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High speed services on the continent have exactly the same mix of business and leisure travel, expensive and cheap fares, etc as UK Intercity services.

Sure, anyone can use the trains, if they can afford them. However, the primary reason why they were invested in in the first place, quite apart from the political glory associated with futuristic technology, was to facilitate business travel. On fares, there is a lot of variation on the Continent, but many countries do it completely differently to the UK. For instance, in Germany you can buy cheaper non-exchangeable tickets that commit you to a particular train, but there is no other mix of fares (apart from first and second class) in Germany, either on Intercity or ICE services, as, fortunately, airline-style pricing and the other nonsensical features of the UK's ticketing chaos were staved off there. Fares are calculated using a base rate per km, which is higher depending on the class of train. 'Normal' exchangeable, open train choice tickets (first or second class) have a fixed tariff, and they don't change irrespective of when you buy them.

I should also make clear that I'm not against high-speed trains per se. I use them, e.g. the Eurostar, several times a year. I just don't think they've done the railways nearly as much good as other measures can or could have done.

The lost railway lines either went nowhere and were closed for good reason, have been built over in key sections, or do nothing to add capacity in congested urban areas. Usually, all three.

I'm well aware of these sorts of arguments, and I used to subscribe to them, too, but I don't any more, mainly because they're all contingent on the political will not being there. It's true that many successive governments have simply not shown it. However, adducing technical difficulties like that is very much like the tail wagging the dog. They're technical difficulties; of course they can be overcome. They cost money? Sure, so you do them as slowly or as fast as you can, but you simply need to start somewhere. Yes, without backing by the Government these things will indeed continue not to be done indefinitely, but that's hardly news.

As an example, in London, one of the Livingstone administration's achievements was to reinstate most of the Broad Street line for a reported £800 million (obviously minus the terminus in the demolished Broad Street station). This was a long-delayed project and one of the policies Livingstone brought out of deep freeze from the 80s. OK, it resulted in some terrible development in Dalston and the destruction of most of the Shoreditch Goods Station undercroft, which is a sad loss, but it was done. It's been followed by quite a few railway upgrades all around London. I'm not particularly fond of improving London at the expense of everywhere else, but if you start somewhere you will be able to continue to tackle projects one by one.

Reprioritising an alignment for a railway line is generally not difficult with the right legislation backing it. Just look at the destruction currently being perpetrated in the name of HS2, backed by a powerful Act of Parliament. Compared to that, acquiring/re-acquiring the land for smaller lines is a doddle. Sure, it's not as spectacular and you don't get to make as many notches for ancient woods on your bulldozers, but with political will, as above, compensating landowners who have built on old alignments is not rocket science and would in any case be a small part of any budget for re-opening most lines.

Also, no railway lines went 'nowhere', of course. They all went to towns, villages, or industrial sites, many of which have been disconnected from the rail network for some considerable time. There are many examples of disconnected towns, e.g. Devizes, which is quite a sizeable town but which lost its two railway stations. Even if one were not to reconnect them all, there are plenty where this would be worth doing (and as a public service, not for profit).

On capacity: it's really not about that in the first instance. 'Capacity' is one of the great mythical concepts of transportation (not only in rail). What people usually use it to refer to is greater concentrations of trips to a few, or even just one, central destination(s). I've spent many, many meetings arguing with traffic engineers about capacity. However, for the most part what is missing are connections (e.g., orbital ones in London) that spread trips so that there is a more even distribution of economic activity (which needs to be backed by the right kind of development in the right places), and great concentrations of capacity aren't needed, all the while supporting a sustainable level of centralisation.

Transport policy needs to improve connections for everyone, not just serve ever higher capacity to only a few places. Think about how there are roads that go everywhere; the principle is still very much alive in policy, but for many decades now it's only been consistently applied to road traffic, and mostly motorised road traffic at that. It needs to become re-established for rail(roads).

If you have a major 'capacity' problem somewhere, you generally already know that something is wrong in either the development in a central place, e.g. the recent ridiculous over-development of Central London, or how the lopsided distibution of railway lines and other transport links create(d) wrong development incentives. None of these things are immutable and can be changed with, again, the right political determination (which, as ad nauseam in this post, I know very well doesn't currently exist) and sensible long-term planning and foresight (which, admittedly, humans are not too good at). It would take decades in some cases, e.g. the decline of Croydon has been a long time in the making, partly because Central London has been set up to out-Croydon Croydon.

Expanding existing mainlines is ludicrously expensive and disruptive for limited gain.

I'm not talking about megaprojectitis in this case, e.g. applying HS2-style megabucks to an existing mainline. I don't like that sort of project. I'm talking about the steady, continuous, and not particularly disruptive improvements that used to be routine for all railway lines but that decades of under-investment have slowed or stymied. (Studying histories of such continuous improvement and how it works is something I find very interesting and have done a lot.) The same applies to non-urban lines. None of them were built in one piece or the way they are today. Like most things, they're never finished. On another note, I'm not even talking about mainline capacity, but the many other ways in which lines can be improved. Greater capacity can be a result, and can be especially useful where smaller lines connect to larger lines, but is by no means the only objective.

Cancelling HS2 doesn't do anything to make money appear for local transport schemes.

True, HS2 money doesn't come from a pot ring-fenced for rail improvements generally, but again, policy on railways simply depends on whether anyone has the political courage to support a different railway strategy. Going ahead with HS2 means a lot of transport funding is used in a way that I don't think is strategically good (and I'm not a NIMBY here, as the routing of the line doesn't affect me personally in my own circumstances). Nor do I think all the arguments against HS2 are sound.