Fifteen years on from its launch by Government, but still some way from completion, HS2 remains in the public eye. As this new book by first time author Sally Gimson shows, there is enough intrigue and political shenanigans to make Off the Rails – the Inside Story of HS2 a compelling read.
She has a journalist’s eye for teasing out what has driven the anguished twists and turns as successive Governments have striven to build on what was the perceived success of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. This, pointedly re-titled High Speed One, had on completion been launched with suitable pomp and ceremony in the presence of HM Queen Elizabeth II at a gorgeously restored St Pancras station in November 2007. This perceived engineering success provided London, at least, with direct high-speed services to Paris and Brussels.
In a mood of national positivity it was time to address the needs of the rest of the country, and it was the Conservative party who were first to raise the flag for HS2 at their Party Conference in 2008. The twists and turns since, as Gimson shows, make for an insightful read that exposes national weaknesses, grim determination, mischievous untruths as piece by piece, the limbs of the project have been detached in the face of delays and rising costs.
HS2-Opponent Christian Wolmar writes of HS2 as a scandal on the Back cover of Off the Rails, adding “the blame may be thickly spread, but Gimpson finds the key culprits.”
And so she does, but just as authors Klein and Thompson found in their 2025 best seller Abundance – how we build a better future when looking at the US economy and the rising costs and programme delays of California’s high-speed rail project, the problem is the ever-expanded territory over which objectors may safely roam.
And so, they found – as does Gimson – that it isn’t the project aims, or its design, construction or project management, it’s the sheer weight of wider legislation in place that grinds progress on the ground to a snail’s pace. As across California so too with the Chilterns: well-meaning legislation is now a huge problem for major construction projects.
The story of HS2 to date is one which starts with all-party political support, proceeds to suffer from multiple changes of ministerial oversight, at Secretary of State level, and sometimes Prime Ministerial too. Yes, Sally Gimson faithfully points out the culprits in an unappealing sequence of political neglect and sometimes baleful mis-direction, as when HS2’s essential ‘Golborne link’ is shamelessly discarded for reasons of high politics, for example.
She questions a Parliamentary approval process which opens the project to a panoply of expenditures on goodwill schemes of social value and environmental mitigation along its line of route. Here wider aims are apparently beyond question, but they are also beyond budgetary control, as are the streams of endless legal challenge from the shire county authorities across which it is being built (so unlike HS1, which enjoyed the support of Kent County Council).
There are lessons too for those who support the project or at least its intention. She gets that the HS2 project has been designed to solve a network capacity problem. But this is cold term she points out, never allowed to be given expression by Government, for instance in the possible form of local train service improvements that HS2 will make possible on the existing railway. Little chance then for the public to even imagine the benefits being sought.
For Sally Gimson, HS2 really is an investment enabling the north of the country to enjoy what London – and indeed, increasingly cites across Europe and across the world now take for granted: reliable, fast, safe and stress-free travel. She is to be congratulated on a fair and balanced assessment and for those who care about the country’s economic (and environmental) future, this is an essential read.
Review by Jim Steer, Director, HSRG and Greengauge 21
Off The Rails – The Inside Story of HS2 by Sally Gimson is published by One World, London, August 2025