When I was a kid, I had some fantasy about high speed trains… like the French TGV and Japan bullet trains; I actually thought that those trains could reach a destination faster than an aeroplane.
The fantasy kinda shattered when I took my first train journey to Kuala Lumpur from Ipoh (or Ipoh to KL, can’t remember correctly) when I was around 9 years old… and it took around 4 hours to reach the destination, as fast as a car could be.
I am still interested in trains though, and I always believe that a good train network is an important factor to build a modern country. I was more affirmed about the idea when I visited London for the first time 5-6 years ago, when I saw how good their Underground (sort of like our LRTs) system was.