Chris Green, Railway Forum chairman said HS1 was "really a trailer for what we could be enjoying across the length of Britain".

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Now to be known as High Speed 1 (HS1), the 68-mile link runs from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel opening at Folkestone, in Kent.

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It said the site would be linked to London by the existing HS1 high-speed rail line, the A2 and M20 and to Europe via the Eurostar service.

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I've discovered that half of the platforms at Stratford International are not the right height and are being raised to make them suitable for the High Speed (HS1) Javelin trains.

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The HS2 line probably won't be comparable with the painstaking efforts made during the construction of the Athens Metro, but if HS1 is anything to go by, the archaeological considerations could still be huge.

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