Treasures found on HS2 route stored in secret warehouse
67 points
12 hours ago
| 7 comments
| bbc.com
| HN
zhivota
7 hours ago
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This should be the gameplay in Civilization, instead of the thing where you train and archaeologist who goes to excavate magically known locations.

Excavation of tunnels and such should just come with a chance of finding artifacts, but it only materializes with the right culture tech unlocked (before some point, buried treasures were just scrapped or sold, not put into museums).

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sarreph
1 hour ago
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I recall comments about this last week on the BBC website where people made the points that:

1. Surely the long term plan is to not keep these relics in a gargantuan warehouse but instead to put them in a museum(s) — with free entry no less — so that the tax paying public can enjoy them.

2. Further, collections of relics that relate to the site of each station on the line could be displayed in each.

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pjc50
1 hour ago
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> museum(s) — with free entry no less

The tax paying public aren't going to pay for that.

The existing collections can just about barely justify free entry. Most museums have a vast secondary collection that's not on display already. These items are going in a warehouse because there isn't enough money to do archaeology on them any time soon, let alone prep them for display.

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Angostura
41 minutes ago
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Or do what the V&A has done in Docklands - make its warehouse available for the public to visit. Pretty cool day out.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/east/storehouse/visit

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troad
8 hours ago
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Contrapoint to the naysayers: building infrastructure is good actually, and in this specific case, has had the added side benefit of unearthing these cool artifacts that would otherwise still be decaying in some peat bog.

British NIMBYs seem unusually strong, even in a world of NIMBYism. Best wishes to the British in defeating the Midsomer Historical Society of Bat-Loving Cranks, which apparently controls the deep state over there.

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techterrier
5 hours ago
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On behalf of the Midsomer Historical Society of Bat-Loving Cranks, i'd like to extend a cordial invitation to our Wickerman Festival this year. Perhaps on perusing our good works, you might be persuaded of their merits.

Kind regards,

Nigel.

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ggm
8 hours ago
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Sir, this is wimpy's - the confusion of naming cheap housing construction firm, the same as a very old burger chain in the UK which predates Wendy's or McDonald's in the UK by many decades being most apposite.
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hdgvhicv
1 hour ago
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It’s called the RSPB
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globular-toast
3 hours ago
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UK is so densely populated that something like this affects a LOT of people. Also people's "back yards" are tiny enough as it is. Small changes have a big impact and people living in such cramped spaces are living in constant fear of that.

If you happen to come across any part of HS2 in some random village you've never heard of it's quite incredible the impact it's having on the locals. Locals who live miles away from the nearest station and therefore unable to use the line, by the way.

We also have very little wildlife left and we don't really want to live in concrete jungles.

Suffice to say, it's not difficult to see why it's like this in the UK if you actually come and see.

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gambiting
1 hour ago
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>> If you happen to come across any part of HS2 in some random village you've never heard of it's quite incredible the impact it's having on the locals. Locals who live miles away from the nearest station and therefore unable to use the line, by the way.

Because people inherently misunderstand the benefit of HS2, and how could they not if it's constantly being misrepresented by our media and politicians.

UK has one of the highest proportion of freight transported by road in Europe. That is fundamentally because our rail infrastructure is overloaded and unable to take any more freight. All non-perishable stuff that in other countries just goes on rail, in the UK is moved by trucks on our roads. Which as you can imagine, is causing tens of billions of pounds worth of damage to our roads, which we - taxpayers - pay for. All of these locals that live miles away from the train station are already affected by the lack of rail infrastructure - because every time they drive somewhere they have to contend with massive potholes and insane amount of heavy cargo traffic anywhere they go. If HS2 is ever finished, it will reduce congestion and our roads and reduce the wear and tear which again, is costing us billions in upkeep every year.

But according to our media, it's all about saving london commuters 2 minutes on a train from Birmingham, so every Dick and Harry is against it, because like you said - they live miles from the nearest station, why would they care?

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pjc50
59 minutes ago
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It's not even about freight! HS2 will increase passenger capacity. The existing trains are completely full at peak time and run at the maximum frequency. Building a whole new line will allow a lot more people to travel. The demand is clearly there despite the price, because it's also pretty congested to drive anywhere inside the M25.

If we wanted to address the freight situation it would be along the route of the A428/A14 from Folkstone (where much of the freight is landed) to the Midlands. That road already has a cheery sign on it pointing out how high the accident rate is.

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xioxox
1 hour ago
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Isn't the problem that the requirements for line were "gold plated"? If they'd put in another standard rail line instead, it would have increased capacity, taken up much less space, would have been much cheaper, would have caused less disruption and would have had a clearer business case.
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pjc50
12 minutes ago
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Japan built the first Shinkansen while British Rail was still running steam services. Can't stay on the Victorian era rail constraints forever.

(it's very British to say "this is too good, can we have something cheap and nasty instead please?")

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9Mfhf34U
1 hour ago
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The high speed lets you build the Y shape to serve London to both north east and north west, as well as cross country journeys from Birmingham to the north east with the minimum amount of new track. With more standard rail lines you'd need to build a lot more. Plus there's many other benefits to high speed.
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globular-toast
1 hour ago
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Yes, most people cannot think beyond first-order effects, but this can be equally applied to HS2 proponents. There are other solutions to cut the amount of cargo traffic, but most of them involve just consuming less stuff.

Building more and more infrastructure is not sustainable. It's been shown time and time again that more infrastructure only leads to more usage of said infrastructure. The number of lorries on the road will not decrease, we'll just start carting around even more stuff than before.

