By Chris Bryant, FT.com, September 4 2007
Eurostar recorded a record time of just over two hours on its inaugural journey on a new high speed rail line carrying trains from Paris to the refurbished St Pancras station in London.The train, travelling at speeds of up to 202mph, took two hours, three minutes and 39 seconds to complete the Paris-London route via the Channel Tunnel, a journey which normally takes two hours and 35 minutes.
It was the first time a train had run on High Speed One, a £5.8bn British high speed rail line, which from November 14 will cut the average journey time between London and Paris by 20 minutes.
Eurostar removed food service trolleys and ran only half-full in its atemtp break to compete journey in two hours, but was thwarted by a speed restriction on the line near Calais.
When regular services from St Pancras begin in November the journey will take a more sedate two hours and15 minutes at a maximum speed of 184mph.
Eurostar hopes the time-saving will help it increase passenger numbers from 8.3m this year to 10m by 2010 and from November passengers will be able to buy through-tickets from stations in northern Britain to the continent.
“Today marks Britain’s entry into the European high-speed rail club,” Richard Brown, Eurostar chief executive, said. “We can now run trains at high speed all the way from the Channel Tunnel to London, making journeys between cities quicker, more convenient – and far greener than flying.”
Eurostar trains currently trundle through south London into Waterloo station at speeds of between 60 and 90 mph.The new 25-mile section of high speed track allows trains to reach 140mph in tunnels to the east of the City before it emerges at St Pancras in central London, north of the Thames.
“Now the French people can finally forget Waterloo,” Guillaume Pepy, chairman of Eurostar, joked.
London and Continental Railways, the company responsible for the new line, a new £100m station at Ebbsfleet and the refurbishment of St Pancras, hopes it will lead to £10bn of investment in deprived parts of East London.
High-speed domestic services will begin in 2009 cutting the journey time between Ebbsfleet and St Pancras to 17 minutes.
During the 2012 Olympic Games the line will carry high-speed shuttle services between St Pancras and a new station at the Olympic site in Stratford.
“This project is about much more than just transporting passengers from London to the continent,” Rob Holden, LCR chief executive, said. “Its about the creation of a piece of infrastructure that will be a catalyst for the regeneration some of the most deprived areas of Britain.
Source : Eurostar sets Paris-London rail record article on FT.com
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