New Hitachi Train at St. Pancras Station

Image by Ken Kitson

Maybe the Age of the Train has returned to the United Kingdom.

Yesterday I attended one of the opening ceremonies of the first new railway line to be built in the United Kingdom for over a hundred years. It was held at Saint Pancras railway station which is the London terminus for the high speed rail link between the UK and the rest of Europe.

The new line - rather unimaginatively named "High Speed 1" - means we'll no longer have the embarassment of trains hurtling across France at over 300 Km/h only to have to slow down to an embrassingly slow speed as they emerge on the British side of the English Channel.

Saint Pancras station was originally built in 1868, and had become quite delapidated, but has now been carefully restored. The gleaming new high speed trains looked wonderful underneath the magnificent Victorian steel arched roof. The new trains will provide a fast, environmentally friendly route into London from Kent.