Earliest practical high speed rail?

Smaller US Class I roads managed daily Twin Cities to Chicago runs that averages 70 some mph with 110+ peak speeds

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point missed the various 4-6-2s in service with Uk railway companies in the similar period were running at 90 -100 mph day in day out ... the issues were sustained operation in excess of this ..
 
By infrastructure, I mean the capacity of the electrification system. If the substation has (and I'm massively simplifying the numbers here for easy of reading by others and because I can't remember the numbers of the top of my head as I'm at work at the moment) a capacity of 2A, and the locomotive draws 1A to run at 90mph, that's all fine and dandy. However, if the service becomes more intensive, and you start to have trains pass each other in the same segment, then you are already drawing the capacity of the substation.

If you are then intent on using a new locomotive that is drawing 1.5A to run at 110mph, then suddenly you can't have two locomotives on the same substation, and the whole electrical infrastructure needs improving.

I agree that the ECML as a whole (and especially York to Darlington) is a fast route; electric trains would inevitably lead to faster times as they are quicker to accelerate, decelerate, and require less energy to run as they are lighter.

Completely agree; the patchwork of schemes and changing systems recommended by the Govt were unfortunate (but sadly understandable)!

As it happens Merz and McLellan the consulting electrical engineers for the NER and NESCo did consider low-frequency AC for the Tyneside Suburban electrification.

I think it's a great pity that Charles Merz hadn't thought of 6,600v single-phase at 50 Hz instead. It would have had no technical improvements to the Tyneside Scheme and might have been more expensive. However, the experience gained from it might have made Butterworth less cautious about electrification. Therefore he might have approved a bigger scheme using 11,000v AC or higher than the Shildon to Newport using 1,500v DC. By 1919 they might be up to 22,000 or even 33,000 when planning the York to Newcastle scheme. However, I think the scheme would still be too expensive to implement and electrification of the ECML would still have to wait until the railways were nationalised.

If the NER had adopted industrial frequency AC from the start some of the other railway companies would have used it for their electrification schemes.

Railway electrification on 25kv AC single-phase at 50Hz was possible over the whole country once the National Grid was completed IOTL. If Lord Weir had known that his electrification report would have made interesting reading.

Note: I had to cheat and increase NESCo's frequency from 40 to 50 Hz to standardise with the National Grid when it is built.
 
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