So, as if there wasn’t enough competition and the cost of developing wasn’t high enough … the Brits want their own HSR system … just crazy. 
Just look at the competing parties … Spain, Germany, France, China, Japan … why not just adapt the TGV system or ICE from Germany … the TGV already stops in London … 
Is it April’s fool day?
If I’m right, it’s between Birmingham and London? It just seems rather pointless and more about driving economy, than a real need to link the two cities but hey that’s just my 
Sigh. I think the poor old Brits are just trying to prove they’ve still got some engineering mojo. Unfortunately, they haven’t. Or if they have, it’s looking rather limp and flaccid.
The daft thing is, England isn’t really big enough to need HSR. We had a perfectly servicable 125mph system (200kph) back in the 1980’s, which I believe is still running on a few limited routes. If they got the normal trains working properly, and got the costs down to less than a week’s salary for a two-hour ride, everything would be fine.
Seemingly the current lines are close to maxing out.
FAIK, the Brits helped electrify Taiwan TRA west coast lines. The first electric locomotives used in Taiwan were GE (UK) made. The first tze-chiang trains were UK made as well (you know the headless ones, I think they are still running?).
So Brits had been a force in the past in trains.
But I understand that the Japanese are promoting a version of the Shinkansen similar to the one they developed for Taiwan for the UK. The Taiwan Shinkansen operates in English and is designed to run on euro-spec tracks, and could easily work in Europe. basically right off the boat, on Euro signalling systems.
Which, if true, makes it rather strange why they spent millions of pounds only 5 years ago ungrading the existing West Coast Main Line from 2 to 4 tracks.
I’m very familiar with the disruption that caused, as my parents house is on that Main Line, and I regularly travelled up there from London Town.
For a start, they could cut the number of First Class carriages on each train, far too many. That would increase capacity.
GE are American, aren’t they? I seem to remember their claim to fame is that they manufactured the neutron initiators for America’s nuclear arsenal.
Most of the trains currently on Taiwan’s tracks seem to be American-spec … big and chunky.
But yeah … once upon a time, the British train system was excellent. Probably one of the best in the world. Then the economists and paper-shufflers (starting with Dr Beeching) decided they knew how to run trains better than engineers and professional trainheads, and the rest is history.
I guess that would make sense, although I’ve never understood why we didn’t adopt the French TGV. National pride, perhaps 
. But it’s all a bit pointless. Most of the time involved in a train journey is physically getting to the station and getting on the train (and waiting while they clean the leaves off the line). For short runs (London to Birmingham counts as ‘short’) doubling the train speed only has a marginal effect on total journey time. And if they can’t even operate normal trains successfully, HSR is going to be a disaster.
The UK railway system is one of the most complex and comprehensive in the world, and it became more complex, ironically, after Dr Beeching made his cuts, because loop lines and through-routes became branch lines.
I think the UK railway system is in fact very good and well run. I would defy the French to run a system as geographically complex as Britain’s - everything has to be timed to perfection, as it is not just a mainline loop. Sadly, one train breaking down in Bristol has a knock-on effect for almost every train running in the UK - chaos ensues.
The UK has very fast trains already, and an HSR is not needed. An upgrade of existing lines without all the subcontracting nonsense which sends costs through the stratosphere would suffice.
They still have, but it is not applauded or encouraged. The best companies get bought out and the best minds get to reap the rewards of designing things like avionics systems for American fighter jets, for higher pay than they would in the UK.
More encouragement, better pay and a better environment for engineering firms to thrive in the UK could sort this stupid problem out over night.
As soon as tech companies get a certain size in the UK they become targets for acquisition and the owners who are often finance and mgmt buyouts are eager to sell out to multinationals and cash in. It sucks to be part of that as then you become a small part of a large operation and there is no real core spirit to the company.
The new lines were proposed to run through some Lord’s land. ThisLord makes generous contributions to the conservative party each year. Surprisingly the line is now not going to run through his land.
The new line is going to go from London to Birmingham and will then fork off left and right to Manchester and Leeds so it will be making a large Y shape. Topographically it will look like we are giving Scotland a giant V sign. 
I think that’s one of reasons Beeching was/is so vilified: although his economic rationale was reasonable enough, he didn’t appreciate the “big picture”; that the train network - as it was then - was a system functioning as a whole, not just an assemblage of bits that could be cut and pruned, at least not with any predictable result. But IMO the worst thing that ever happened was the separation of track maintenance and fleet operators. The theory, I suppose, is that that’s how the roads work: but that system doesn’t work properly, either.
Sure - but the system should then be designed with appropriate redundancies so that it doesn’t. They can’t just give a (Gallic?) shrug and say, “well, that’s just the way it is”. When BR was a single, vertically-integrated entity, it probably could have evolved a more resilient structure. As things are now, with different companies operating in different areas and track management contracted-out, it would be a management nightmare.