> because every time they drive somewhere they have to contend with massive potholes and insane amount of heavy cargo traffic anywhere they go

I don't buy that. The potholes are in residential and country roads. No amount of railways is going to do anything about that. The cargo traffic which could go via rail is on the motorways.

I'm all for more rail and less roads. But to stop the road usage we need to tax it more heavily, especially for heavier vehicles, and not just lorries. So far I haven't seen any evidence of replacing roads with rail, it's just more, more, more.

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youngtaff
1 hour ago
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Even in the South East, the UK isn’t that densely populated — apparently golf courses take up more space than housing (excluding roads)

HS2 benefits pretty my everyone along it’s route path through increases local services as capacity is released from the current lines

Midland Connect have a good overview of what it enables them to do – https://www.midlandsconnect.uk/media/1602/hs2-released-capac...

There’s also a document somewhere that covers how HS2 increases short distance services from Euston somewhere

Local rail transport should benefit hugely from HS2

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energy123
3 hours ago
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The taller the concrete jungle, the more spare land there is for people like you outside of it.
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globular-toast
2 hours ago
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I don't live outside it.

"People like you" shows that you're no better than the "NIMBYs" you so hate. Just complete refusal to accept that anyone might be different from you or have problems that aren't yours.

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cs02rm0
2 hours ago
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HS2 is more sprawl than tall.
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ErroneousBosh
2 hours ago
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> building infrastructure is good actually

It was never about "building infrastructure", though, which is why they used Compulsory Purchase to force farmers to sell their land for pennies. Because obviously "undeveloped" land without any sort of planning consent is worth very little.

Now those bits of land, which have been put through the planning system and can now be built on, are not being used for HS2. So, they're being sold back to the farmers, right?

No, they're being sold for thousands of times the purchase price to property developers run by the people who donate the most to the government.

It's a land grab, same as the "inheritance tax on farms" thing.

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youngtaff
1 hour ago
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Do you know how Compulsory Purchase Orders work?

Many people along the HS2 route have been paid double the market price of their house

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gambiting
1 hour ago
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>>though, which is why they used Compulsory Purchase to force farmers to sell their land for pennies. Because obviously "undeveloped" land without any sort of planning consent is worth very little.

Did you ever look into any of it? Because it's 100000% nonsense. One of the reasons why HS2 is over budget so much is because farmers are being paid absolutely through the nose for smallest chunks of land taken for it. Compulsory purchase has to pay the market rate, and in most cases it pays well above that.

>>No, they're being sold for thousands of times the purchase price to property developers run by the people who donate the most to the government.

I'd love to see an example of any piece of land being sold for "thousands of times the purchase price", it would be quite incredible. And the land goes back to auction, anyone can bid on it so not sure how exactly is it sold to "people who donate the most" - care to explain? Or better yet, give an example?

>>It's a land grab, same as the "inheritance tax on farms" thing.

Yes, nothing to do with people like the Percy family owning half of Northumerland for the last 700 years and never paying any inheritance tax on it because they farm on some of it. Nuh huh.

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hardlianotion
9 hours ago
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What is the HS2 route these days? Difficult for a casual to keep track?
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quink
9 hours ago
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Get any satellite imagery of the UK, like on Google Earth. Even at a very zoomed out level, with London and Birmingham but an inch apart, you'll instantly spot the bit of HS2 they're building.
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Normal_gaussian
8 hours ago
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To this point; if you look at google maps satellite view and zoom in/out repeatedly over the UK the yellow line 'road' that doesn't disappear and reload is the construction site of HS2.

If you want confirmation, the easiest bits to "check" are Aylesbury and Coventry. London and Birmingham are too big for the features to stand out.

Here is the official HS2 map: https://www.hs2.org.uk/map/?mapView=9_52.0744_-1.8347

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barkingcat
8 hours ago
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the indiana jones warehouse.
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ggm
8 hours ago
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Arguably the science museum London already had one. They lost a bit of donated science bits over many years due to lack of maintenance and records management.
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6stringmerc
4 hours ago
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TOP men…
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6stringmerc
4 hours ago
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I want to print this article and take it with me when asking permission to use my pro-grade Garrett metal detector on unused, abandoned but owned / to be redeveloped property.

I’m old enough and studied enough to know where I live people in the Great Depression stashed loot in jars and buried it. Who knows what all could be in the occasional backyard recovery. History tells lots of things, not many listen. Utility can be limited in scope.

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crossroadsguy
9 hours ago
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> a hand axe that may be more than 40,000 years old

As opposed to a foot axe I assume

> and 19th Century gold dentures

Ah, them classy 19th Centurians!

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Normal_gaussian
8 hours ago
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In modern times a hand axe is opposed to full axes, hatchets, felling axes, wood splitting axes etc. Depending on where you are in the world you will have different axe categories, but a 'hand axe' is typically present as an axe wielded in a single hand.

However, some significant distinction should be made for what is actually meant here. For such historic finds "hand axe" often means a stone tool with two faces and shaped like a tear drop / round-bottomed triangle. With the 'bottom' face shaped to a crude blade, and the 'top' 'sides' made into a grip. Note there is no shaft, and the way it is used is speculative and likely very varied, as few other tools existed.

The proto-axe if you will.

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Podrod
8 hours ago
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hinkley
6 hours ago
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Those have always looked so unwieldy to me. What an excellent way to lose a limb.
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jetrink
8 hours ago
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FTA

> Hand axes were held in the palm rather than attached to a wooden handle.

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