IanVisits

For an more in-depth look at some of the capacity benefits of HS2, this article on the London end of HS2 by ianvisits.co.uk is definitely worth a read:

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/08/20/taking-a-look-at-hs2s-huge-old-oak-common-station/

On the redevelopment of Euston station:

> Building not just more platforms for HS2, but critically, the extra tunnels for those trains to use shifts intercity services to the HS2 line, releasing lots of capacity in the old tunnels for suburban services. If that doesn’t sound too important, then where’s the UK’s most congested train... it’s the 17:46 out of Euston which carries more than twice the number of passengers that it’s designed for. When completed, HS2 is expected to more than double the number of seats out of Euston station during peak hours.

It seems building HS2 is only part of the cost. A lot of it is also paying down "infrastructure debt" that hasn't been touched for decades.

Being done. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/cooling-the-tube-engineering-heat-out-of-the-underground-20873/ (from 2017, 59 HN comments from 2022 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31694445) says

> Elsewhere, they’ve been using cool groundwater to cool some of the stations. An experiment at Victoria station was the first, as water from the River Tyburn was used to cool the air in the station. This was only an experiment, but at Green Park, a permanent version was installed in 2012.

> There, five boreholes were drilled deep down into the ground, and here cool water is sucked up to the surface, used to cool a separate water supply which is pumped down to cool the platforms, and the warmed groundwater is also pumped back into the ground.

Does Manhattan suffer from heat soak in the underground?

I know in London, the Underground has generated so much heat over so many years, it no longer cools in Summer but instead retains heat overnight meaning it's sweltering even deep underground in many stations for much of the year.
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/cooling-the-tube-engineering-heat-out-of-the-underground-20873/

It's always somewhat surprising to me that given a bit of time, a seemingly inexhaustible resource like heat capacity of the ground or ground water can actually be depleted once we put our minds to using it.

Absolutely wonderful. I have been looking for something like this for a long time.

You may want to consider contacting some of the London / tube bloggers for advice or assistance if you haven't already:

http://london-underground.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/3d-tube-maps-diagrams.html

http://london-underground.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/3d-london-underground-cutaway-diagrams.html

http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/

I suspect they'd be delighted to assist.

Also good to know we have a TFL rep on HN (@mcdowall). Promise I'll go easy ;-)

The London Underground definitely does that. Also in part because it reduces the heat output. The underground has been heatsoaking for decades and it’s hitting problematic temperature levels.

This article is a great read:
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2017/06/10/cooling-the-tube-engineering-heat-out-of-the-underground/

Apparently about half of the heat generated in the tunnels is/was from braking. And the tunnel temperatures have risen from 14-30C since around 1908.

Is a good read about the engineering challenges.

Canary Wharf in London has a installation of six Swiss railway clocks which, invisible to most people passing by, has a clever way of synchronising.

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/see-londons-six-swiss-railway-clocks-11962/

> The second hand takes 58.5 seconds to rotate around by 59 seconds, then the second hand pauses. It waits until a nationwide pulse is sent to every Swiss railway clock that a minute has passed, then the clock jumps to the minute and carries on for another 58.5 seconds.