The UK has several “mainlines”, all built before WW2. All are fairly straight and have been smoothed and updated continuously since WW2. Anything destroyed in

The UK has several “mainlines”, all built before WW2. All are fairly straight and have been smoothed and updated continuously since WW2. Anything destroyed in WW2 was repaired as quickly as possible at the time. Britain didn’t really “make use” of bomb damage to change the layout of London as it wasn’t really destroyed. And then in the 1960s Dr Beeching’s cuts closed almost half the rail network. The only new high speed railway in the UK opened in the 90s to connect London with the continent, I.e. Eurostar