It is a thousand pities Michael Wilkinson that there are not more like you with your mindset in the positions of leadership in this Country and perhaps more to the point present at the time when the Beeching’s and the Marple’s were doing their damnedest to shut down the British Rail infrastructure to satisfy their vested interests. There was a deliberate and planned period of Asset stripping and Neglect as a precurser to this policy of Greed and Profit and the results are now evident! .. High cost and Gridlock. European Countries have left Britain far behind in the efficient use of Rail Infrastructure but the time has got to come when Britain will have to reclaim that which it once had.

The Road Building and Road Haulage Industries have for too long pointed Britain in a direction that is fueled more by greed and vested interest than an efficient and economical need for Payload Haulage and Passenger Transport.

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Michael makes some good points about issues of scale but he misses the most fundamental point: that continued expansion of the economy and, more crucially, population are unsustainable and ruinous.

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Nothing matters like BA these morons will go on strike after listening to the millitant clap trap from the unions . The train service is on par of what you get in india apart from we are not hanging off the sides, dont throw good money after bad .

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Brunel had it right all along.
Simple mathemetics, scale it up to double the size, carry eight times the cargo.
Ever tried travelling in a Virgin Voyager?

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Nice idea on paper – shame about physics, economics and the NIMBY green lobby.

You could not rebuild the existing railways without causing major disruption. Disruption = cost = unhappy people.

Most of the world uses 4 ft 81/2 as track gauge. Changing would make us unique = cost = unhappy taxpayers.

New rail lines need land. Land near urban areas is expensive and you have to compensate for loss of amenity, for noise, for disruption etc. Every man, woman and child will object to a proposed line near their house = planning delays, green protest camps and court action. Compensation and delays= cost = unhappy taxpayers.

Wider trains need stronger bigger parts to hold up all that extra weight. Extra weight = bigger track foundations, more building work, more horsepower to move the train. More = cost = not a chance it will happen.

The answer, scrap capitalism and socialism so we all revert to cave men and live like animals. This reduces our CO2 emissions and makes the rich the same as the poor. Or we do what everyone else is doing and build a few high speed lines and improve the existing trains and wishfull thinking says build some more tram networks in the bigger towns and cities.

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