A very interesting thread. All sides of the argument seem to have been canvassed.
I am a rail lover and I would love to have very fast trains but the sad reality is that we live in a "wide brown land" with scant populations hundreds of km apart. I think the economics beat us. In the meantime I think we are stuck with B-doubles etc. In my part of the world on the Pacific H'way we were having a semi crash about every three months but the incidence seems to have declined this year (2012).
