HS2 at Stoke Mandeville | 2nd Jan 2023

In this video we follow the route between Stoke Mandeville and Oxford Road, Aylesbury.
Music from the KZbin Audio Library:
Liquid Time - Aakash Gandhi
Eternal Garden - Dan Henig
Gently, Onwards - ELPHNT

[@michaellawn6744]

Great drone footage and thanks for the commentary which makes it all a lot easier to understand.

[@KarlVaughan]

Thanks 👍

[@paulbigland8655]

A very informative and well filmed video that shows work on a less publicised stretch of HS2. These will be a fascinating record that'll be well worth looking at when HS2's finished and all the landscaping and mitigation are in place so that you can compare the building site to the finished product.

[@KarlVaughan]

Thanks. These videos are meant to be just a document of what's happening. I've never seen a railway being built before so this is all new to me. I will try and do the next section at some point, when the weather is less windy!

[@grahamjesson5464]

pretty much all of what you see north of aylesbury was just fields. The irony is that if a person in aylesbury wanted to use hs2 they have to go to acton or birmingham to get on it. I hope its for freight because it has little use for anybody in the home counties. Will it have connections to the east west mainline?, that is also being built in this beautiful aylesbury vale landscape. I dont get it!

[@sweetfreedomGB]

As fascinating as it is depressing

[@frasermitchell9183]

As per Michael L, many thanks for this and other videos. I do wonder why the railway bridge is quite so wide, (Pr. Risborugh-Aylesbury line). A quick look at the Plan and Profile map shows the cutting is quite wide although not all that deep, so obviously needed.

[@KarlVaughan]

Thanks for your comment. It appears that I won't be able to produce any new videos like this because of the new rules that have just come into effect. Regarding your point about the railway bridge, I wonder if it's that wide to accommodate two tracks? Future-proofing maybe? Something else I noticed was in the field next to that new bridge are some test trenches as if they are preparing for something being built there. On the plans I can't see anything going there so it's mystery to me. I wonder if anyone here knows?

[@frasermitchell9183]

@@KarlVaughan Plan and Profile map just shows the two tracks, but the cutting is quite wide, although why, I don't know. There is probably a standard somewhere that says what the cutting side slope should be to minimise weather action

[@KarlVaughan]

Maybe it's to do with how deep the cutting is and yes, it could well be because of erosion prevention. We could do with engineers on here to tell us why.

[@paulbigland8655]

@@KarlVaughan Do you mean wide , or long?

[@flyingpinkpig]

Karl, your the first I've seen to break the new VLOS regs. No way you could have seen the orientation of your drone throughout this flight. Not going to report it personally but it absolutely breaks the new CAA regs,

[@sweetfreedomGB]

Zzzzz

[@KarlVaughan]

Thanks for pointing that out. I had forgotten about the new rules. I thought they were still in consultation stage. It looks like I will have to have a think about how to produce my HS2 videos from now on. It really has put a dampener on things. I had a quick look at your videos and see that you've also covered some of the areas I've been doing. I'm wondering though how you managed to fly over Wendover which in Halton airfield's no fly zone. Did you have to get permission? I've just avoided the area altogether because of that.

[@flyingpinkpig]

Firstly I'd like to apologise for the way I phrased my comment, it's very abrupt and critical and that wasn't my intention. I've enjoyed your videos and hope you do more in future but as you stated we will all have to rethink how we produce videos. I know the new drone code was published on 7th December and as far as I am aware the new code is now in place. Geeksvana on you tube is a good source for up to date info. The areas you mention where I've flown are in the authorization zone which is close to but not in the NFZ. I just went through the normal unlocking process via DJI.

[@KarlVaughan]

I appreciate the apology. I've just sat through the recent livestream on Geeksvana where Callum from the CAA was a guest and he says that these new guidelines may well be revised this year during a period of consultation. The CAA have implemented these rules to cover everyone all at once and there is uproar in the drone community about this, and rightly so. It needs to be looked at because most of us fly responsibly and away from potential danger.

