High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

High-speed rail in the United Kingdom is provided on five upgraded railway lines running at top speeds of and one purpose-built high-speed line reaching .

Trains currently travel at 125mph (200km/h) on the East Coast Main Line, Great Western Main Line, Midland Main Line, parts of the Cross Country Route, and the West Coast Main Line. On the latter line, only tilting trains can reach this maximum speed due to the difficult track geometry.

The long High Speed 1 (HS1) line connects London to the Channel Tunnel, with international Eurostar services running from London St Pancras International to cities in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands at 186mph (300km/h). The line is also used by high-speed commuter services from Kent to the capital, operating at top speeds of 140mph (225km/h).

Beginning in 2019, construction on a major new purpose-built high-speed rail line, High Speed 2 (HS2) is ongoing. When completed, High Speed 2 will link London with the West Midlands, saving approximately 36minutes on the route to Birmingham. Government-backed plans to provide east–west high-speed services between cities in the North of England are also in development, as part of the Northern Powerhouse Rail project.

In addition to these plans, the East Coast Main Line is currently in the process of an upgrade to cab signalling, which will allow trains to run at 140 mph (225 km/h) on some parts of the east coast line, and the Transpennine Route Upgrade aims to increase the speed of the Leeds-Manchester railway to 125 mph (200 km/h).

Trains in the United Kingdom are operated by a mixture of public (as operator of last resort) and private railway companies as part of the ongoing re-nationalisation of British rail transport infrastructure. High-speed services are provided by Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Eurostar, Grand Central, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, London North Eastern Railway, Lumo, Southeastern and TransPennine Express.

History High-speed steam

During the age of steam locomotion, the British railway industry strove to develop reliable technology for powering high-speed rail services between major cities.

The earliest attempt to build a railway line dedicated for operation at the higher speeds was the Great Central Main Line, opened by the Great Central Railway (GCR) in 1899. This line was an ambitious project led by railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin who envisaged a Liverpool-Paris route crossing from Britain to France via a proposed channel tunnel. Although the tunnel scheme was not realised by this railway company, the route operated services between and via , with the dedicated express track beginning at in Nottinghamshire.

The line was built to certain specifications so that it could take advantage of the higher speeds offered by the advances in steam locomotion. For most of the line the ruling gradient did not exceed 1 in 176 ( ‰); outside urban areas wide curves were employed with a minimum radius of 1 mile; the route only had one level crossing; and, unlike other railway lines in Britain, the Great Central Main Line was built to an expanded continental loading gauge which meant it could accommodate larger-sized continental trains. The GCR's target market was higher-class 'business' travellers, and it promoted its long-distance express trains with the slogan "Rapid Travel in Luxury". Most of the Great Central Main Line closed in 1966 as part of the Beeching cuts, although parts of the route are still in use today by Chiltern Railways as the London to Aylesbury Line. According to plans announced in 2010, part of the proposed High Speed 2 (HS2) route will run along a re-opened section of the GCR route between and . An alternative proposal to re-open the GCR for freight has been put forward by the Central Railway company.

Various claims exist for the first locomotive to break the barrier, notably the Great Western Railway's City of Truro (1904) and the LNER's Flying Scotsman (1934). Locomotive power capable of reaching has existed in Britain since 1938, when the LNER's Mallard broke the steam locomotive speed record. Despite advances in locomotive engineering, the railway infrastructure was unable to support safe running at such high speeds and, until the mid-1970s, the British railway speed limit remained at .

The APT

In the 1963, the British Rail board voted to established the British Rail Research Division, to explore new technologies for high-speed freight and passenger rail services on existing rail infrastructure, leading to the initiation of the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) programme, with a planned top speed of . An experimental version, the APT-E was tested between 1972 and 1976. It was equipped with the C-APT in Cab signalling system, and a tilting mechanism which allowed the train to tilt into bends to reduce cornering forces on passengers, and was powered by gas turbines (the first to be used on British Rail since the Great Western Railway, and subsequent Western Region utilised Swiss built Brown-Boveri, and British built Metropolitan Vickers locomotives (18000 and 18100) in the early 1950s). The 1970s oil crisis prompted a rethink in the choice of motive power (as with the prototype TGV in France), and British Rail later opted for traditional electric overhead lines when the pre-production and production APTs were brought into service in 1980–86.

Initial experience with the Advanced Passenger Trains was good. They had a high power-to-weight ratio to enable rapid acceleration; the prototype set record speeds on the Great Western Main Line and the Midland Main Line, and the production versions vastly reduced journey times on the WCML. The APT was, however, beset with technical problems; financial constraints and negative media coverage eventually caused the project to be cancelled.

