The issue seems to come down to the fact that the new trains are too fast to test on our existing tracks. The Government apparently doesn\u2019t want to have to build a special test track and, understandably, doesn\u2019t appear to want to send the rolling stock to China to be tested there either.<\/p>\n
All this is another step along the way to how I predict HS2 will come to be used: as a heritage train ride in the same vein as the Settle to Carlisle train<\/a> \u2013 only run on hubris instead of steam.<\/p>\n Novelty train day trips weren\u2019t what anyone had in mind for HS2. But perhaps if we start viewing the whole farrago as macabre entertainment<\/a> rather than a serious addition to British life, we might enjoy it more; should any of us still be living when HS2 finally opens.<\/p>\n It really wouldn\u2019t cost too much more to just revamp it as a \u201cmisery heritage line\u201d. We can repaint the livery the colour of cold tea, allow smoking in the carriages and sell curly sandwiches in the buffet. As for the other stuff, you know, the arriving late, breaking down frequently and not going fast enough, well that will take care of itself. It shall be the transportation equivalent of Banksy\u2019s Dismaland theme park in Weston Super-Mare<\/a>.<\/p>\n American and European tourists will ride on it, thinking it an exceptional example of that strange gallows sense of humour of ours, all the while listening to the specially created soundtrack album, featuring Tracks Of My Tears and the entirety of Bob Dylan\u2019s Slow Train Coming.<\/p>\n All this, and it\u2019s only set to cost us \u00a3100bn. If only there were some way of harnessing the collective national ennui, irritation and despondence into a source of energy, we could have the damn thing up and running at top speed tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The issue seems to come down to the fact that the new trains are too fast to test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1186,13,633,1183,1181,1185,31,18,613,1184,1182],"class_list":{"0":"post-1588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-banksy","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-comment","12":"tag-department-for-transport","13":"tag-hs2","14":"tag-labour-party","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-opinion","17":"tag-rail","18":"tag-uk-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}