On Nov 3, 3:22*pm, Jamie Thompson wrote:

An interesting read. Though I'm not sure about the "high speed" aspect
of the orbital. At the M25 the radial main lines aren't very far
apart, so unless you have rail gun acceleration you'll not get
anywhere near to line speed before having to slow for the next
station. I've proposed a similar route in the past, but using
conventional rail standard lines. All still very interesting though.


Also, I'm not sure how much of a market there is for high speed trains
that by-pass London or at best stop at some peripheral London
location. Ring roads may be fine for motorway networks but railways
don't work like that. we already have cross country trains to
interconnect different parts of the country without going through
London. Although there is room for improvement in how things are set
up, I doubt re-routing such trains over a London orbital line would be
the solution.

If you're going to be spending billions on interconnecting main line
railways in London it might be better spent on tunnels between the
existing terminii, a bit like the Germans have done in Berlin.
(admitedly Berlin does have an orbital railway, but it is used for the
S-Bahn and only individual sections of it for long distance trains).