England is an urban sprawl.

Too expensive, and a major part of HS2 is cancelled. It is a disaster.

Got a lot of time for Stephen

Stunning location and the Dam is impressive. Nice filming and editing. The narration adds so much

Uk whith this carbon footprint word😅 really sucks

China builds one of this (or longer) every other week...

What an incredibly ugly disgrace . What IS the point of it? It is as if someone presented a map of all the SSIs and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and ancient woodland, and fragile natural environments and HS2 decided to go through as many of them and destroy as many of them as possible. This vidauct also seems deliberately 'designed' and built to be seen ( and heard 😞 ) in all its concrete hideousness and train noise from as great a distance as possible It is like a child's a black scribble drawn over Boticelli's Venus . It represents' £££££ arrogance + Zero respect for natural beauty or habitat* More than 100 billion pounds of tax payers money spent on a railway line from Old Oak Common to Birmingham just to create a deep cut and divisive scar along the length of England's habitats** which is evident from the childish scratch shown in this video It also involves demolition and destruction of homes, business, farms, amenities...*** In addition to all that destruction and misery HS2 Ltd stated that 21,300 dwellings will experience a noticeable increase in rail noise and that 200 non-residential " receptors" (community, education, healthcare, and recreational/social facilities) within 300 metres (330 yards) of the preferred route 'have the potential to experience significant noise impacts.' This blot on the landscape and hatred and disregard for nature and producer of noise pollution was supposed to drive economic growth in the UK!! What a joke! Economic growth? Where is it? Just lies All this destruction and expense for what would have been, if the trains started from Euston, which they won't, a 13 minute ( optimistic) saving in travel time from 'London' to Liverpool!! or 20 minutes to Birmingham The place the train will in reality leave London from for many years, if not forever, is not Euston but Old Oak Common which is is seven and a half miles from central London. Curzon Street station, when finished ( how long will that take?) is two and a half miles from central Birmingham. In calculating the travelling times you need to add in the time it takes to travel these miles. They could easily take a passenger 25 minutes including the walking and waiting around times. So, even being as generous to HS2 as possible it will take a passenger at least five minutes longer to get to central Birmingham from central London than on existing trains. On HS2's site there is twaddle about thousands of lorries currently using the roads suddenly transferring to rail!! That's magical thinking ! Where is the evidence for that happening? *The impact of HS2 is horrible in the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, where the line passes through the Misbourne Valley.The HS2 'track' include a re-alignment of more than 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) of the River Tame, and construction of a 0.63 km (0.39 mi) viaduct and a cutting through ancient woodland at a nature reserve at Park Hall near Birmingham. 108 ancient woodlands are damaged due to HS2, 33 sites of Special Scientific Interest are affected, and 21 designated nature reserves destroyed. Pretty disgusting ain't it? ** HS2 THEMSELVES say that 43 ancient woodlands are directly impacted by their railway!!! ***Among many other things a 17th-century farm in Uxbridge once visited by Queen Elizabeth I in 1602, and the Eagle and Tun pub, which was the set for the UB40 music video for Red Red Wine. PS this project involves the destruction of a lot of Calvert ( nothing special about Calvert but not nice to see destruction of fields anyway)

Beautiful, but singularly the biggest waste of public money on this failing project. HS2 is bankrupting this country, the old, and disabled are having to choose between eating and heating, while HS burns thru cash like Pacific Palisades.

The M6 Bromford viaduct is longer at 3.5 miles (5.5 km).

Yes it is a great piece of work, but sadly like so many other structures these days, it will look bloody awful once the graffiti morons get to work on it.

Sadly, no matter what engineering achievements are made these days they are always going to be overshadowed by those who don’t understand or care about the world around them. I bet 99.9% of those who object against HS2. Will end up using it. The Colne Valley viaduct will eventually disappear into the horizon as it ages and weathers with its environment like so many great Railway white ducks and bridges already standing. This viaduct will stand the test of time. I am sure..

Great video. Very informative and direct. Loved the drone shots :D

We need that train station in Aldridge, Walsall

Its great how quickly they've removed the temporary works across the lakes so the viaduct now just becomes part of the landscape like it was always there

On time and under budget as always.

What a wonderful delivery from such an informative speaker. Bravo.

It's magnificent.

03:16 "Enhancing local habitats". Comedy gold.

Ridiculous vain glorious project that will only reduce London to Birmingham by 40 minutes if that…billions of overpriced nonsense

Haich?

You pronounced Colne incorrectly. It’s not Colen, it’s Cole-n.

HS2 has not much to do with reducing train times ; 10/20 mins !! It is ALL about ADDING capacity ; Ask a train guy . That said "people" didn't want The turnpikes ; they were built . Every 'improvement' since ; Canals , Rail , Motorways has had opposition and have all been built with reference to speed . HS2 was never going to be cancelled once started .

