Should the UK have TGV routes?
Put it like this TGV is French and they would not be able to set up their own network in the UK unless they used the present rail infrastructure & they will not be able to take over the infrastructure unless it went through the EU & British Goverment. DB Rail Company has bourght into a few UK TOC’s (Train Operating Companies) who have kept their British names. But back to the point: There are plans to build HS2 & 3 (High Speed 2 & 3), but it all boils down to the goverment as it has to pass through Parliment as a white paper. If the goverment are behind building High Speed Network then it will happen sooner rather than later. Hopefully they will act sooner.
Whilst we don’t have services as fast as those of the TGV, we have services on ‘classic’ routes that now run regularly at average speeds of in excess of 100 miles an hour, where you can just ‘turn up and go’. Even in 1975, when I started to travel regularly between London and Newcastle, the journey time behind a Deltic was 5 hours – HSTs and later electrification got that down to 3 hours. Similarly, with routes to Wales and the West Country using HSTs. Speeds on cross-country services increased out of all recognition with the introduction of Voyagers and Super Voyagers, with regular interval services on routes that had perhaps only a couple of trains a day (eg North East to South West). Speeds on the west coast route to Lancashire and Scotland increased with Pendolinos, and are due to increase even more when the route upgrade is finished… So, please don’t listen to the half baked prejudices of most of the previous answers which talk without regard to the facts. Beeching had nothing a
