New Jap Trains Leave HS2 In Their Wake

By William Mills

While Britain debates the new HS2 train, its industrial competitors are racing ahead with their modern rail networks.

Japan’s Maglevs are already zipping along at 315 mph, a massive one third faster than
Britain’s much vaulted High Speed 2 train.

The new Japanese magnetic levitation train, or ‘Maglev‘ works with two reversed magnets
‘floating’ the train a few inches off the track and enabling speeds of over 300 mph. A WWII
Lancaster bomber’s cruising speed was around 180 mph.

The Jap’s train track is buried in landscape cuttings for 80% of its length muffling the noise and minimising the visual impact.

However Britain’s HS2 is still in the consultative stage, and if it goes ahead the first trains will run
sometime after 2025. One former UK Transport minister ruefully commented;

“It will be 50 years out of date before it even starts and will be no cheaper than the Japanese
system.”

France’s latest trains have the edge on Britain’s Victorian railway network too.

The new double decker TGV cuts the train journey time from Paris to Barcelona to six and a half hours, and from London it is now only a nine hour trip.
In contrast to fly, this week, it took a weary traveller from Brighton 18 hours to reach
Madrid, with so much time being taken up waiting around at airports.

In Victorian times Britain’s innovative engineering skills were the envy of the world. Today
we are in danger of becoming a third world joke lagging increasingly behind.

HS2 needs scrapping in favour of the world’s best and latest rail system, and Britain needs
to buy it now.