@@TonyAbbeyFETraining These were taken in January, and its now May! They are already out of date (although aside from the trees looking greener, not a huge amount has has happened in those 3 months on this small section)
We need to learn in this country that we need the countryside. Ukraine has already taught us we need to be more self-sufficient on home grown produce.... ....and we need lots of countryside for that!
I have a few already from just south of Brackley to a few miles NE of Brackley, have a search on this channel for GCR - all should be on this playlist - ruclips.net/p/PLoer2ToyOBGBw9p8zKTk3u7i_ty36WZYC - most are from a couple of years back, but obviously minimal changes.
Remember that neither drones nor RUclips videos existed in Victorian times. Accounts of Victorian railway building are full of lawless gangs of navvies who terrorised the towns and villages that the railways ran through. The railway builders of those days had no concern for environmental issues. If they built tunnels, they left the excavated spoil in heaps. They blended into the landscape after a while. However Newcastle had its castle cut in two by railway construction and when they built a railway through Leeds, they removed all the gravestones from the parish church, sprinkled some at random over the embankment and left the rest in piles in the churchyard. As for engineering, HS2 has just completed a ten mile tunnel through the Chilterns (mainly for environmental purposes) and has almost completed a two mile viaduct through the Colne Valley. The Victorians may have done things more quickly but they did so in a time when land aquisition was quite simple, organised environmental campaigning was practically non-existent, labour was cheap and health and safety didn't exist. The death toll amongst construction workers was horrendous but they were easily replaced.
@@martinsloman6905.. HS2 Ltd aren't as "environmentally friendly" as you'd like to think. They've already incurred numerous fines for multiple breaches of environmental issues. Thousands of trees planted along the route in Warwickshire where the vast majority perished due to lack of aftercare. The pollution of streams, rivers & other waterways with toxic chemicals. The bulldozing of mile upon mile of hedgerows containing nesting birds when they specifically said they'd wait until the nesting season was over .. the list goes on. Their numerous RUclips videos are nothing but propaganda & the blatant corruption within the organisation that's recently been exposed proves they've been hoodwinking the public & the government since day one of this disastrous vanity project. HS2 is an environmental disaster of epic proportions & Britain's biggest infrastructure mistake in half a century.
@@martinsloman6905 And many of the same problems of "gangs" terrorising local communities still exist on HS2. Brackley Town Council spent a fortune fencing off even small green areas in the town due to a massive surge in the number of caravans and transits rocking up and causing a spike in crime and a mess to tidy up when they could finally be evicted(only to move to a new area just down the road, and the legal process has to start over). Compared to the broadly similarly routed M40 built in the late 80s, HS2 construction progress is utterly unacceptable. And those expensive service roads and dedicated bridges to keep traffic off the public roads? Its not working. Much like all the traffic lights they have so badly configured everywhere where their private access roads join the public roads. Land acquisition for HS2 was simple. Very simple. If they wanted it, they were legally entitled to it due to the laws passed for this monstrosity of a project, to the point even now, some of the original land owners are still waiting for the payment (and will only get the "fair price" when valued 5 or 6 years ago.
@@martinsloman6905 According to the press at the time, "In the 1840s, the railway sliced through the Castle remains “as if for the express purpose of vaunting modern progress at the expense of the historic past,” said historian Cadwallader John Bates in 1895" . I remember as a child standing on top of the Keep watching the steam trains go right under me, just a matter of feet (metres) from the castle itself.
Is it for the greater good? To blow £100bn on construction and then blow £billions every year in taxpayer subsidies, for a line that is utterly unneeded and likely to close shortly after opening unless it converts itself to yet another London commuter line? I think not. A waste of money, and pointless destruction and upheaval for no gain....
@@DaveFiggley I apologise, I'm a bit behind with editing, I have more that I'm filmed, just not got around to editing and uploading - you know how life gets in the way!
@@theboy-ukI don't pretend to be a transport expert but I have a background in railway engineering and have followed HS2 for over ten years as part of a campaign group focussing on its northern connectivity. I hasten to add that, apart from a cup of coffee bought for me by an HS2 official some years ago, I have received no material benefits from this association - although I admit that some biscuits might have been involved. It seems to me that almost every anti-HS2 protestor will make claims such as you have. However, I wonder how much study of the project they ever undertake? Because, very few people with an understanding of the issues involved would speak in this way. I understand that people get upset when they see a major infrastructure project going through a cherished landscape but that doesn't mean that the project isn't required. All this talk about 'gravy trains' and corruption has to be seen in this light. It might be true, I don't know, but I doubt that the people making those accusations know either - still it sounds impressive. There is a video from several years ago from a Stop HS2 'protection camp' at Lichfield. The activists are boasting about how they are disrupting HS2 when somebody makes the point that Lichfield is north of Birmingham - so why are HS2 cutting down trees there. 'Yes, I wondered about that ' says one of the activists. These people had spent weeks living in tree houses or down tunnels without the first idea about the project they were protesting against. Maybd if they knew more they wouldn't protest?