This is one spectcular piece of construction, it will look great with a HS2 train doing 225 mph over it

I bet HS2 doesn't cut journey times and it won't run when the drivers are on strike anyway.

It’s going to look nice once it’s done. Good job. Most impressive. ❤

Colne not Collon

A truly stunning and beautiful piece of engineering. Easily the equal of the Glenfinnan & Ribblehead Viaducts.

#StopHS2 #HS2Spam #Spam

HS2 has been built because one man, Boris Johnson, gave in to lobby groups and gave it a thumbs up. But because he gave priority to a hugely expensive railway line, he's also responsible for the awful state of our armed forces - the navy and army in particular. What's more important - our armed forces or a railway line? Commonsense says we could have had an adequate (not ultra high speed) but cheaper London-Manchester line constructed (perhaps using part of the old Great Central Line) AND allocated funds for the army and navy!

How can hs2 help cut carbon emissions? The damage is already done in the construction of it. We already had a rail line from London to Birmingham so all this is unnecessary. The paying commuting public will be priced out of using it anyway because the government have a lot of money to recoup. They should have built the northern part first before they ran out of money but that doesn’t suit their agenda!

It's sad how negative and ignorant the media portrayal, and therefore public perception, is around HS2. This is a beautiful structure that has minimal impact upon the environment it sits in. HS2 is about capacity and growth, especially around freight workings, it's sad that people have to be so cynical and negative.

2:30 Nice to see the workers working at speed!

I’ve been working on hs2 for 3 years, I put a lot of those bases on for the piers. Been a good job but you can see where the money is wasted on every site I work on, never seen anything like it.

Now the new government has reinstated the link from Old Oak Common to Euston, this viaduct will not end up as the white elephant it could have been. If the northern legs of HS2 are also reinstated, then the line will prove extremely profitable, and the bridge will pay for itself. As to the environmental impact, the route of HS2 had to go somewhere, and the route chosen is an acceptable compromise. Thanks for uploading.

You keep mentioning HS2 extending beyond Birmingham and going further north. HS2's northern leg was abandoned by Rishi Sunak in autumn 2023. The "critics" you refer to are experts in their field of wildlife, ecology etc. so why not refer to them as such? No mention of the humongous overspend on the HS2 project. The original cost of HS2 - at 2009 prices - was supposed to be £37.5 billion. In 2020, the leaked Oakervee Review revealed the total project could cost up to £106.6bn, but concluded “on balance” it should continue (channel 4 report). Now let's look at the benefits. Commuters save 40 minutes on a train journey from end to end. So 40 minutes time saving for commuters who would probably be working on their laptops anyway= £106.6 billion? Fantastic. Hey Mr Starmer, instead of taxing small businesses etc, why not stop this carbuncle of a project and save £70 billion? Pretty civil engineering projects for commuters who are now seeing the benefits of working from home given the expansion of fibre networks (perhaps a more financially sustainable use of taxpayers money with wider benefits) is not great politics. I don't suppose that I will ever use this train line. But thousands more commuters would rejoice if their daily commute into the "northern powerhouse" was reduced by 40 minutes on rolling stock that animal protection league activist would take an interest in if cattle or sheep were transported in them. There, I'm feeling better already.

i wish the narrator would pronounce the name correctly. other than that a good video.

Why these “environmentalists” bang on about the impact to birds and bats is nuts - not exactly the Serengeti is it …

rofl....

The main beneficiaries of HS2 will be the cabal of civil engineering firms who are having a field day working on a poorly managed vanity project with a total lack of cost control. There has never been a justification for a train line to this specification and people know that but they keep building and they keep lining their pockets. A typical British failure.

Ever wonder why it's costing so incredibly much?

It's a shame it has to go through the Colne Valley but since it has to at least they built a very good looking bridge.

4 years, built faster than the fixes on the motorways.

It is amazing from an engineering point of view but you have to ask did it really need to take that route?

What a monumental waste of tax payers money. Only on a publicly funded project in Britain would you see uncontrolled spending on this scale. Not a single cost/benefit analysis in sight.

It’s beautiful, hopefully the news flow on HS2 starts to focus on the positive now.

Thank you James. A really good piece of work and a lovely video. Lots of great shots, and information......Thank you!

Can’t wait for California HSR viaducts to get completed. High speed rail should move forward.

イギリス頑張れ〜！

Please everyone, say AITCH not HAITCH. You don't pronounce the H at the start of the letter. HS2 = A Chess Too. That said, some great footage of a bloody great eyesore for an unnecessary project. The whole network could have been upgraded for the same money. Miles, yards and feet too please. Our official unit of road and rail measurement is still the mile, regardless of what some people would have you believe.

It's absolutely beautiful