InterCity 125

During the same period, British Rail also invested in a separate, parallel project to design a train based on conventional technology as a stopgap. The InterCity 125, otherwise known as the High-Speed Train (HST), was launched in 1976 with a service speed of and provided the first high-speed rail services in Britain. The HST was diesel-powered, and the Great Western Main Line (GWML) was the first to be modified for the new service. Because the GWML had been built mostly straight, often with four tracks and with a distance of between distant signal and main signal, it allowed trains to run at with relatively moderate infrastructure investments, compared to other countries in Europe. The Intercity 125 had proven the economic case for high-speed rail, and British Rail was keen to explore further advances.

InterCity 225

BR then proceeded to electrify the ECML and ordered a new fleet of InterCity 225 electric trains in the mid-1980s. These were capable of and although not initially equipped to tilt, were designed to be easily upgraded to tilt mode by having trailer profiles that tapered inwards at the top and suitable bogies. Speeds of were tested on the southern, straighter sections of the ECML by using a flashing green aspect on the signals. This indicated it was safe to proceed above , but HMRSI eventually ruled that this was dangerous and that speeds above would require in-cab signalling. The 225s were therefore limited to and have been ever since.

High-speed DMUs

In the early 2000s, a number of train operating companies introduced diesel multiple units (DMUs) capable of speeds, including the Adelante, Voyager, Super-Voyager and Meridian/Pioneer units.

Pendolino

In 2002, Virgin Trains introduced a new high-speed service on the West Coast Main Line with a fleet of 53 custom-designed Pendolino trains. The nine-car trains were constructed by Alstom and are equipped with a tilting mechanism developed by Fiat to enable them to run at high speeds on existing rail infrastructure, thus fulfilling the aims of the APT project some 30 years later.

The Pendolinos were designed to run at , but require in-cab signalling for high-speed operation. The 2004 West Coast Main Line modernisation programme was an upgrade to the infrastructure to allow faster line speeds, As with the introduction of the InterCity 225 in the 1980s, the lack of signalling upgrades resulted in the maximum line speed being restricted to . Some members of the fleet were later lengthened to 11 carriages.

High Speed 1 (HS1)

High Speed 1 (HS1) (formally the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL)) was the first new mainline railway to be built in the UK for a century and was constructed by London and Continental Railways. After a lengthy process of route selection and public enquiries in the second half of the 1990s, work got under way on Section 1 from the Channel Tunnel to west of the Medway in 1998 and the line opened in 2003. Section 2, continuing the line to London St Pancras, started soon after Section 1 and was opened to the public on 14 November 2007.

The HS1 line was finished on time and under budget. The reduction in journey times and increase in reliability achieved through the opening of Section 1 enabled Eurostar to capture 71% of the total London–Paris market and over 80% of the leisure market and Section 2 has increased these figures further. Additionally, the connections provided to the WCML, MML and ECML by Section 2 may see growth of hitherto marginal markets, by finally allowing Regional Eurostars to operate, at least on the electrified ECML and WCML.

The completion and successful operation of HS1 Sections 1 and 2 spurred much discussion and several proposals for new lines in the UK and many interested parties are hoping to capitalise on the momentum given to these ideas by the completion of the complete HS1. These proposals are discussed below.

The construction of HS1 also permitted the introduction of a new domestic high-speed service when in 2009 Southeastern launched its high-speed route between London St Pancras and . Operated with a fleet of Class 395 trains, the service reaches a top speed of . Southeastern High-Speed is currently the only British domestic high-speed service allowed to run above .

High Speed 2 (HS2)

High Speed 2 (HS2) is a high-speed railway originally designed to serve London, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, Liverpool. The UK Government launched a formal high-speed rail project in January 2009, and high-speed rail has the support of all three main political parties. Subject to consultation, the London terminus for the high-speed line would be Euston, a new Birmingham city-centre station would be built at Curzon Street, and there would be interchange stations with the Elizabeth line at Old Oak Common and with the existing intercity rail network near Birmingham Airport.

HS2's original proposal was for a Y-shaped network between London and England's major regional cities, serving Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, East Midlands, with connections on to the West Coast and East Coast Main Lines to allow through services to Liverpool, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Greengauge 21 study states that the total route length, including the connections to the existing network and High Speed One, would be .

The first phase of High Speed 2 is currently under construction. However, the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands (IRP) was published on 18 November 2021 and impacted the High Speed 2 plan. Following several changes to the project, the route was successively truncated; in October 2023, it was announced that subsequent phases of the route would be cancelled, with the result that High Speed 2 would run between London and Birmingham only. The rest of the funding would go into the Network North programme, which consists of hundreds of transport projects mostly in Northern England and Midlands, including new high-speed lines linking up major cities and new railway hubs.

UK high speed lines