The route was unveiled this week for phase two of HS2 — and those who got hot under the collar about phase one (London to Birmingham) are furious again, on the same economic or environmental grounds. But perhaps they might rediscover some of the joy of a fast train if they read a little Dickens.
In 1851, when Britain’s railways were being developed on rather a larger scale than today, Dickens wrote a short article about his trip from London to Paris by what was then considered to be high-speed rail. ‘A Flight’, as he called it, fizzes with excitement:
‘Here we are — no, I mean there we were, for it has darted far into the rear — in Bermondsey where the tanners live. Flash! The distant shipping in the Thames is gone. Whirr! … Whizz! Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds. Rattle! New Cross Station. Shock! There we were at Croydon. Bur-r-r-r! The tunnel.’
If travelling at a mere 50 miles per hour reduces Dickens to nonsensical whirrings and burrings, then just the thought of HS2’s proposed 225 mph would render him speechless — unlike those of you who protest so vociferously. And if he was amazed at being able to get from London to Paris in 11 hours, surely he would be flabbergasted at the prospect of getting from London to Birmingham in a mere three quarters of an hour. While Birmingham doesn’t quite hold the glamour of Paris, Dickens was very fond of the city and indeed gave the first public reading of A Christmas Carol in Birmingham’s Town Hall.
But, as a well-read HS2 anti might point out, Dickens avoided high-speed rail travel in his later life. His experience of the 1865 Staplehurst train crash, in which ten passengers died and another 49 were injured, left him shaken, although physically unscathed.
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