Peterdown - Annand, David

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Résumé :

It was announced just before Christmas, the Goods Line is getting revived, upgraded, made a key part of the new national infrastructure: High Speed+. The plus sign is the evidence of the ambition. The ante has been upped, this is High Speed Ultra . . . the route's new Excalibur trains will levitate on magnets, flying along its tracks at near enough 500 kph.

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But where will they go, I hear you cry, these trains of the future? Why, to an airport of the future, of course. It's taken decades of wrangling but the nation has finally had the gumption to say Goodbye, Gatwick! Hasta la vista, Heathrow! And - after eight years, four transport secretaries, three London mayors, and a near-derailment by our old friend Brexit - finally, 'Allo Avalon. A mythical name for a near-mythical airport. A floating island, off the coast of Kent, opened by the Queen on January 1st, exactly one month ago today . . .
But why such haste to get from shiny Avalon to Peterdown, this city of heart failure, of special measures and mismanaged decline? Well, we've only been chosen, haven't we? Picked out of a parade of fellow down-at-heelers, rusty-belters, post-industrialists. We're going to be the regional hub, the splitter station, the knot in a pair of braces, one side pinging up to Edinburgh, the other across to Manchester.

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The future is coming to Peterdown for the first time in a long time. But where will it stop, this ultra-train, and whom will it serve?