High-speed trains past and present

Artist's impression of a train which will be built under a £7.5bn contract awarded to a British-led consortium called Agility Trains, to build and maintain a fleet of new 'super express' trains for the Great Western and East Coast main lines Photograph: PA

The Flying Scotsman (holder of three steam speed records) at Grange-over-Sands, between Carnforth in Lancashire, and Ravenglass in Cumbria, in the 1970s Photograph: Don McPhee/Guardian

The Mallard, the fastest steam locomotive in the world. It reached 126mph on the East Coast Mainline between Peterborough and Grantham in 1938 Photograph: Graham Howden/Corbis/Cordaiy Photo Library Ltd./CORBIS

The English Electric Company's new locomotive, the Deltic (type 5) diesel, pulls a train from Liverpool Lime Street station to London, in March 1958. British Railways ordered 22 of the locomotives for long distance routes Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

An InterCity 125 train pulls into Kings Cross station, London, in 1982 Photograph: Paul Brown/Rex Features

An Advanced Passenger Train, a tilting train which was later rejected by the network. British Rail ran a limited number of prototype tilting trains in the early 1980s Photograph: PA/PA

A high speed InterCity train crosses the Forth Bridge in Scotland, in the 1990s Photograph: Colin Garratt/Corbis

A GNER InterCity train on the Royal Border bridge, at Berwick upon Tweed Photograph: GNER

America's first bullet train, the Acela Express, pulls into New York's Penn Station, in 2000. The train made the Washington-to-New York trip in 2 hours, 26 minutes, arriving 2 minutes ahead of schedule and setting an Amtrak speed record. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/AP

A magnetically-levitated train powered by a linear induction motor sits on the track in December 2003, prior to setting a new world speed record during a manned test on an experimental track in Kofu, Japan. The three-car maglev train reached a top speed of 361 mph Photograph: Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images

A speeding TGV train passes a field of sunflowers in France in 2002 Photograph: Bryan F. Peterson/Corbis

A type 700 Shinkansen Japanese bullet train leaves Tokyo station in 2002. The train has a maximum speed of 220mph Photograph: Itsuo Inouye/AP

A Eurostar train travels on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, near Rochester, Kent, in July 2003 Photograph: Martin Godwin

An ICE high-speed train from Germany's railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, makes its way towards Cologne's main station, near the city's cathedral, in June 2006. The latest generation of the train allows travellers to look inside the driver's cab Photograph: Jochen Luebke/AFP

A Virgin Pendolino train on the West Coast main line. The tilting trains were introduced to the UK in 2002 Photograph: Christopher Thomond

A bullet train which completed a trial run at a railway station in Shanghai, China, in January 2007. The new CRH (China Railway High-speed) bullet train was tested on the Shanghai-Beijing route during the spring festival celebrations, when there is sharp rise in demand for transportation. The train can run at 155mph Photograph: AP

The V150 TGV train sets a new world speed record for a train on rails, hitting 357mph on a 45.3-mile stretch of track between Paris and Strasbourg, in April 2007. The record was made by an experimental version of the train equipped with two supercharged locomotives and extra-large wheels Photograph: Christophe Recoura/SNCF/Getty