Sadly it's all stunningly unimpressive. The HST should have been retired years ago, and where are the proper highspeed lines that the government has been contemplating for decades for these things to run on? For all their 'record levels of investment' the network is still barely held together, ludicrously expensive to travel on and generally mediocre compared to that of many other countries, and most laughably of all slower than in 1977. Obviously a full scale TGV network can't work in a similar manner to France due to the distribution of people, nature of the terrain and distances, but there is absolutely no excuse for there not already being a TGV speed connection between London, Birmingham and Manchester at the very least.
The engineers who invented and built the railways of the UK had vision and drive and the ambition to get people and goods from A to B. I think they'd be ashamed of the mess we have today after decades of mis-management.
Annoying to see the government trumpet about this so-called fantastic achievement of theirs - when you're scraping the barrel the only way to go is up - so no matter what they do they'd be hard pressed to make it worse...
...and where is the electrification - why are we even using dirty diesels and 'hybrids'?! With electric trains you get less noise, faster acceleration and decceleration, can use regenerative braking to feed power back into the grid and so overall more efficiency. Presumably they just can't stomach the initial expense of all that overhead wiring...even though it probably pay for itself in a decade or three and reduce carbon emissions. But then, why would a bunch of short-term politicans take a long-term decision for the greater good of the country when it might hurt their peerage prospects today? Same problem on nuclear power et al. Why not have the country run by unelected experts, they could hardly do a worse job...
Sorry, I've ranted myself off topic - my father has a Hitachi shaver which is very reliable so I'm sure the trains will be stopped by fewer leaves that other makes, so I look forward to being ripped off with slightly more leg room in due course!
The HST is dead, long live the HST.