The high-speed rail line currently under construction in the UK is High Speed 2 (HS2).
HS2 is a new railway in England designed to add capacity to the heavily used rail network and provide faster services between London and the Midlands. Construction began in 2019, with the main surviving project running from London toward Birmingham and Handsacre in Staffordshire, where it will connect with the West Coast Main Line.
The project was originally planned as a much larger Y-shaped network. Its proposed eastern branch would have reached Leeds, while its western branch would have continued toward Manchester. Those extensions were cancelled or cut back, leaving the London–West Midlands section as the core scheme. This is why HS2 is sometimes confused with a nationwide high-speed network rather than a specific railway project.
HS2 will be Britain’s second purpose-built high-speed railway after High Speed 1, the line linking London with the Channel Tunnel. Its trains are intended to operate on both new HS2 track and existing conventional routes.