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"Let's go to Birmingham", from 1960, shows the trip by rail from London to Birmingham in two hours. With a nice lunch. (That's a fun video to watch. You can see why the existing rail route isn't suitable for high speed trains.) The current Virgin Rail timetable shows a time of 1 hour 24 minutes from London (Euston) to Birmingham. Tunneling half the distance to speed that up seems excessive.

No, this is not really true either. While European railways as a whole often receive some form of subsidy, High-Speed passenger services between major cities in Europe are usually very profitable. It is the less-busy regional and commuter type services that tend to receive subsidies, because it is believed that there are economic and environmental benefits in doing so.

It is true that taking the train is sometimes more expensive than flying, but this is simply because rail can command higher fares because it is more convenient. If you can save a couple of hours (and, lets face it, a lot of hassle these days with security checks and such), by taking the train then most people will.

• Booming passenger numbers drive record revenues at Virgin Trains http://mediaroom.virgintrains.co.uk/2011/08/booming-passenger-numbers-drive-record.html
• SNCF: Net profit of €588 million http://www.sncf.com/Finance/pdf/en/CP_et_Presentations/SNCF_group_HY2011_Results.pdf
• Deutsche Bahn Revenue, Profit Surged in 2010 http://www.joc.com/logistics-economy/deutsche-bahn-revenue-profit-surged-2010

All takeoffs are optional. All landings are mandatory.

If I had a choice between taking off into air heavily polluted with ash from a volcano and staying on terra firma, I'm staying on the ground.

Branson should stop bitching about the flight ban as his barely profitable Virgin Trains stands to make a very nice profit from this mess.

Some cheap return air fare rates to New York cost just 185 pounds, slightly less that the rate I was charged for a through-London train journey.

One person holiday stay at a New York hotel is charged at 51 pounds per person per night. NY Hotel prices

If you visit the Virgin Train wAebsite, and enquire about prices between Liverpool and Maidstone, standard fare, the prices are as follows:

Off-peak return - 78 pounds
Any-time return - 296 pounds
First class Any-time return - 444 pounds

For the prices of a two-night stay in new york (airfare 185 pounds + 2 x hotel 51 pounds, total 287 pounds), will cost you less than an Any-time Virgin train ticket through London.

I forgot to add that Virgin was the first to get tilting trains (Pendolino) working commercially, if you don't include the old APT that British Rail unsuccessfully experimented with in the 80s.

It's true, they should. (But this will never happen on the British rail network... on the London Underground, yes it's planned, but otherwise...)

As it goes Virgin (in the UK) are doing something for data (given that they operate long connections between hi-tech destinations, connecting, for instance, Yorkshire with Newcastle, Edinburgh and Southampton) with wireless on board... sadly only in first class - academics aren't allowed to travel first class :(

What part of Europe are you in?
Cos here (UK) the buses come in groups of three, and the trains run (well, sometimes, if you're lucky, and they're not Richard Branson's ones.)