I travelled on one in the US last year. It was ace.

"It's" history is the reason the trains here are so backwards, of course.

It's surprisingly hard to maintain perfection, y'know.

Really? I find its quite easy.

Your avatar has a white background.

So does yours.

Too large for the UK's loading gauge (clearance for trackside structures like bridges and tunnels). An experimental unit was tried but it was restricted to its line and was extremely cramped.

Really? I find its quite easy.

The version of Beex I look at has a white background too, ta.

Spend this cash on doing whatever needs to be done to the infrastructure to accommodate them.

My understanding is that the system of franchising and leasing we have makes it really hard for individual train operators to increase the amount of rolling stock they have. We seem to have ended up with the worse parts of both the private and public sector, without getting the benefits of either.

Do that then.

They are. It's called HS2.

But that's pointless.

Admittedly I've not been paying much attention, but the time talk I've heard has been journey time of HS2 which is roughly the same as the flight time, Manchester-London anyway.

Badgers can ride horses?!

You want double deck trains? The Channel Tunnel and HS1 can accommodate them, HS2 certainly would too.

You want double deck trains? The Channel Tunnel and HS1 can accommodate them, HS2 certainly would too.

Whereas right now, if you include checking in at the airport, the flight and getting into London from Gatwick/Stansted/Heathrow, the train from Manchester to Euston is already faster.

Did you arrive in the UK yesterday, or something?

I fully expect the additional shallow tunnel things to be so badly specced and built that HS2 would, actually, not accommodate them at all.

Why would they bodge that while HS1 was built "properly" and to European High Speed and LGV specifications? Ah, because they fucking wouldn't. This could eventually lead to the north of the UK have direct rail services to Europe like was meant to happen with the Eurostar.

But what about the South West of the UK?

Because we've got a grand old tradition in government of fucking things up royally.

It didn't seem much different last time I did it, though that was before the WTC fell down went boom. I chose flying because it was about a fifth the price and still included a sausage sandwich.

If you cut it as fine as realistically possible, you would arrive at Manchester Airport 45 minutes before the flight is due to leave. Then security and get to the gate. Flight time is about 40 mins to Heathrow. I assume 40 mins to get to Central London on Heathrow Express or Tube or whatever. So 45+40+40 = 125 mins.

Manchester Piccadilly -> Euston is 2 hours.

But yeah, price is the major factor. Our return flights were £62 each, return, including taxes on BMI with a checked bag. To do the same can be as little as £25, or somewhere north of £150.

If you're heading to Central London from a UK city, City Airport would make a lot more sense than any of the others.

Err - except that oddly there aren't any flights to Manchester from City. Strange.

Err - except that oddly there aren't any flights to Manchester from City. Strange.

40 minutes from landing at Heathrow to arriving in London is hopelessly optimistic. Even flying internally and bypassing passport control, 40 minutes from landing to getting to a train platform is more like it.

What was HS1?

PS.... I'm not reading 3 pages.

St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel, dedicated high speed line. Prior to that they rattled out of Waterloo on the decrepit third rail commuter network south of London. This had a speed limit of 100mph and had to be shared with local services, and was a bit of a joke.

Once Scotland landmine Hadrian's Wall after independence, they're going to use their massive oil wealth to dig a tunnel to europe anyway.

Edit: That was a reply to a post a long way back. I forgot to click 'send'