Why British trains are so great…
So let me get this right. Network rail has spent £8 billion to upgrade the West Coast mainline; Virgin Trains has spent £600 million on new trains, and all we do is shave 20 minutes off the record set 25 years ago!- That’s £430 million per minute.
So over £19 million per mile has been spent on this upgrade. In comparison, a high speed network like the TGV costs approximately £10 million per mile. A TGV would get you from London to Glasgow in about 2 hours 40 mins. So that’s a considerable improvement in time at half the costs.