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Announced now that HS2 will be going ahead sometime in the distant future. If this does happen, what benefits will there be for Nottingham folk, apart perhaps from an increase in property values as Londoners will be able to move up and commute?

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It's a hell of a lot of money being spent for something which I guess will be pretty expensive to travel on. A lot of the passengers will be corporate fatcats who aren't paying the fares out of their own money. I wonder how many "normal" people will ever travel on it - assuming it ever actually gets built, which is by no means certain.... especially as any early curtailment to the life of this government will probably result in the whole thing being reconsidered.

I assume there will be a pretty big Park and Ride at Toton, complete with associated hotels and other buildings. It coud expand in the way East Mids Airport has grown over the years.

But I guess quite a few people may not be around to see it happen. ETA sometime around 2035.

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I hope the British rail companies, don't do the same in England as the Fench railways did when they put in a high speed TGV line to Paris around here.

The TGV tickets cost a lot more than the normal trains, and after a time all the non TGV through trains to Paris, became stopping trains, so the time to Paris went from 3 hours 45 to 5 hours 20, almost forcing people to use the TGV, when they wanted to go any great distance, then they started to cut the N°'s of non TGV trains from, 1 every 2 hours to 1 every 6 hours.....

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Yes, there is also the story (supposed to be true) that a UK transport minister enquired of his French counterpart how on earth they managed to build their TGV lines, without getting bogged down in everlasting planning applications, judicial reviews and what not. His superb reply, completely overlooking the double entendre, is said to have been, "When we wish to drain ze swamp, we do not consult ze frogs."

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It will be interesting to see how they would get the trams down to a station at Toton, looking at the contour lines I reckon that there could be a difference in height of about 35m, it may not sound much, but it could be quite a steep gradient not conducive to rail vehicles, though I think that trams can cope with it better than standard trains.

Perhaps they'll have to position bankers at the bottom of the hill as at Lickey, and give 'em a good old shove with a 9F, after all 92079 replaced 'Big Bertha' at Bromsgrove and my photo's of the final locos in steam at Toton shed in the mid 60's included 9F's so one wouldn't be out of place.

Wishful thinking !!

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It's interesting that they even considered the possibility of such a thing. We'll have to live with the mistakes of the 1960s for a long time to come.

Bearing in mind how derelict and empty the Broad Marsh Centre is these days, I wonder if someone will have the idea of bringing the area back to life by rebuilding Drury Hill?

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The Drury Hill is an interesting one. On the face of it, it sound implausible but then again why not?

I'm never sure about 're-building history' and of course when it's gone it's gone, we can't go back. Nevertheless new history has to start somewhere. What would an (unfortunate) forty-odd year gap in Drury Hill's history mean in two hundred or five hundred years time? It wouldn't represent it's origins but it might still be worthy in its own right.

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The trouble is that Toton is neither fish, flesh nor fowl. It just means that even more folk can hurtle along the A52 and M1 in their cars to join the train, in addition to all those who are doing their entire journeys by car. It isn't even in the right place to provide conventional rail connections to either Derby or Nottingham. History repeats itself - Trent all over again, a station that was so remote from anywhere that it had to take the name of the nearest river.

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Toton Station?

Its next to ASDA in Long Eaton.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/69003/hs2-arp-lr0-dr-rt-55121_3-0.pdf

I wonder if there will be access Long Eaton side?

Ah well, that's all right then. At least the station name is settled - just like old Trent. But this time, instead of naming it after the river it will be called "Asda" (though I suppose they could call it Erewash station - to be endlessly mis-pronounced Ear-wash).

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Ah well, that's all right then. At least the station name is settled - just like old Trent. But this time, instead of naming it after the river it will be called "Asda" (though I suppose they could call it Erewash station - to be endlessly mis-pronounced Ear-wash).

Or Hog- Wash :)

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One or two people have commented that the new line wouldn't be used by ordinary passengers, but HS1 is. That's the line from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel which has services on it (the 'Javelin' trains) for people travelling to places like Ebbsfleet, Ashford, Dover etc. When we were on holiday in Folkestone a couple of years ago we used it for a day trip to London. I can't remember or not whether it was more expensive than by the slower service on the old route, but if so it wasn't enough to put us off using it.

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