The UK’s High-Speed Rail Successes & Misfires

Comments · 854

• GH

  @ghamerons6287 · 2 years ago

  Gosh I wish we had a government that wasn’t allergic to long term plans

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• JO

  @joelong7273 · 2 years ago

  Removing the Northern leg of HS2 is probably one of the stupidest desicions ever made in relation to railways in Britain (up there with beeching and privatisation) and even worse, it was made by a PM no one voted for

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• CA

  @caseysmith4206 · 2 years ago

  Excellent timing! - the Eurostar just suspended travel to London today because of flooding in a Thames tunnel.

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• JO

  @Jopal2222 · 2 years ago

  A couple of things on the trains on HS2 beyond Birmingham:<br>- The government is selling off the property it compulsory purchased on the route beyond Birmingham for development making it incredibly hard to extend the line in the future<br>- HS2 trains will continue beyond Birmingham to Manchester etc on conventional rail. Because these trains are designed to go on HS2 lines they are not built to deal with the curves that currently exist and will run at slower speeds than existing trains

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• AC

  @acommenter · 2 years ago

  A huge problem we had in the UK was the branding &quot;HS2&quot;, a lot of people just saw it as paying a lot of money for a high speed service that would only benefit a few London commuters.<br>It was more a keystone line for a large railway infrastructure upgrade all over the network.

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• FL

  @FlyingPhysicist · 2 years ago

  The cancellation of HS2 at least as far as Crewe was criminally stupid. I work in the same building as HS2 Ltd and I&apos;m not sure I&apos;ve ever seen a workforce so demoralised by events outside of their control.<br>The UK&apos;s incredibly bad attitude towards major infrastructure planning is going to be its downfall on the timescale of multiple decades. Even with traditional railway upgrade projects, there is constant pushback over cost/benefit. A few years ago Network Rail presented a plan to UK Govt to electrify the majority of the UK&apos;s remaining diesel-only lines (something like 60% of track miles) by 2050 in order to meet the UK&apos;s net zero target. The Treasury blocked it.<br>I despair.

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• TO

  @tompang5296 · 2 years ago

  Going to the UK for exchange reinvigorated my childhood interest in fast trains! Living in a car-centric town in Australia killed my interest, but seeing how well-connected the UK was…and seeing the countryside fly by at 200km/h on the GWR main line was simply something else…I’m now back on the train career path.<br><br>It helped that during my stay in the UK, my bedroom was directly facing a train line, and I got to see an intercity train zip by every 10 minutes or so to small towns, which is simply unthinkable back home!

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• IS

  @isaacramsay7889 · 2 years ago (edited)

  I had to pause the video when you started talking about the current HS2 situation due to how angry it genuinely makes me. Probably not good that something like that which doesn&apos;t have a direct impact on my life makes me feel like that. But the UK government is just so, so stupid.<br><br>Good video though

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• FR

  @fringestalin6263 · 2 years ago

  Your personal dream to have a connection between HS1 and HS2 through London was actually one of the original ideas for HS2 but was scrapped because of a lacking business case. The UK is not in the Schengen zone so you&apos;d need juxtaposed passport control to have cross-channel services. But the idea itself was not the tunnel you proposed between Old Oak Common and Stratford but actually between Primrose Hill and the first London tunnels just north of St. Pancras. It&apos;s only about a 10-minute walk and 5-minute tube connection but it would&apos;ve been great for Birmingham and Manchester to Paris route ideas.

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• DS

  @DS.J · 2 years ago (edited)

  A small correction. Tohoku Shinkansen doesn&apos;t run at 225mph (~360km/h), but ~200mph (320km/h). <br>Some trains on some lines in China as well as the new line in Indonesia have services that run at 350km/h (217mph).

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• ED

  @edmund-osborne · 2 years ago

  Also hoping for the cancelled parts of HS2 to be revived after it opens. I think it&apos;ll just take the line being open and people actually seeing the benefits of HSR for it to happen. Back when the Edinburgh trams were being constructed, there was endless moaning about how disruptive it was, but all of that has gone away now that Edinburgh has a modern light rail system, now extended, that people regularly use.

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• A1

  @a1white · 2 years ago

  The class 800, for all their faults, are actually very suited to the UK as apart from their capable bimodal operation they also accelerate very quickly (even under diesel power) which is useful for some of the shorter distance between stations that we have on some of these routes. It helps keep the average speed up.

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