Originally Posted by
Marco
On a purely train note, as this is the HS2 thread, the APT wasn't a low budget scheme. Not when you consider British Rail's underfunded resources in the 1970s and early 1980s. The problem was that the West Coast mainline wasn't built by Brunel, and has a lot of sharp bends. It was good enough for the 1840s, but as it hadn't been re-aligned the curves required tilting technology which is what the APT offered and almost provided.
The French built new lines, dedicated to high speed travel. We didn't put the investment in, and spent less money trying to develop technology to allow new trains to travel fast over 1840s routes. In the end we did it by buying Pendolino trains
The reason we were running Deltics on the East Coast mainline was because British Rail couldn't afford to electrify it at that time. It's worth pointing out that when they were introduced the Deltics cut an hour of the scheduled London-Edinburgh time, set by the steam powered A4 pacifics (like Mallard), and were cutting edge diesel traction for the time.