Well your Ist remark is rather ironic nd contradictory but nyway,
going from suisse to FRA one is bound to see variations in speed due to mountaneous region(though I havnt been dere), same happens if one takes Paris-Milan TGV(exp vividly by my cousin), run is mostly 300 kph till Lyon but dramatically reduces post that when it encounters hill section(Alps) along border and once on Italian plains it rarely crosses 250 mark(even though Italy has 300+ tracks).
Certainly not every train in Europe is HST/semi-HST(semi-HST has more of a symbolic value)
Regarding...
more... sf, I don't think dere are any pan-european stds for it as they are for HST...
Regarding selling old technology, buddy dats a hard Indian fact dat is true for most of engg. fields except d ones which we were not given(ICBMs, nukes etc.)