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Comment by kwhitefoot | Hacker News Reader

The British Rail HST started development in 1970 and was running at 125 mph in 1976.

The US is only fifty years late.

We peaked with the west coast and east coast mainlines. HS1 was suffered in its ambitions thanks to low cost airlines (the infrastructure is underutilised today). HS2 got gutted. The Transpennine electrification is going at a snail's pace and isn't ambitious in the slightest.

The UK is finished with ambitious infrastructure (and house building), as we are a populous country of rich and influential NIMBYs with a party often in power that panders to them

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that some American steam locomotives went >120 mph in passenger service (the Milwaukee Road's F7's and the Pennsylvania Railroad's S1's, for example). I believe if you look at the PRR timetables, they had some routes that averaged 80 mph between stops, meaning they almost certainly hit a max speed at least over 100 mph. The US didn't have the same speed record contests that the Brits did though, so there's no official record.

In 1947 a law was passed requiring trains above 79mph to have some kind of automatic train stop system, so that ended most of the high speed steam service.

The UK's record-setting locomotives were pre-war. The HSTs were only a moderate increment over the existing "deltics", but it gets much harder to add that extra bit of speed for true high-speed rail (and there's no real evidence that US steam trains ever achieved 125mph, even though 100mph+ running was routine on some routes).

For those interested, this is a good video that summarizes the US's high speed steam locomotives, from a YouTuber who works on steam locomotives (despite the title, it's fact oriented and there's not too much flag waving). There is some evidence, but it's not conclusive.

https://youtu.be/hVtVk3T80hA?si=Y8PYYt4IRakKLRDg

Great Western Railway locomotives had automatic stop long before the end of steam. Why would having to have that automated put an end to high speed steam service?

In the US, it was only required in 1952 (due to the aforementioned law passed in 1947), and there was very little experience with it before then. By 1947, it was clear that diesel was going to replace steam due to steam's significantly higher maintenance costs (and the lack of MU). If you're running a mainline railroad in 1947, you already know that you're gonna be replacing almost all your steam locomotives within the next 10 years, so why bother upgrading them?

Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll never actually finish this.

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