It was amusing to see the Fat Controller on the news this
week, launching the microminimally speeded up East Midlandzzz Trainzzz services
to London, with four whole minutes shaved off some journey times between Derby
and London, and an entire minute saved between Leicester and the capital. He
failed to mention that, in the new timetable, some of the services from
Nottingham by this most unattractive of train operators are actually taking
longer.
When asked whether this thrilling, paradigm-shifting,
quantum-leaping acceleration that so underwhelmed interviewed potential passengers
didn’t obviate the need for HS2, he countered that more freight was travelling
by rail, that we needed more capacity and that, er, more people were
travelling. So, three absolutely compelling reasons then. Or maybe two (but
what’s mere numbers to politicians, eh ? It’s always being right that counts).
Travelling into Birmingham last weekend I couldn’t but help notice the cleared
site adjacent to the Curzon Street relic that will form the projected HS2
terminus in the Second City, and I also observed how far it was from New Street
and from most of the city centre.
Birmingham, as both a major city and a national transport
hub, needs a radical improvement to its rail services, but neither HS2 nor the
current redevelopment of New Street Station are the answer. Something with
twice (or some multiple, I’m sure the experts would know) the capacity of New
Street, incorporating HS2, is needed; perhaps, somehow, a New Street “deep”
station, to use the terminology of the Berlin Haupbahnhof. It would cost a vast
amount of money and cause huge disruption, but other countries – the Netherlands,
for instance – are tackling similar problems in an imaginative way. If only the
inspiration lying behind the splendid new Library of Birmingham could be
redirected towards relieving the desperate congestion of the existing rail
facilities.
More positively, I’ve now completed my promised painting,
and though it hasn’t photographed very well, here it is. 
It’s a composite,
located in a semi-fictional setting in the vicinity of Westbourne Park and
Kensal Town in west London, between the Paddington Canal and the Western Region
main line, and it has the provisional title, with obvious debts to Algernon
Newton and Edward Hopper, of “Terrace by the canal”. Hope you like it.
© R. Abbott 2013
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