city in the heart of S. Yorkshire – via Nottingham and Leicester to London and then a channel tunnel envisaged in the early 1900s. Too late to compete and too late to now to recover the track route probably.

Aylesbury is already expanding. As for “loops and car parking” these are already being provided for servicing and could, I expect, incorporate station facilities.

W do have severe problem because of our loading gauge. This is one proposal – https://www.railway-technology.com/features/seeing-double-uk-ready-embrace-double-decker-trains/ – but it prohibits people standing up which may not be acceptable when boarding and leaving. Southern Region tried this in the late 1940’s but found problems with passenger comfort and, although the carriages provided 34% extra capacity, the longer time spend at stations to load and unload mitigated against it.

However, I cannot find much about investigating this concept. Perhaps someone can find what research has been done? Incidentally the EU seems to govern many of the regulations that our railways must comply eith. They refused HS2 an application for a platform height of 1200mm to ease passenger embarkation.

This discussion about double decker trains reminded me of my own childhood, when a bus firm called Crosville ran double decker buses with a similar profile to today’s coaches.

Downstairs (where the European First class seats normally reside) you could stand up to around 6 feet 2 inches but upstairs there was a channel in the floor which allowed you to walk along to a seat, but you couldn’t stand up once in that seat. The channel formed what seemed like an aircraft overhead luggage compartment in the lower cabin seats.

The Swiss network slings the downstairs compartment within inches of the track, and the sections directly above the bogeys is single deck only.

This design has been suggested as a possibility:

I agree about moving freight by water being an environmentally friendly approach, though only a limited number of existing waterways are suitable. The Thames Clippers provide good sightseeing opportunities and not just transport, hence the charges. There won’t be much opportunity for sightseeing in an underground Hyperloop.

We don’t have many adequate waterways in the UK but:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/barge-transport-wins-on-fuel-efficiency
“A report commissioned by the U.S. National Waterways Foundation indicates that inland river barge transportation has improved its fuel efficiency for cargo transport compared to road or rail.
The study shows that barges can move a ton of cargo 647 miles with a single gallon of fuel, an increase from an earlier estimate of 616 miles. In contrast, trains can move the same ton of cargo 477 miles per gallon, and trucks can move the same ton of cargo 145 miles per gallon.
The improvement for barge transport was due in part to the continual upgrading of the fleet and the high utilization rates that were achieved in the latter part of the study period. Rail and truck remained almost unchanged during the same period.“

I was referring to the UK, Malcolm. Here is a presentation by David Lowe, who must the strongest supporter of barge transport in the UK: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/library/6695.pdf

I attended a very similar talk a couple of years ago.

I assumed you were. I wonder just how useful our canal system might be for shipping some products where 4 or 5 m/h max might be acceptable. The labour cost would well outweigh the saving in fuel I suspect. I think in the UK a well-organised rail-freight system would be the winner for most areas.

I have long been an advocate of barge transport for the long-distance haulage of non-perishable low-value bulk commodities like construction materials, fuel, grain, waste and other suitable materials from a production centre to storage compounds for onward local distribution. Time is not necessarily of the essence so long as there are regular flows to maintain stock levels.

Considering fuel efficiency for waterway transport, does the tide not have an effect on the fuel consumption? I would expect differences for going against the tide or with the tide on tidal rivers which is why traditionally craft waited for the tide before setting off. Perhaps the results are averaged. For long journeys on US rivers there will be several tidal turns between the origin and destination and the same could be true on some of the UK’s major rivers, which is why parallel ‘navigations’ were sometimes constructed [although the chief purpose was to ensure adequate depth and width as well as access to docks or basins].

So am I, but if you look at slide 11 in David Lowe’s presentation, not much of our inland waterways are suitable for freight and even some of those that are need dredging (very expensive) and there are pinch points that would have to be removed to make container barges practical. Traffic has declined, particularly on the River Trent, because economics take priority over environmental issues – something that needs to change, in my view.

I’m expecting the delivery of a (rather nice) new chessboard, today. I use an app to track its route and thus far it’s been Amristsar / New Dehli / Dubai / Charles de Gaulle / Stansted / Newcastle / Sandycroft and is now on the FedEx vehicle for delivery to me. It was flown through the first six legs of the journey and for some odd reason flown to Newcastle instead of Manchester or Liverpool, either of which would have been far closer to me than Newcastle. I shudder to think of the sheer quantity of pollutants vomited into the air by that journey.

I never order on a ‘phone (other than by voice), so John and I have the same issue. However ,we also have no mobile signal here, so the mobiles are kept switched off. It’s when ordering online from the desktop that I need an alternative to a code sent by mobile.

I expect a card reader would serve your purpose, Ian. That is what I intend to use and my current account provider [Nationwide] gives that as an acceptable alternative to a voice or text message.

