• GIANT German engineering company Siemens is introducing 100mph trains to suburban rail networks under St Pancras station, linking Cambridge and Peterborough to Thameslink, Moorgate, Farringdon, the south coast, and Heathrow.

Blackfriars is to be the gleaming hub of this network, carrying up to 60,000 passengers a day. This is the same German company that is building the giant wind farms in the North Sea off Hull.

These German-designed trains will use Automatic Train Operation (ATO); 250 drivers are being trained for a year to drive the trains which are remote controlled from central computers (like the planes landing and taking off at Heathrow).

Journey times will be drastically cut and frequency greatly increased as trains can run 40 per cent closer together.

The question is, could these same fast German trains be used to save Camden Town and the farce of HS2 arriving at Euston, with its 15-minute gap to St Pancras Eurostar?

Could Siemens sort out the HS2 muddle, for instance, the St Pancras-to-Birmingham line via Luton Airport could be upgraded to high-speed tracks in the deep cutting between Camden Square and Gospel Oak, and utilise existing or new high level platforms at St Pancras within the custom control area of Eurostar.

Such a simple plan would end once and for all the wanton destruction of large areas of Camden, uprooting people from their homes, cutting down half the trees, and the nightmare of digging up the roads and bridges of Mornington Crescent and Parkway. It might also make us forget such unworkable schemes as an Old Oak Common terminus.

It needs the courage of MPs such as Sir Keir Starmer and Tulip Siddiq, and someone with the knowledge of how trains actually operate, to sort out the present miserable muddle and demand that a prime German engineering company, with a proven track record, design something that really works.

NICHOLAS WOOD
South Hill Park Gardens, NW3