Why does the UK not have a dedicated high-speed rail network?
No desire by any government to sink the necessary billions of pounds into building dedicated high-speed routes, despite the fact that Britain is ideally suited to such routes being built. Under-investment of British Rail in the 1980s is the main reason for the demise of the APT tilting-train project which came very close to offering 155mph speeds on the WCML, while the off-spring of the APT, the Italian Pendolino (which was then developed based on much of the research done by BR with the APT) is only capable of doing 125mph with the current signalling. The APT was way ahead of its time and showed what BR could have done if given a bit more money and a bit more time to fix the problems (in fact in one crucial way, the APT was still superior to the current Pendolino because of the hydrokinetic brakes it used which allowed for incredible deceleration making a 155mph speed possible with existing signalling– unfortunately problems with it, as well as the tilting mechanism, when it was publ
