The east coast was ten year old, ten year old, ten year old - sorry ten year old track, ten year old trains - and was really quite a modern railway network, and yet Chris Green and the team at Virgin Trains actually got the performance of the westcoast ahead of GNER in the last six months running up to Hatfield.
But making green off blue power soon proved to be so much California dreaming as plans for WestCoast wave energy arrays sank under opposition from surfers, fishermen and local residents.