2007 was a good year for breaking rail speed records, says Alastair McKenzie

The flurry of investment in rail infrastructure all over the world has led some to hail 2007 as the Year of the Railway Reborn. Environmental concerns aside—rail travel is infinitely more green than air travel—there seemed to be a real shift in thinking. The year got off to a flying start in January with high-speed train debuts in Taiwan (Taipei-Kaohsiung) and Ireland (Cork-Dublin), and then gathered even more momentum with February's speed record of 553km per hour (343.6mph) on the new TGV line between Paris and Strasbourg, which opened in June.

The action switched to the UK in October with the government giving the go-ahead to London's massive Crossrail project (to read more details about the east-west rail link, buried deep under central London click here); the breaking of more speed records on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now called High Speed 1); Eurostar's relocation from Waterloo to St Pancras and the near-simultaneous opening of the new international station at Ebbsfleet—plus the opening of Thameslink platforms at St Pancras.
So what is to come? Well, in the short term, we're not finished in London. St Pancras Chambers, the stunning, Grade I listed Victorian building at the front of the station (which used to include the Midland Grand Hotel whose last paying guest departed in 1935), has yet to be restored to its former glory as a glamorous station hotel.

In January 2010, Eurostar trains at St Pancras are likely to be joined by trains in other liveries as the EU throws the European high-speed rail network open to competition. Not only have rail companies such as Deutsche Bahn and Virgin expressed an interest in operating international rail services, but as Conservative MP Julian Brazier recently noted, even some of Eurostar's airborne competitors, such as Air France, are reported to be interested.

Brazier was speaking in a House of Commons transport debate held in the wake of the St Pancras opening in which MPs congratulated themselves on the successful launch of High Speed 1 (HS1) and began enthusiastically laying the early parliamentary groundwork for HS2 (St Pancras to Manchester), HS3 (East Coast), and a range of future routes, all the way up to a jocularly proposed HS15 (to Norwich). Rail is back.