It's great to see this video and thanks to The Boy for posting. As a retired civil engineer, I want to have a go at making sense of what is going on here in reply to some of the comments here and on other videos. When you see the 'green tunnel', the double concrete arch, that shows the actual width of HS2, which is clearly much less than the affected area. However, most of the route, certainly in this section is in cutting to cut down on visual and noise intrusion. The cutting slopes are probably around one in two and a half, so add to the overall width. These will be grassed over in the final scheme. Outside of that there are a lot of temporary works including access roads (to take the pressure off local roads), construction compounds with car parks and storage areas. There will be a fair amount of permanent works outside of the rail route, including access points, transformer compounds and balancing ponds (to prevent water draining from the railway overloading watercourses). I think that a large part of the ploughed up area will be for mitigation planting with huge numbers of trees planted, so as to both screen the railway and compensate for tree loss during construction. There will also be new wildlife habitats created. If you want an idea of how HS2 will look in a few years time, go on Google Earth and look for HS1 across Kent. You can see where it parallels the M20 motorway, which has much greater environmental impact.
@@martinsloman6905 I have the original proposal for Phase 1, and what you say is indeed what they claim will happen. However, due to a massive overspend of catastrophic proportions, they have to keep going back begging for more taxpayer money. And you can guess the bits that get dropped when any sane government finally says no more cash... Looking at the waste land that Network Rail own, I'd say it's not habitat friendly, and I have no reason to suspect this will be any different. In addition, I'm fairly convinced that fast trains and mammals are incompatible with easy other, so have nature reserves on the side of the track doesn't strike me as a grand idea. Returning it to growing food strikes me as a more necessary option given the size of our population, and the Ukraine thing highlighting that we need to be more self sufficient on crops etc....
Exactly, and why progress is glacial, as everybody wants to ride the gravy train - no pun intended - for as long as possible. Given that hardly anybody travels on the 2 existing lines from central London to central Birmingham, I can see HS2 being close within a few years of opening, so extending the build phase as long as possible means people keep jobs for longer, and hopefully can finish their careers before they all have egg on their faces....
Well, I'm sorry about that but the Chiltern Line isn't really London to Birmingham is it? I know it serves both cities but few are going to use it for the whole journey. It is more of a commuter line which is subject to rush hours and then times when it runs almost empty. If you want to get from London to Birmingham by rail, you would use the West Coast Main Line, which is the route that will be relieved by HS2.
@@martinsloman6905 Well, CML is (was) a London to Birmingham route, offering a 1hr12m service at one point, before Network Rail tried to knobble it to make HS2 look better. The passenger capacity issues apply equally to Avanti, although they always run 8 carriage trains. Pro HS2 supporter like to forget about Chiltern, as it completely wipes out the "HS2 is needed for capacity" augment, as it has mountains of spare capacity available.... ....that nobody wants, simply because there isn't the demand to travel between Birmingham and London. That last point is inescapable. Hence HS2 can only survive if it becomes yet another commuter line, in which case, why are we bothering with the whole High Speed thing and it's associated (unpalatable) construction/running cost price premium?
![[TF2] The Russian Bear Trap](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YFNSwz2_rOA/mqdefault.jpg)
Great video of the progress ❤
Thanks for your comments, glad you enjoyed the fly-over :)
Thanks for the update, it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything from this section of the route.
Great video.
Apologies for the delay, I'm a bit behind with editing these!
@@theboy-uk - no apology needed - just very happy to see the videos as and when ready!
@@TonyAbbeyFETraining These were taken in January, and its now May! They are already out of date (although aside from the trees looking greener, not a huge amount has has happened in those 3 months on this small section)
Clearly shows the British government's commitment to tinker with the landscape
We need to learn in this country that we need the countryside. Ukraine has already taught us we need to be more self-sufficient on home grown produce.... ....and we need lots of countryside for that!
One day you will return and see rail lines laid down, that will be a shock to the system. Great to see how the progress is going (or not).
