They spent millions putting international services in to St Pancras and now will spend millions putting most long-distance London services in to Euston.

If they put them both in to the same station then you could have through services, e.g. Glasgow to Paris via Manchester, Birmingham and London.

Have there been any suggested routes for the line to take between Birmingham and Manchester yet?

The northern end of HS2 is proposed to join the WCML south of Colwich, so the newly-4 tracked section in the Trent Valley should make a good buffer between the old and the new railways. But a flyover at Colwich might be needed to prevent bottlenecks with Stoke line trains crossing Crewe line trains.

At the southern end, HS2 runs into a ‘new’ Euston. But what seems to be missing is a link to HS1 so trains to and from the north can use the Channel Tunnel.

As for the nimbyism of the Chiltern dwellers….. heck, the M40 must be a far worse ‘bad neighbour’ than a high speed rail line!

My view is that we need HS2 for capacity reasons; the shortened journey times are a bonus. And experience with HS1 and the WCML upgrade has shown it is far better use of money to build a new railway than to cobble up an old one.