I guess it does work after a fashion, but the amount of sheer brute force required to keep it going suggests all is not well, and the cost of hiding the Heath Robinson shambles underneath the commercial veneer gets passed on to the customer, which means (sadly) trains are used a lot less often than they could be.
Exactly. The costs will be out of all proportion to the benefits, which will be marginal or nonexistent (depending on whether it actually works or not).
Very true; I’ve watched it happen, and it’s been a sad spectacle. And as HH said, the financiers make things worse with their short-term attitude to profits; it’s pretty much enshrined in UK corporate law, in spirit if not in actual words, that hostile takeovers and financial jiggery-pokery are Good Things. There are actually a lot of gov’t grants on offer for engineering, but they’re very specifically targeted at flavour-of-the-month - particular technologies that the government think will “solve” climate change, for example - and at favoured corporations (the latter is achieved by specifying the exact type of corporate entity that can apply for the grant, invariably European conglomerates). The grants are also only offered for “research”, which basically just means demonstrating a prototype. There is little support for promotion of or manufacture of more pedestrian (but more practical) technologies: a lot of money gets poured into whizz-bang stuff with no obvious commercial value, and none at all into actually making stuff that gets the job done. The issue of HSR vs. existing 125 trains is a prime example.
Tommy, have you ever ridden the tube?
Now answer this: Have you ever ridden the tube at rush hour and NOT heard of a signal failure somewhere?? 
I don’t think they replaced British signals from the time they first installed them in the 1800s! The way they (don’t) work you’d think they never bothered to maintain them, either…
This. We can’t managed the trains we have, and hardly anybody can afford a blinking train ticket now anyway. What’s the point in an HSR? For the tourists to ride on?
The trains aren’t so expensive if you book in advance. I get a return from London to Birmingham for 10 quid, which is around 600nt. There are signal failures from time to time but generally everything runs pretty smoothly. And if there are signal failures and your train gets delayed they let you ride in the first class carriages. Yes it is expensive in the mornings in some places, but you offset your train ticket costs by having a nicer/larger house away from where you are working. Or your company pays your train ticket either directly or indirectly through higher wages. And taking the train is still cleaner and easier (and possible cheaper) than driving into the cities.
I take the train from Paddington to Cardiff sometimes，3 hours, it’s a bit crap to be honest and expensive too. Then again I pay 16 GBP just to take the express to Paddington. The UK could do with the HSR, the problem is that it will just be for business people due to cost.
You can get a one way for £11.50 using the Southern Rail ticketing system… http://tickets.southernrailway.com/sn/en/JourneyPlanning/MixingDeck
That may well be truer than we know. It could have a lot to do with “image” (otherwise known as Face) and less to do with getting people from A to B on time.
For those of you getting cheap tickets: sure you can book a year in advance, travel on a popular route, and you’ll get a reasonably-priced ticket. Try turning up at the ticket desk and asking for a more unusual same-day destination, and it gets ugly. Trains should be (almost) as convenient as cars and less expensive to run. There’s absolutely no technical or economic reason why they cannot be, especially if you don’t piss about with demanding and finicky technology like HSR. Granted, some of it is rocket science, but it’s fairly mature rocket science. Anything less than “excellent” is down to incompetence, corporate greed, and general mismanagement.
I was in London once for two weeks and once I attempted the tube. I couldnt even get down to the platform when claustrophobia set in. I simply couldnt handle the crush of humanity down there. Its what I would imagine the first circle of hell would look like.
So long answer to a short Q tsuki is “no”.
To finley: The electric GE locomotives that pull a bunch of trains in Taiwan are made in the UK even though GE is an American company. I remember a news story about a few of these falling off a ship on its way to Taiwan in a phoon. The previous diesel-electric GE locomotives were made in the good ol’ USA.
These electric locos still pull the FuShing, the ChuKwang and freight trains I believe.
NOt sure if the headless (no loco) brit made TzeChiang trains are still running (if anyone knows chirp in please) . But the ones that largely replaced those had a South African made locomotive coupled to AFAIK South Korean made carriages.
And now comes the Japanese made tilting trains for the new Taroko trains. Which i want to ride on next time on the wan.
The platform’s worse than the actual train. British people have a need to be at least 20cm away from everyone at all times, so our ‘packed to the brim’ could still fit another 50 odd people in Taiwan.
If only 1 person travels the train would be cheaper (not more convenient), but starting from 2 or 3 it’s cheaper to take the car … traveling with 4, the car is definitely the winner.
Reviving this thread to link a fascinating article from Bloomberg, accessed via today’s Taipei Times, discussing a tale of two systems: Japan’s famed shinkansen system (planned meticulously nearly 50 years ago) and the erstwhile British HSR system, recently hacked back by the Sunak government. Try to guess who comes out looking better in this comparison. It’s a great read on how to do things—and also how not to do things.
Guy