All true, of course, but they also only cut through what was needed to lay 1 or 2 tracks, not the vast, wide ribbon HS2 seem to need to push soil around....

​@@theboy-uk, are you seriously going to compare a Victorian rail infrastructure to the modern ones of today which travel almost four times the speed? No modern infrastructure projects are "environmentally friendly".

@@inbb510 It shows how progress has gone backwards over 200 years ;)

@@theboy-uk at the end of the day, there is a trade-off to be made. Given HS2 accounts for less than 0.1% of the logging that takes place on Earth, I think that's a price worth paying in exchange for getting our railway infrastructure to the 21st century standards.

@@inbb510 Which I would more than agree with if HS2 actually provided something worthwhile, beyond getting between London and Birmingham about 15 minutes faster by 2042. Because nobody will be able to actually use the line, and certainly not even 5% of the required 576,000 for "only" a 50-60% taxpayer subsidy per fare, it will have to get shut down, Beeching style, within a decade if any form of common sense ever makes it back into the UK rail industry. Thus its a waste of (our) money, a waste of time and effort, and pointless destruction of the countryside, just to feather the nests of the outdated railway family....

Fingers crossed 👍, as I'm sure its causing considerable disruption to the local communities there, and I'm sure they can't wait for it to be completed!

I was a bit disheartened on the lack of progress on that since January to be honest. 7 months, and the tunnel has only slightly extended. This is the Jan 23 vid of the same area - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/p7x5q5SYtbrFaX0.html Still, it is progress, just so desperately slow, and I'm sure causing lots of extended disruption to the local communities there.

I am not in the construction industry, but do recall the M40 being built along a broadly similar route, if a little further west. Now a 6 lane motorway with hard shoulders will be wider than a 2 track railway, yet the M40 needed very little land for construction beyond the width we see now. I'm struggling to see why HS2 needs so much, and the destruction that has caused. Also, I struggle to understand why they need to cause so much long term disruption to local communities in road closures, "temporary" traffic lights and so on - no other project would even get away with in. I have an interest in big engineering, but after reading the initial proposal for Phase 1, quickly decided it was the wrong project to sink (then) £24b into (HS2 themselves never thought they could make a viable case for anything more than Phase 1 at them time - turns out they had at least some vision of the future!)

I work in Highways mostly, I'm not on HS2 so I cannot answer your queries. HS2 haven't explained the project well! It's about capacity, freight is very inefficient & expensive (highways maintenance) by road. It's going onto rail. A lot comes through the Channel Tunnel on Euro gauge track (HS1 & 2 is Euro gauge), UK gauge track is not as wide. Freight is transferred to UK trains at Folkstone currently. Wembley European Rail Freight Terminal near Old Oak Common will receive Euro freight, directly in the future. The West Coast Mainline currently takes freight at night to Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT), Northampton has just had it's Rail Freight Terminal approved. Network Rail plan to replace the WCML to DIRFT with Euro gauge track. I think you're intelligent enough, aided by UK infrastructure knowledge to see the UK long-term freight plan & why HS2 was required. @@theboy-uk

@@edwardnichols5111 The original proposal was to magically free up track space for freight on the existing WCML, but the amount of track slots that could be freed up was minimal, as the vast majority of passenger trains between Euston and New St aren't non stop. So to free up track slots, you have to reduce the number of services currently being run and stopping at stations en-route, which would be too unpopular, and if you believe the passenger capacity stories also backing HS2, impossible anyway. As freight is never going on HS2, it doesn't increase freight capacity. Additionally, apart from morning peak London bound, anyone who tries to tell you that there are capacity issues on WCML has agendas not involving the truth. It was looking at the proposal, and asking a lot of questions at the roadshows, that made me change my mind about HS2, and why I don't think Sunak has gone anywhere near far enough and completely pulled the plug on this one, in favour of providing transport services that are actually needed.

​@@theboy-ukcomparing a road to a railway is very unfair. I have a background in engineering and am actually currently doing a uni placement at Chipping Warden, whilst the progress on that site is slower than I would have expected the line as a whole has many challenges to overcome and is moving forward at a decent albeit it slightly slow rate. The main problem is trains can't handle hills, based on your YT content I'm assuming you're somewhat local so you'll know that the area isn't particularly flat. Trains generally stick to only a %1 gradient whereas motorways are designed with a limit of 3%. That means for every hill or valley you'll need to make the train track x3 flatter than you can get away with for a motorway. If you want a high speed train you're going to want it to be even flatter than that, every slight slope, hill or valley needs to be flattened out, filled in or bridged over to keep the train running fast and that involves a lot of earth moving and a lot of cost TLDR; you can make a motorway run up a hill, if you're building a train line you need to either remove the hill or go through it and there are a lot of hills

@@dill5ter Actually, done correctly, you can have reasonable gradients on the old victorian technology - look at how they do it in France. But that's a completely different debate. The progress on this section is worse than slow, its been shambolic since it started, with complete utter disregard for local communities - today, for example, the A422 has remained closed due to that large fire, and HS2 picked today to ensure that traffic couldn't use the diverted route along the B4525 for no other reason than bloody mindedness. That's not how to get people on board with the rather pointless vanity project. It's been mismanaged since I've been following it around 2008/2009 ish, and that situation has managed to get worse. The government should have canned the lot, as it will be closed within a decade of it opening anyway, so lets save the cash.

I'm disappointed that I never captured the landscape before the HS2 works came along, for comparative reasons, like I did around Brackley.

No matter; one day all you great compilers from the air could put your material together and make a record of the progress the whole length of it - there probably won't be many gaps. I did my complete record from the ground, stills and video, in 2018, took the whole year, and with a full time job too! Glad I did it. Not much had been touched. The views would be unrecognisable now@@theboy-uk

@@willhemmings I think its essential we keep sure records for future generations

Glad you enjoyed the view above the construction :)

Its not easy to see from the road, you need a bit of elevation, and the new temporary bridge blocks the view as you come down the hill from Daventry's direction.

Don't hold your breath!

I have some footage from late August, just haven't got around to stitching it altogether yet, but expect to see something in the next week or 2 (probably Greatworth to Chipping Warden first, then Brackley to Greathworth following on a week or 2 later)

It's an awkward decision for the government, seeing how much has been spent on this waste of money project. Its probably too late now to cancel Phase 1, but it is the common sense thing to do really.

You wouldn't be over worked!

@@theboy-uk I hope so 🤪

HS2 is a highly controversial high speed rail link in the UK, initially planned to go from London in England to Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, but will now only go from London to Birmingham in the Midlands (and area of England in about the middle).

History tells us they didn't. I'm told it's called "progress", LOL.

HS1 was built much more economically of land take, as was the ECML line bypassing Selby to allow the coal field to be developed. HS2 took far more land for Phase 1 than necessary. On the plus side once the line is finished the land will revert to its previous use where possible.

@@frasermitchell9183Its actually not being returned to its original use, but being retained by HS2 and designated as wildlife habitats. The original owners, be that farmers, property developers or other land owners will never see it back. Lets hope they do make it into wildlife habitats, rather than the usual dumping ground of overgrown concrete and obsolete machinery that litter railway owned land normally.

Thanks :). And I agree about the waste of precious taxpayer's money on something that really isn't needed...

Need to make drastic cuts somewhere to pay for the building and running of this vanity project :(