I got in a tangle the other day trying to do something on-line with HMRC and they needed multi-factor authentication before they would release an automated speech access code to a mobile phone. The problem was that I had not updated my mobile phone number since replacing the old one and I had to go through a rigmarole of identification involving my passport number and several other evidential documents before I could reset the access number. In the end I gave my landline as the contact number and life was suddenly so simple again! The phone rang, the code came through, I wrote it down and typed it in, and I could proceed. My landline number is much less likely to be changed than a mobile number so it is virtually future-proofed.

So long as the organisations we deal with realise that we are not going to do everything on-line, or with a mobile phone in the other hand, we can make progress and the SCA process is a case in point. Banks and the other institutions that control our money will have put up with it and get used to it.

I have noticed that companies push for mobile rather than landline numbers these days, for example when ordering online. I prefer giving a landline number because I have handsets around the house, whereas the mobile could be upstairs, downstairs or in the car.

Nowadays a mobile number can be kept, irrespective of service provider. In contrast, a geographical landline number will be lost if you move out of an area.

Many years ago I read that it was possible to receive text message on a landline phone and bought a phone that would display messages. I cannot remember why I never used the feature.

Like you, I don’t keep my mobile to hand at all times because I only use it outside the house and for emergency or essential calls [to get a taxi, for example]. Only one other person has its number so I don’t expect to receive any calls on it.

I would have switched the old mobile number to the new phone but I still wanted to keep the old phone with its number and start again with the new one.

I am fed up with speaking to people who only have a mobile phone and their signal keeps dropping out or they are twirling around and their voice does not reach the microphone.

Text messages can be sent to a landline and then spoken to the recipient. However, i guess most people ask for mobile numbers as they expect they can be contacted anytime, and sent messages. I avoid businesses that only give a mobile number and no address.

I suspect it’s more about assuming that what the 18-30 demographic is doing in their lives is what everyone is doing. Our sons and their partners use their mobiles as lifelines; we, on the other hand, only take them when we go out for emergencies and to call each other if we get lost.

Malcolm – I was wondering why display of text messages on landline phones failed to become popular.

Possibly because by the time a landline phone with a text facility became widely available the country had gone mobile potty and was repudiating landline phones as yesterday’s technology.

One thing we can be sure of is that phones don’t have a great deal of relevance to the future of long-distance transport. 🙁

I’d suggest they make (have made) long distance travel unnecessary for some when you can simply ring your friend/colleague/customer for instant and real time discussion from the comfort of your own home/office. Quicker than the train. But that’s a bit of a tenuous justification for their relevance…….. 🙁 so no, should have moved to the Lobby?

Re landline text messages – Also because the land line is usually found in a fixed location or locations in the house and to read a text message one has to be aware of it and go to the phone to get it, while a mobile phone does things in the pocket and the awareness is instant. My newish landline phones might have a text message facility but it is not obvious on the main menu how to access this. I probably haven’t received any and sending one would be purgatory, since the keypad is numerical only. Today I have received two SMS messages from “an unavailable number, please press 1 to hear it.” I haven’t pressed one so I hope who ever it is will give up. This seems to be yet another ploy to hook the listener’s curiosity when they have failed by direct contact. Of course this may not be the BT SMS service anyway.

malcolm r says: Today 09:47

I’d suggest they make (have made) long distance travel unnecessary for some when you can simply ring your friend/colleague/customer for instant and real time discussion from the comfort of your own home/office.

Well, not really. I don’t believe there’s a single business in the UK that doesn’t possess a telephone which, as our sons tell us, are used regularly. However, the youngest – an Engineer – says nothing substitutes for a personal visit to a site to check progress, make arguments for change, modify workflows and so on. And repeated surveys have suggested that until we achieve the Asimovian levels of technology, businesses will continue to press for face to face meetings.

I expect you are right about the hassle of sending text messages from a landline phone, Vynor. I would not have a problem with reading text messages, which can presumably be sent from a computer.

As I hinted, my comment was tongue in cheek. 🙂

Returning to freight transport by water, which NFH mentioned earlier, there are plans to create an inland port in Leeds: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/green-light-for-gbp337m-leeds-inland-port

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If only HS2 carried freight some of this stuff could be taken off-road quickly to other parts of the UK (or “England” as it might become).

Incidentally, “The digestive process of horses produces far less methane than the digestive system of cattle and sheep. ” so to reduce one greenhouse gas perhaps it would be better to cultivate horses for meat, if we must eat it.

