Bitte keine heiße Asche einfüllen

70 years later, something vaguely rocket-shaped that is usually travelling at 200 mph and has German inscriptions all over hits London again, right in the middle of St Pancras....

Okay, okay, I'll stop with the bad punnery. :P

Seriously though, today has marked the spot where the British high-speed rail market opened up for real competition, with the first ICE and therefore the first fully-foreign train ever doing test runs in St Pancras today. As far as open access is concerned, this is a Very Good Thing™.



And a bit of personal opinion? Fuck the current Eurostar, fuck the TGV. Alstom's dated, shabby 1990s stock can do little against Siemens' Velaro which has been selling like hotcakes, and the French -know- this. Unless they come up with a solution to this problem very soon, I foresee the next order at Siemens to come from SNCF...

Rail is a short 13.5 minute documentary film made by Geoffrey Jones for British Transport Films between 1963 and 1967, prompted by the success of Snow. The "pure cinema" film illustrated the transition from steam powered locomotives to diesel and electric traction which was taking place during that period.



No wonder it got nominated for a BAFTA in 1968. For the late 60s, that's pretty progressive filmmaking!