Shinkansen

The Bullet Train still looks fantastic almost fifty years after its introduction

Another observation from my trip to York was about high speed rail travel. At the National Railway Museum was a Japanese Bullet train. Much as I like steam engines, I remember the first time I heard of the Bullet Train. It looked like a piece of space technology on rails and travelled at over 130mph. I liked it despite my loyalty to steam. This was a truly futuristic form of travel, a revolution based on first principles rather than one that had simply grown out of tradition. 

So could we have a Bullet Train in Britain?

At the museum, actors were putting on a small story telling play about the Bullet Train or Shinkansen - literally the new main line. 

They put across the point that the Bullet Train rejected the standard gauge of 3'6" with which a British engineer had saddled the country from the outset. It adopted standard gauge but the train in the museum was conspiciously wider than anything that ran in Britain - the loading gauge was still much wider. 

They also showed how Britain was overtaken in technology by Japan.

Could the Bullet train ever happen in Britain?

In a way it has. The 395 Class on the High Speed 1 line from Dover to St Pancras were built by Hitachi using Shinkansen technology.

There's currently the debate about the HS2 between London and Birmingham. HS1 was the UK's belated answer to the super trains on the continent and happened becasue the British were shamed into building a high speed link to Channel Tunnel. 

HS2 looks good to me when the UK has a transport system many third world countries would be ashamed of. 

You'd think it would make environmental sense, too, but people who live on the proposed route through the Chiltern Hills claim it'll make a scar across their landscapes. Personally I think a train enhances a landscape and would love it if the Liskeard and Caradon was re-opened as was proposed recently. 

The HS2 would be more intrusive, though, due to its sheer speed. Putting the HS2 in tunnels under Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty doesn't always work - when the high speed train bursts out of a tunnel it produces a tunnel boom. If you're not expecting it in a sylvan setting it could be quite a surprise. Maybe it would be best to keep it above ground. Then we could admire it instead of hide it.

If the HS2 ran somewhere else, these people would give a damn about it. Another lot would probably spring up in their place.

Would they prefer people drove their cars from city to city or flew? That is not their problem. Devalued property prices are.

I remember seeing an interview with a farmer whose farm was bisected by the LGV Nord line from Brussels to Calais. A British film crew asked him if he was unhappy about this and he said, "But of course, but this is for France!" 

The HS2 probably won't just stop at Birmingham but will stretch up Scotland. Currently, rail travel can't quite match air travel for speed even when you factor in the messing about at check-in. A national HS2 service might almost match internal flights and have less environmental impact.

The Bullet Train boosted the local economies of the towns it served as well as saddled the operators with debt but its long term positive impact probably can't be counted in vile money. I think that is what this French gentleman understood do well. The protesters might have a point when they claim that the business case doesn't stack up but for me the HS2 represents a "Thunderbirds" moment when advanced transport technology can only be admired.

I'm in the yes camp then, although the yes camp website seem full of business case acronyms only someone with an MBA would really understand.

If we are clever we can preserve our environment and have our high speed links.

But the less said about the premature demise of Maglev in the UK the better.

Magnetic levitation is what the Japanese are investigating for the next shinkansen. And this has already happened in Britain!

Except that it was restricted to a low speed section at Birmingham Exhibition Centre and Airport and was closed in 1995 because it had become unreliable.

I am old enough to remember maglev systems appearing on Tomorrow's World (a TV programme about new inventions) but am young enough to remember the excitement maglev systems instilled in me.

These are truly trains that fly and the next generation of Bullet Train will be superb. I just hope it happens in Britain as well as Japan like this proposal.

Finally, I can recall another wild proposal. I think it was on Tomorrow's World again but was essentially a sexed up version of Brunel's atmospheric railway. Instead of carriages being propelled by bullet in tubes, this atmospheric railway featured carriages inside the tubes. With more extreme pressure differentials in front and behind of these passenger carrying units, vast speeds were proposed and the whole system would be underground. In fact, the proposed sytem could girdle the earth at speeds approaching those of air travel.

I'm not sure if earth quakes were an issue with the underground tubes but suspect that if we're brainy enough we can solve anything.