DAVID McKenzie's plans for an Argyll-Antrim link (Letters, December 12) are certainly ambitious, especially those that involve a rail line. Even if we leave aside the eye-watering cost of a rail line built to High Speed standards from Glasgow to Antrim via Kintyre, there is the perennial problem that our Victorian forebears, in their wisdom or otherwise, built the railways in Great Britain and the island of Ireland to different track gauges, so that, even if a simpler link were proposed with the existing line at Stranraer, it would not be possible to run British trains in Ireland or vice-versa.
If a High Speed link were built to Belfast, using the British track gauge which is standard throughout most of Europe, it would still be necessary to change trains to get to Dublin. The alternative, which would also be costly, would be to build special trains that could change gauge, such as the Talgo train which used to operate between France and Spain before a High Speed line was built, using the standard gauge to Barcelona and beyond.
It is perhaps ironic, particularly in the present climate, that in some respects the railways of Great Britain have more in common with the Continent than with Ireland.
Iain Maclean,
25 Gartconnell Road, Bearsden.
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