HS2 Construction Progress Turweston to Newton Purcell September 2022 

Currently it looks like a big scar across the landscape, but when all complete, should look much better. Hopefully! Thanks for the feedback 😀

It does take a load of space, most of which will get returned to nature when/if construction completes.

you know nothing about biodiversity - eco systems - REAL green agenda not green - not eco - not needed electric is not clean energy UN AGENDA21/30/40 WEF 28/09/2022

Picturin in your mind exactly where the line is oil to be is hard enough...

I'll see what I can do when the weather allows, I've not been to that section this year. I do fear that HS2's bad planning with temporary bridges etc has caused costs to spiral uncontrollably, which is bad news on a project that the voting public was never really in favour of in the first place.

Indeed you are right, the old Great Central is taking one for the team here, sadly. I believe a route like the GCR would make more sense in freeing up perceived capacity issues on the existing Birmingham to London lines than HS2 ever will, as the vast majority of passengers on don't travel the entire route between the 2 cities, and want to use stations along the route. Strangely enough, I am just editing a GCR video of a flight between Brackley and Sulgrave, covering where HS2 crosses it, so keep an eye out for that one in a couple of days :)

@@theboy-uk Looking forward to it already.

@@theboy-uk We have 2 excellent slower mainlines between London and Birmingham, only constrained from serving local stations by the need to accomodate non-stop services, HS2 solves that.

@@iman2341 As a regular user on those 2 slower lines (that used to run faster services, incidentally, that were in the same ballpark as HS2's proposed times, but Network Rail slowed them down to make HS2 look viable), thats why I know HS2 will be a failure. Hardly anybody wants to go from central Birmingham to Central London. The vast, vast majority want to use stations along the route.

Amaze is not the word I would use. I'm staggered. I measured one section in the car, and it was nearly half a mile wide! HS2's original proposal for Phase 1 is it needs to carry 576,000 passengers a day to "only" need 50-60% taxpayer subsidy on fares.. Pre pandemic, Chiltern and Avanti's combined daily passenger figure across their entire network (not just Birmingham to London sections) was under 100,000 a day. Its a farce.

They are using an awful lot of land for the construction phase 😥

That does seem to be quite common on the stretches around here. To the point its very noticeable when they are working....

@@theboy-uk Not much point in finishing the plain line or earthworks until the larger structures are more complete.

@@iman2341 So why compulsory purchase all the land 3 years ago (purchase in the loose sense, some ex landowners are still waiting for the payment), and make a start, then leave the contractors say in site huts playing cards for 2 years? Sounds like poor management to me...

@@theboy-uk Becuase the line of route needs to be surveyed, prepared and graded and if anything does go wrong it won’t affect the entire opening schedule of the line. Given sites like those at Ruislip have near 1000 people at them I highly doubt contractors have all of them just “hanging around”.

@@iman2341 Plenty of cars have been parked up in the huge carparks they have built around the sites, but no workers outside. Given that they have hugely increased the number of portacabins they have put at these sites does lead me to believe they do have lots of people sat around. Such inefficiencies are not a problem when you're not paying for it...

Well, maybe this decade for this phase.... ...if they get a wiggle on!

@@theboy-uk 🤣🤣🤪

And money. Taxpayer money. Our money.

I bet no other railway has needed quite so much land for construction, but at the end of it, should be a lot of land returned to nature. Quite how larger mammals like foxes and even deer will co-exist with high speed trains is probably yet to be considered.

@@theboy-uk Isn't it obvious, they'll ride the trains too!

Most of it is only temporary, though. Land for factories to build the concrete linings for the tunnels, for example. Or to build viaduct segments, etc. Much will be returned to nature (by law, they can't skip that bit)

@@Garner84 They get to ride the loco itself!

@@hoagy_ytfc Who will manage the "returned to nature" land, or will it just be left unmanaged like much of the spare unused railway land that other lines used, full of lumps of concrete and rusting steel?