Are superfast trains speeding down the tracks?

 

At the time the UK was completing its first stretch of high-speed rail in 2007, China had barely left the station.

Nearly a decade on, Britain still has only that same 68-mile (109km) stretch of track, but China has built itself the longest high-speed network in the world.
At more than 12,000km (7,450 miles) in total, it is well over double the length of the European and Japanese networks combined.
So if you want to get a sense of what the future of rail travel might look like, China would seem to be the place to come.
Vacuum velocity As it stands, train technology doesn't seem to have changed much for decades.
The UK may have just received its first Hitachi-made Super Express high-speed train capable of running at up to 140mph (225km/h), but this is hardly a quantum leap forward.