Britain is behind the rest of Europe on high speed rail  The United Kingdom has been somewhat of a laggard when it comes to high speed rail. In the first half of the century Britain’s railways were the fastest in the world (still holding the world speed record for steam). But since what we would now consider to be high speed started with the launch of the Shinkansen in 1964 the UK has only marginally upgraded its own railways to 125mph. This means the only high speed line the UK has is the link to the channel tunnel which does not serve a large number of internal passengers. The UK therefore has 113km of high speed rail against 1334 in Germany, 1342 in Italy, 2036 in France and 3100 in Spain. Even much smaller countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium have longer high speed lines. [1]  [1]