Wild experienced "a feeling of deep gloom," but he knew the concept was too good to give up. He began to think of the possibilities of a Sydney–Canberra–Melbourne journey of firstly six hours, then progressively shorter. Eventually he fixed on the notion of completing the journey in three hours, which would be highly competitive with air travel. That meant a speed of 350 kilometres an hour – although the world's fastest train at that time, the French TGV, only travelled at 270 km/h. (Later he was to set his sights on a symbolic speed, just as 60 miles per hour had been the target in his youth: 360 kilometres an hour, because it represented 100 metres per second.)