Lymm to Lime Street

Having worked out a route for HS2 to connect to Liverpool with minimum fuss and cost I thought I had better price it. I found some estimates done in 2007 by Network rail for upgrading various lines to GB & GC gauge to take double decker trains or extra long trains. It is Version: 1.21Preliminary Evaluation of Double Deck Extra Long Train Operations Table 1.3 provided most of the information.

The plan I outlined requires the upgrade of the Ditton to Lime Street section which already has OHLE, so I used the figures for the London-Ipswich Route which is similar.

For Bank Quay to Ditton, the line exists but is not electrified, so I took the low from London -> Brighton and the high from London to Southampton.

To estimate the reinstatement of the line from East of Lymm to Bank Quay was a little trickier, I took the numbers from HS2 own estimates for Phase 2 and took out the irrelevant bits. Such as there being no Tunnels this gives a cost of £64 million per mile of which on £17 is construction costs.

Route	Miles	Min m£	Max m£	Low Per Mile	High Per Mile
London →Brighton	51	810	1200	15.8823529412	23.5294117647
London →Ipswich	68	890	1340	13.0882352941	19.7058823529
London →Southampton	79	610	1440	7.7215189873	18.2278481013
London →Oxford	63	800	1720	12.6984126984	27.3015873016
HS new build				64.375	126.333504
Ditton-> Lime Street	10	130.8823529412	197.0588235294
Warrington BQ->Ditton	8	61.7721518987	188.2352941176
		192.6545048399	385.2941176471
2007->2016 Pounds	1.31	252.3774013403	504.7352941176
East of Lymm	8	515	1010.668032
Total	26	767.3774013403	1515.4033261177

from my spreadsheet East of Lymm to Lime Street.

If we take the cost of East of Lymm down to just construction, then the total cost is £469m, if you wanted you could knock another £130 million off and just have the classic compatible running into Lime Street. I'm assuming that there would be little to saved by using only W10 on reinstatements and upgrades. So that should be done to GC gauge.

These numbers do not include building a new station at Lime Street or a complex remodeling of Ditton junction, to bring the lines in from Warrington to the centre 2 without crossing at grade, which would be needed for optimal performance, as would a complex junction between HS2 and this spur or the extra work needed on the viaduct over the Manchester Ship canal. Nor does it involve and remodelling of the route around Warrington Bank Quay. This is simply to get the trains through with no traffic.

So a cost of between £0.5 billion and £1.5 billion doesn't sound unreasonable, just to be on the safe side say 1 billion. It is still less than Liverpool City council offered to pay.