Oops, only just seen your reply, apologies. Its possible the tracks might go down in my lifetime!
love this aerial footage you just cannot get the same perspective of the scale of the works from the ground
Glad you enjoyed it, it certainly gives a different perspective from above.
Any chance you could fly the old GCML alignment, from where its diverges from HS2, South East of Brackley, to either Banbury or Rugby, for comparison?
I have a few already from just south of Brackley to a few miles NE of Brackley, have a search on this channel for GCR - all should be on this playlist - ruclips.net/p/PLoer2ToyOBGBw9p8zKTk3u7i_ty36WZYC - most are from a couple of years back, but obviously minimal changes.
But now kinder weather is about, I'll try to get out over the next 2 or 3 months and get some updated footage of GCR.
When the Victorians built all the railways I bet they didn't make this much mess and the engineering was far superior and pleasant to look at.
And they did it quicker. But I suppose they are happy to milk it for as long as possible....
Remember that neither drones nor RUclips videos existed in Victorian times.
Accounts of Victorian railway building are full of lawless gangs of navvies who terrorised the towns and villages that the railways ran through.
The railway builders of those days had no concern for environmental issues. If they built tunnels, they left the excavated spoil in heaps. They blended into the landscape after a while. However Newcastle had its castle cut in two by railway construction and when they built a railway through Leeds, they removed all the gravestones from the parish church, sprinkled some at random over the embankment and left the rest in piles in the churchyard.
As for engineering, HS2 has just completed a ten mile tunnel through the Chilterns (mainly for environmental purposes) and has almost completed a two mile viaduct through the Colne Valley.
The Victorians may have done things more quickly but they did so in a time when land aquisition was quite simple, organised environmental campaigning was practically non-existent, labour was cheap and health and safety didn't exist. The death toll amongst construction workers was horrendous but they were easily replaced.
@@martinsloman6905.. HS2 Ltd aren't as "environmentally friendly" as you'd like to think. They've already incurred numerous fines for multiple breaches of environmental issues.
Thousands of trees planted along the route in Warwickshire where the vast majority perished due to lack of aftercare.
The pollution of streams, rivers & other waterways with toxic chemicals.
The bulldozing of mile upon mile of hedgerows containing nesting birds when they specifically said they'd wait until the nesting season was over .. the list goes on.
Their numerous RUclips videos are nothing but propaganda & the blatant corruption within the organisation that's recently been exposed proves they've been hoodwinking the public & the government since day one of this disastrous vanity project.
HS2 is an environmental disaster of epic proportions & Britain's biggest infrastructure mistake in half a century.
@@martinsloman6905 And many of the same problems of "gangs" terrorising local communities still exist on HS2. Brackley Town Council spent a fortune fencing off even small green areas in the town due to a massive surge in the number of caravans and transits rocking up and causing a spike in crime and a mess to tidy up when they could finally be evicted(only to move to a new area just down the road, and the legal process has to start over).
Compared to the broadly similarly routed M40 built in the late 80s, HS2 construction progress is utterly unacceptable. And those expensive service roads and dedicated bridges to keep traffic off the public roads? Its not working. Much like all the traffic lights they have so badly configured everywhere where their private access roads join the public roads.
Land acquisition for HS2 was simple. Very simple. If they wanted it, they were legally entitled to it due to the laws passed for this monstrosity of a project, to the point even now, some of the original land owners are still waiting for the payment (and will only get the "fair price" when valued 5 or 6 years ago.
@@martinsloman6905 According to the press at the time, "In the 1840s, the railway sliced through the Castle remains “as if for the express purpose of vaunting modern progress at the expense of the historic past,” said historian Cadwallader John Bates in 1895"
. I remember as a child standing on top of the Keep watching the steam trains go right under me, just a matter of feet (metres) from the castle itself.
Looks messy but if it's all for the greater good it must be worth it, right?
Is it for the greater good? To blow £100bn on construction and then blow £billions every year in taxpayer subsidies, for a line that is utterly unneeded and likely to close shortly after opening unless it converts itself to yet another London commuter line?
I think not. A waste of money, and pointless destruction and upheaval for no gain....
@@theboy-ukCheer up, darling x . Keep em coming.
@@DaveFiggley I apologise, I'm a bit behind with editing, I have more that I'm filmed, just not got around to editing and uploading - you know how life gets in the way!
@@theboy-ukI don't pretend to be a transport expert but I have a background in railway engineering and have followed HS2 for over ten years as part of a campaign group focussing on its northern connectivity. I hasten to add that, apart from a cup of coffee bought for me by an HS2 official some years ago, I have received no material benefits from this association - although I admit that some biscuits might have been involved.