Duncan – Here is a report on the potential for increased use of waterways for freight: https://addressingthetenpercent.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/inland-waterways-for-freight.pdf

Barges require considerably less power than road or rail transport, but at present use diesel engines. As far as I know, these are relatively dirty compared with those used in lorries, lacking particulate filters and exhaust catalysts. In the report, David Lowe, who has been campaigning for freight transport by water, suggests the possibility that electric power could replace diesel: “David Lowe in the CBOA Chairman’s Report (2018), turning to the question of green issues and emissions in particular, said:

“This has become a topic of major interest over the last year or so.
Alternative fuel systems are very much in the news these days.
We can argue a case for retaining older diesel engines as this avoids the emissions from newbuild, but hydrogen and electric battery powered trains are being introduced and electric trucks are on the horizon. The water freight industry will need to follow suit and Bernard Hales is keeping us updated on developments.
We have tended to ‘take the moral high ground’ – and rightly so – as inland waterway transport is demonstrably better in environmental terms than road or even rail.
However I urge caution!
The first electric trucks are being developed, battery electric trains likewise – my friend Adrian Shooter is converting an underground train and one of our speakers had converted a barge to run on hydrogen.
Our barge and boat diesel engines tend to be old and dirty; we love them of course as historic artefacts, but we will need to up our game and embrace cleaner technology whether it be Euro 3b diesels or some kind of bimode arrangement with hydrogen or electric power for narrow boats or 1000 tonne barges.

Horses may seem like a good solution, but our rivers other waterways that are deep and wide enough to carry container barges don’t have towpaths and horses cannot manoeuvre barges into docks.

An interim solution might be to apply the current Euro 6 emissions standards for diesel engines to new or re-engined barges.

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Thanks for the links, Duncan. I expect that we will hear a lot more about hydrogen in future. What interests me most is the way that hydrogen production provides greater potential to store ] energy produced from renewable sources of electricity without the need for batteries.

Interesting. Never knew about that.

I have seen a newsreel of the Railplane. The engineering structure is a major drawback and reminds me of the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal which is an elevated city centre transit system that has recently been modernised. It runs for much of its length over a river but it has to be said that the infrastructure is extremely ugly.

A modern ground-level high-speed long distance system could look acceptable across open countryside but these are very much point-to-point solutions and do not offer much versatility, flexibility or inter-operability with other forms of public transport.

The selling point of railplane seemed to be that it could be built over existing tracks, but I seriously doubt that could be done without taking the tracks out of service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7ZvfO-99dc
Makes, as John says “steel rails on well-ballasted track are hard to beat” seem like an advance on this, even though they predate it by over 100 years.

The Germans had another “solution” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH3mqj-pkLQ
The principal advantage of a propellor driven train seems to be no reliance upon steel wheel adhesion on a steel track. Presumably reverse thrust can be applied for braking (when otherwise good adhesion is required).

I don’t see a propeller having enough oomph to move a train and turbines are dangerous to the environment. Air travel is air travel and land travel goes on land. No one has had much luck in changing that. Levitation requires energy plus drive and the bulk has to be moved and stopped and kept in line – less easy when there is nothing beneath it except air and some form of lift. Electric power seems to prevail on the railway, where it has been modernised. Any form of mass transport has to have multiple seats and an enclosure to put them in. This starting point limits how this can be moved and dictates the space needed for its transit. Railways seem to be a good compromise in this respect. They have pinch points and terrain difficulties but other than roads nothing else is available to use on land.

Propellors are fairly inefficient at low speeds so regular start-stop will not be good. They will not be very pleasant in stations where blowing the debris normally found on the track would be unpleasant, to say the least.

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Trouble is, if it can be shown, (and many say it can) that we are poisoning our planet at a rate that makes the next couple of generations unable to live as comfortably on it as we have, then we have a problem that we ought to do something about fairly urgently. While I agree that everyone likes the status quo that allows us to live as we have done for ages, and I agree that developing countries have not yet aspired to the level we have achieved, this doesn’t address the issues that face us. No one will change things over night, but currently no one has put forward a coherent plan that takes us from where we are now to where we need to be, to be in logical stages. Following your thoughts, no one has yet found a way to advance the development of developing countries in a way that makes them more prosperous and “green” at the same time. As can be seen war, famine, lack of resources, and other countries struggling with their own problems, too busy to help, all mitigate against this. Internal politics and strife don’t help either.
To accept the inevitability of natural change is somewhat selfish when we are having a direct impact on it and won’t live to pick up the tab for our life style excesses. When a natural disaster just happened, then, indeed, no one was to blame and the world got on under its new existence as before. This is the same now when earthquakes and volcanos disrupt our lives. But, we only have ourselves to blame when we are the cause of these disasters and are flooded out, over heated or desiccated. Thus I can not agree with your penultimate sentence. For the first time in our history we are dictating to nature not the other way round.

I think we have always tried to tame nature and use it for our own ends, often with unfortunate results. As far as population growth is concerned this will carry in at an ever increasing rate. There is no way we will ever be organised to control it and, as with all other living things, our prime aim is to reproduce.

The only way I see this being changed is by some huge epidemic that wipes out the majority of us. Such an apocalypse would leave the earth virtually intact, apart from a lot of organic debris, for the population cycle to start again from a much lower base. Well, that is my prediction just before I retire (for the night). Happy dreams.

You too!. The only difference between this and previous apocalypses is that those left to start again would not be inventing things again. Though they might not be able to make them, they would not be a mystery. It would be interesting to speculate how quickly this knowledge could be used as compared to our ancestors who started from first principles. This, of course, will be a reality if we ever begin to colonise the moon.

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