It's like the chewb but it goes to France

I wonder if people in the 2060s will be saying the same about the castrated version of HS2

There will be a Chinese or Japanese version of Race Across the World where a team boards HS2 at old oak common thinking it'll take them all the way to Inverness. How dissapointed they are when the service terminates a few miles up the road at Brum.

As per that there Wikipedia it was in Longsight though in fairness it does sound like it was put to some use eventually.

it would have been successful if we had gotten our shit together

Agreed. I wonder if people in the 2060s will be saying the same about the castrated version of HS2 we're fucking up today?

It sounds like it would have been successful had we gotten our shit together. Although Paris to Glasgow would've been grim in the 90s.

In Manchester, there was a huge building constructed as a maintenance depot for the Eurostar and Nightstar trains that even had "Eurostar habite ici" printed on the side

Oh really, where abouts?

Yeah, but British long-term thinking rears it's head again: there was apparently no way to run the train that had just gone under the sea through the other side of London. Even now, the HS1 line that links London to the continent is separated from the new HS2 line that leads up to the Midlands, Northern England, Wales and Scotland by a gap of a about 500 meters which is apparently insurmountable.

In Manchester, there was a huge building constructed as a maintenance depot for the Eurostar and Nightstar trains that even had "Eurostar habite ici" printed on the side in massive text. Seeing that brand new building slowly fade and rot, unused, over the years has been super inspiring, I can tell you.

SJ has had rolling stock in continental gauges for such services. The Stockholm-Berlin sleeper train ran on SJ-branded ex-Deutsche Bahn wagons (which are now RDC-branded, now that the Swedish subsidy has ended).

I remember going on the sleeper train from Berlin to Malmö back in 2011.

It took the ferry between Sassnitz and Trelleborg.

I seem to recall it being normal Swedish SJ sleeper cars, though I do admit that I don't know this for certain

Edit: I think it was either a BC2 or BC4

Sweden has a broader loading gauge than mainland Europe (the sleeper services to the continent had to use secondhand German carriages as the domestic ones wouldn’t fit), which would presumably not feel quite as cramped on North American railroads. Britain, however, has an unusually narrow loading gauge. I would imagine that the ex-Eurostar wagons would be considered uncomfortably cramped by Canadian standards.

I seem to remember reading that there is a heritage railroad society in Canada who runs Swedish passenger cars.

Everybody! Quick! Get out of the Chunnel!

Euphemism for the Channel Tunnel from England to France under the English Channel. The Eurostar train service.

Chunnel?

I did not know this or about the Chunnel sleeper, very interesting!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_%28train%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_%28railcar%29

@railForgot to note, Via Rail is the national passenger rail operator for Canada.

TIL Sheffield's trams were the heaviest. No wonder why they have to replace rails every fortnight!

They've been saying this for a while and nothing has come of it.

Conventry is big enough to warrant at least a full light railway but the UK constantly tries to cheap out on public transport.

To my mind the interest in this technology should he targeted on how much viability it opens up for small towns/villages

Third and fourth rail systems are largely deprecated due to the dangers to workers.

Overhead lines are safer, but require adaptation of the formation at stations, bridges and tunnels. This is the sticking point on the Great Western main line, as the clearances were already lower before the trackbed had been raised in the 80s to give the HSTs a smoother ride, leaving no room for OHLE without expensive works.

Batteries are a compromise, and could be the permanent solution for shorter routes.

Jago Hazzard did a good video about this a couple of years ago when it was in testing, for those interested. https://youtu.be/dV441HnVI34

This particular route wasn't electrified, they mention at the end that it's electrification was cancelled after cost overruns.

Reading between the lines, this is quite a short route, and the batteries are really not particularly impressive (more than a typical car battery, but not much more), though the recharge rate is (2000kw is impressive). Batteries are very expensive (maybe less than electrifying a line, but still very expensive), but trains are very good at lugging massive weight, so if you could afford the batteries you could probably make a battery train that went genuinely long distances (more than battery cars would ever be practical for).

Though a battery fire in such a train would be an impressive and expensive lightshow.

I thought electric trains get their power from the tracks, or overhead lines. Why do trains need batteries?

2000kW. That’s a lot of energy.

If you get off the train with your eyes closed you are at every station until you open them.

Boring isn't necessarily bad, in fact I would argue that my preference for bringing back Rail Blue would be even more boring. I think it's best if people can come to associate their feelings of the railways with the livery rather than the other way round, so I'm favouring something simple and timeless.

It's the most boring livery they could have come up with, and not exactly an original design but perhaps they weren't go in for a originality.

It creates somewhat of a Mandela effect, it's so generic that I couldn't 100% guarantee that they didn't already look like that.

Given that renationalisation is a bit of a hot button topic for the right wing, they probably didn't want to rock the boat too much. This doesn't particularly draw attention to itself.

The average profit was 2%. That’s been blown by the rebranding.