It seems to me that almost every anti-HS2 protestor will make claims such as you have. However, I wonder how much study of the project they ever undertake? Because, very few people with an understanding of the issues involved would speak in this way.
I understand that people get upset when they see a major infrastructure project going through a cherished landscape but that doesn't mean that the project isn't required. All this talk about 'gravy trains' and corruption has to be seen in this light. It might be true, I don't know, but I doubt that the people making those accusations know either - still it sounds impressive.
There is a video from several years ago from a Stop HS2 'protection camp' at Lichfield. The activists are boasting about how they are disrupting HS2 when somebody makes the point that Lichfield is north of Birmingham - so why are HS2 cutting down trees there. 'Yes, I wondered about that ' says one of the activists.
These people had spent weeks living in tree houses or down tunnels without the first idea about the project they were protesting against. Maybd if they knew more they wouldn't protest?
How can you write 'progress' in the title? 😏
It's great to see this video and thanks to The Boy for posting. As a retired civil engineer, I want to have a go at making sense of what is going on here in reply to some of the comments here and on other videos.
When you see the 'green tunnel', the double concrete arch, that shows the actual width of HS2, which is clearly much less than the affected area. However, most of the route, certainly in this section is in cutting to cut down on visual and noise intrusion. The cutting slopes are probably around one in two and a half, so add to the overall width. These will be grassed over in the final scheme. Outside of that there are a lot of temporary works including access roads (to take the pressure off local roads), construction compounds with car parks and storage areas.
There will be a fair amount of permanent works outside of the rail route, including access points, transformer compounds and balancing ponds (to prevent water draining from the railway overloading watercourses).
I think that a large part of the ploughed up area will be for mitigation planting with huge numbers of trees planted, so as to both screen the railway and compensate for tree loss during construction. There will also be new wildlife habitats created.
If you want an idea of how HS2 will look in a few years time, go on Google Earth and look for HS1 across Kent. You can see where it parallels the M20 motorway, which has much greater environmental impact.
No need to rush when you can string it out for as long as possible!
@@martinsloman6905 I have the original proposal for Phase 1, and what you say is indeed what they claim will happen. However, due to a massive overspend of catastrophic proportions, they have to keep going back begging for more taxpayer money. And you can guess the bits that get dropped when any sane government finally says no more cash...
Looking at the waste land that Network Rail own, I'd say it's not habitat friendly, and I have no reason to suspect this will be any different. In addition, I'm fairly convinced that fast trains and mammals are incompatible with easy other, so have nature reserves on the side of the track doesn't strike me as a grand idea. Returning it to growing food strikes me as a more necessary option given the size of our population, and the Ukraine thing highlighting that we need to be more self sufficient on crops etc....
@@theboy-uk This is a real art of construction.
@@robodrone5662 #JobForLife
This is a program of a government feeding its mates vast amounts of public money, what a waste for 10min time saved
Exactly, and why progress is glacial, as everybody wants to ride the gravy train - no pun intended - for as long as possible. Given that hardly anybody travels on the 2 existing lines from central London to central Birmingham, I can see HS2 being close within a few years of opening, so extending the build phase as long as possible means people keep jobs for longer, and hopefully can finish their careers before they all have egg on their faces....
@@theboy-uk As Yogi Berra might have said, nobody uses the trains from London to Birmingham anymore - they're too crowded.
@@martinsloman6905 I type this and the previous long reply as I sit on a near empty 3 car Chiltern DMU. Crowded? I'm lonely!
Well, I'm sorry about that but the Chiltern Line isn't really London to Birmingham is it? I know it serves both cities but few are going to use it for the whole journey. It is more of a commuter line which is subject to rush hours and then times when it runs almost empty. If you want to get from London to Birmingham by rail, you would use the West Coast Main Line, which is the route that will be relieved by HS2.
@@martinsloman6905 Well, CML is (was) a London to Birmingham route, offering a 1hr12m service at one point, before Network Rail tried to knobble it to make HS2 look better. The passenger capacity issues apply equally to Avanti, although they always run 8 carriage trains. Pro HS2 supporter like to forget about Chiltern, as it completely wipes out the "HS2 is needed for capacity" augment, as it has mountains of spare capacity available.... ....that nobody wants, simply because there isn't the demand to travel between Birmingham and London. That last point is inescapable. Hence HS2 can only survive if it becomes yet another commuter line, in which case, why are we bothering with the whole High Speed thing and it's associated (unpalatable) construction/running cost price premium?