Is it just me who doesn't believe it will ever happen?
When the SNCF started running the TGVs in the late 1970s, and building new lines to run them on, the UK thought it could do better. We'd have the APT instead, which could run (almost) as fast on existing lines. Leaving to one side the debacle that the passenger-carrying trials turned out to be in the early 80s, I often wondered how the signalling systems could cope with trains running with such vast speed differentials - an APT leaving Carlisle at high speed would be up the back of a slow freight leaving Carnforth at the same time before it got much past Lancaster.
Then we had CTRL. Whilst the SNCF were running Eurostar at 300 kph over their metals, the UK was running those same trains at 60mph over the Southern third rail system, and were actually building CTRL at a speed that suggested two men a ladder and a bucket had been the complete workforce on the job.
I hear on the news tonight that it would be necessary to build new stations for this proposed new line, adjacent to existing ones. That's going to cost a bob or two redeveloping a swathe of land next to Euston
Does anybody else think that the media have mistaken today for April 1st?