Perhaps if we had continued to use ALL of the railway resources at our disposal, instead of the old rivalries between the companies and then regions IE GWR(Western Region/LMS(London Midland) causing massive closures of the GWR route, we would still have four tracks to and from Birmingham to and from the South into and out of Snow Hill as far as Lapworth, thus giving lots of capacity for expresses and local services on the route which was always the fastest to London, thanks to finer engineering of the line. We would also have had another route North as well, because that is the next one they will decide to throw money at, but then maybe not because it won't assist London!!
Chiltern Railways are slowly but steadily improving the route South and I can foresee a time when their route will be faster than the West Coast route and competing for the business from the white elephant which will be HS2 (if it gets built), just like HS1 which is conveniently not discussed. Or maybe when Chiltern have invested all of their resources the franchise will pass to the First group for them to make massive profits out of. Rant over........for a while!!