With all our grumbling about trains – and it is close to a national pastime – it is easy to forget the successes. There is a tale to tell, for example, about high-speed trains, that goes beyond the endless wrangling over HS2.

If you look at the history around the globe, as I have, you find that high-speed trains saved the railways. An industry that was gradually sinking into oblivion, thanks to motorways and aeroplanes, has been revitalised by a technological revolution that means trains travel faster, more safely and more comfortably.

Over time, beautiful but inefficient steam engines and their dirty diesel successors have been replaced by sleek modern trains that shrink distances and provide a service that their rivals on either land or in the air cannot compete with. Train travel that had been in decline has become the preferred mode of transport for many journeys previously dominated by aviation.

But this is a revolution that almost didn’t reach Europe. In 1964, Japan became the pioneer, creating the Shinkansen, known worldwide as the bullet train, in effect the first motorway on rail, with dedicated tracks, a small number of stops and an at the time unprecedented top speed of 210 km/h (130mph). Nowadays trains often run at 190mph and they may routinely reach 250mph before the decade is out.

But as Japan surged ahead, 1960s Europe had fallen out of love with trains. Beeching-type cuts were the order of the day across the continent and a new invention seemed in the 1980s to be about to supersede the iron road. This was levitation........

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