[@angel-heaven]

I live close to that disgusting mess. Interesting to see the damage done to the countryside in the name of profit. Yes it's not about a railway, it's the fat cats making an obscene profit from building it. If it was designed to be useful to the public, it would start at Birmingham and go North. Improve the lives of the poor sods living next to the Euston, Hatfield and the North line first if, as claimed, they have the technology to make this line quieter. Yes, I work for the Railways.

[@edwardtreadwell3859]

Agree entirely. Thing is, it has already been said that it will never make a profit. And that by a cross party parliamentary committee!.

[@johnparr5879]

An excellent example of Centralised Government yet once again. Waste. of UK citizens hard earned financial resources.

[@xxrockraiderxx]

The money for the new line is coming from Government borrowing against future growth. So really the UK citizens aren't paying anything apart from some of the future Treasury budget will go to repaying said loans, but at the same time the UK economy would be bigger (mind you most of the assessments were before the Tories took a 4% chunk out of the GDP with Brexit and another 4% chunk with Trussonomics). As for it being a waste, it's about capacity relief. Best way to explain it is by saying that stopping services are like \, and high speed services are like |. Now a properly efficient system would have the two separated so that on one line all the local stopping services could be like \\\\\\\, and on another line all the inter-city high speed services could be ||||||. What Britain's current mainlines look like is |\ |\ |\ |\, which as you can see forces both sets of services to have greater gaps between them meaning that we get less service over all. So the idea of HS2 is the make that efficient system of having the services separated, not so that people can get to London faster, though that is a nice benefit, but so that the amount of stopping services in small towns can double or even quadruple depending on where they are. Take for example Aberystwyth in Wales, it's quite a ways away from Birmingham. Currently there is one train to Birmingham from Aberystwyth every two hours. Once even this first section of HS2 is built, that train can become every half hour due to the released capacity. And that's not even getting into the benefits to freight. The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is the most used rail line in Britain, and more freight passes along it than anywhere else. With the released capacity of HS2 being built up to Crewe alone, we'll be able to see between a 60% to 150% increase in the amount of freight on the WCML as it no longer has to fight for space with higher speed trains. So overall is it a waste? No. Could there certainly be improvements to the design, yes, though there have already been a lot. The design has been revised several times already to make it better, and whilst it may not be perfect, it's about as good as we can get it without having to start demolishing a lot of houses or spending even more billions in digging yet more tunnels and underground stations. Hope all that helps. If it was too long to bother with then don't worry, it is a large chunk of writing.

[@johnparr5879]

@@xxrockraiderxx The real costs in such useless escapades is the Land. Its. Habits Its. Wasted precious resources, Its time.. Time to realise that decisions being made from the now defunct, Centralised Government complex.. Is now past its sell by date*

[@xxrockraiderxx]

@@johnparr5879 Look, I'm all for devolution of powers, but would you rather have a new railway which damages barely 50 hectares of so called Ancient Woodland along it's route, or the Road Improvement Strategy 2 (RIS2) plan which will damage some 7 times that amount for a less than 10% capicty increase to our roads. Both plans cost the same, and if you're going to argue against one on environmental grounds then argue against the one which is actually more damaging and that's the building of more roads. Lastly, tell me how you'd fund large scale infrastructure projects like this except via central government. Because believe me if there was another way then councils would be racing to make use of it and not have to deal with HM Treasury.

[@johnparr5879]

@@xxrockraiderxx I am very sure the Centralised Government... Narrative.... About we need more housing is also in the same corrupted conversion.... And yet huge amounts of brown field site remain undeveloped...and ever more green field sites are swollowed up by the ever ongoing sterile growth of so called modern society..... In truth the the powerful lobby of construction companies actually controls the Centralised Government said Narrative *. The environment is... Paramount.... The ever striving for so called economic. growth is. A total falsehood. I can say this after being in business and experiencing over the years constant financial ups and downs...... *

[@johnparr5879]

@@xxrockraiderxx Thank you, for your detailed response *