WHEN it comes to HS2, some of us are still standing on the doubting platform, with the litter of political hyperbole blowing around our feet.

The £50 billion rail link – well, that’s the latest figure; other wild estimates are available – is back in the headlines this week for a number of reasons.

In York, and in this newspaper, there are calls for a high-speed college to be based in the city, in order to educate those whose skills will be needed in the construction of this massive project.

Nationally, the business secretary, Vince Cable, has been demanding – and after all, demanding is what he does – that the high-speed rail plan should be revamped to bring greater benefit to the north.

Mr Cable’s intervention came on the eve of a report from the project’s new chairman, Sir David Higgins, who is credited with delivering the 2012 London Olympics on budget and on time.

Sir David’s report said, in brief, that HS2 should be brought forward to avoid spiralling costs.

Although I have never built a railway, at least not since the children were small, I strongly suspect that spiralling costs are what you get.

For HS2 could prove to be ruinously expensive, while also doing great damage to the countryside.

Before thinking this through further, I shall step off the platform and head to the Dales.

Anyone who has been on the Settle to Carlisle railway will know that the Ribblehead Viaduct is one of Yorkshire’s man-made wonders.

Its brick arches, all 24 of them, cross Batty Moss some 100 feet below, and the contrast between this wild corner of the Dales and the striding brick arches of the viaduct is uplifting and beautiful.

This section of the line is said to have been the most challenging to build, and looking at it now you can only wonder at what was achieved under such difficult circumstances.

Construction began in 1869 and lasted for seven years, with some 6,000 working on the line, building it by hand.

It was, for those who like these facts, the last mainline railway in England to be almost entirely handmade.

The Ribblehead Viaduct presents those of us who worry about the destructive nature of HS2 with a bit of a conundrum: if it was acceptable for the Victorians to send a railway line across remote and beautiful countryside, why should HS2 worry us now?

Well, I think it is probably down to scale. HS2 will rip through vast acres of our much-scarred countryside, and the results are more likely to be brutal than inspirational.

Then there is the business case. Mr Cable is reported to have been impressed by the strong views of northern council leaders who believe that phases one and two of HS2 should start at the same time – or even be built from the north rather than the south.

All of which is fair enough and just the sort of thing you expect council leaders to say: that’s what they are there for, really. If there’s pie to be had, they want their slice.

But will HS2 perform all the economic miracles being made on its behalf? All those grand statements, including Mr Cable’s view that the link will redress the north-south divide, are really only so many wishful theories.

Will HS2 truly benefit the north – or will this huge scheme merely extend London’s footprint further, vacuuming in more long-distance commuters to the capital while dragging them through stretches of once-lovely countryside?

Here’s another thing. The impetus of HS2 is all north-south, and not east-west.

So in York, for example, which sits on the rail spine known as the East Coast Mainline, you can already speed with ease south to London or north to Newcastle and Edinburgh. Yet it takes a relative age to travel west to Manchester, or east to Hull, or cross country to Sheffield.

Wouldn’t northern economies benefit from more speed and mobility east to west, rather than concentrating solely on building a high-speed link to and from London?

Well, such are the concerns scribbled on the back on my railway ticket.