TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

Eurostar currently serves two main routes: London - Paris and London - Brussels, both with intermediate stops on some trains. There are also seasonal services to French Ski destinations (winter) and Avignon (summer), plus daily service to Disneyland Paris. With the opening of phase 2 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link high speed line from London St. Pancras station (the new international terminal in London, replacing Waterloo station) and the Channel Tunnel on November 14 of this year and the corresponding reduction of travel times between London and Paris to 2 hours 15 minutes, the focus of service expansion and improvement might shift to the addition of service to new destinations.

One obvious candidate of such an expansion would be to finally start service to cities north of London - this was already planned for the original opening of the Channel Tunnel service, but the idea was then abandoned because it did not look promising enough. The connection through/around the city of London would have been cumbersome at best. But with the new high speed line that terminates on the north side of London, such connections will become much better - there will even be a direct link between the high speed line and the West Coast Main Line (already visible on Google’s satellite images) to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and points north. So a direct service between Paris and, say, Birmingham should be very easy to implement. Taking current Virgin Trains timetables as a guide, travel time between London and Birmingham is around 1 hour 30 minutes with 3 intermediate stops. Thus, a nonstop trip between Paris and Birmingham should be around 3 hours and 45-50 minutes.

East Coast service would also be possible, but would probably - at least initially - require a reversal of the trains at St. Pancras. Also, the option seems less attractive since cities on the ECML are smaller than on the WCML (and Scotland is too far away for attractive travel times).

One obstacle for starting services on routes with lower expected ridership is the fact that until now, the only trainsets allowed through the Channel Tunnel are the original Eurostar trainsets that consist of 2 motor cars and 18 coaches. 7 additional trainsets were originally built for the “North of London” services with 14 instead of 18 coaches, but that still seems like a lot. Regular TGV trainsets used on domestic lines in France only have 8 coaches.

Maybe the North of London trains could also be scheduled to stop at Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Ashford - at the same time, the London - Paris trains could run nonstop and thus provide an even more attractive travel option.

Other options for new Eurostar destinations would be service to Amsterdam over the new HSL Zuid line or possibly service east of Brussels to Cologne and other points in Germany. For these services, new trainsets would have to be built however - since the currently existing trains are not able to run over those lines.

All in all, the future looks promising - as all the various high speed rail lines in Europe are growing together and are starting to form a truly continental network.

Today, I ran across a reference to the “Railteam” alliance and thought “what the heck is that? Never heard that before”. So I did some research and was able to find the following information in a Eurostar press release:

The Railteam alliance will offer travellers high-speed, high-quality travel across European borders. As well as Eurostar, other members include:

• Deutsche Bahn - Germany
• NS and HSA - Netherlands
• ÖBB - Austria
• SBB - Switzerland
• SNCB - Belgium
• SNCF - France

The rapid development of high-speed lines across northern Europe, linking major cities, has created the opportunity for an alliance under the working title ‘Railteam’, which has a vision to provide travelers with:

• Seamless connections at stations
• Through ticketing and fares - one ticket/fare for a through journey
• Easy access to timetables, information, booking and train services
• Real time journey information
• Universal, high-quality standards of customer service and facilities, such as on-board internet access

[Quoted from Pan-European ‘Railteam’ alliance expands @ eurostar.com ]

(I wish we would see some of these “features” in the U.S. …)

Looks like the whole thing is modeled after the alliances that already exists between various airlines (e.g. Star Alliance, SkyTeam, OneWorld, etc.). It will be interesting to follow the developments in the future - after all, a couple of years down the road, international rail travel is supposed to be deregulated in Europe.

It appears that the “Railteam” alliance does not currently have a website - there is something at railteam.com, but it does not appear to be related.

I meant to write an article about upcoming new rail lines that are scheduled to open in Europe this year, but I just ran across this piece by columnist Ed Perkins (written as part of a more generic travel article, so you might not have noticed the rail content …), where he sums up the most important parts quite nicely.

Rail: Focus on Europe. The Europeans remain serious about high-speed rail, and you’ll see some major improvements this year: The last remaining high-speed segment between London and the “Chunnel” will open late this year, cutting 15-20 minutes off the already spectacular rail times between London and Brussels (less than two hours) or Paris (a bit over two hours). From the new station at St. Pancras to the Continental terminals, travel will be entirely on high-speed tracks, with speeds up to 186 mph.

France will open most of the LGV Est line from Paris to near Strasbourg, with a branch connecting to Frankfurt, Germany. Belgium and the Netherlands will open high-speed links, cutting train time from Amsterdam to Paris to just three hours. Spain expects to complete most of the high-speed line between Barcelona and Madrid this year. Late in the year, Switzerland will open the new 20-mile low-level Lotschberg tunnel between Brig and Bern, cutting an hour off travel times between Italy and Germany.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to talk a lot and do little about high-speed rail. At best, we’ll see a few improved (but conventional) speeds on a few Midwestern Amtrak routes. The main improvements will be in local public transit and commuter systems — welcome, to be sure, but not a substitute.

[Quoted from Expect higher hotel rates and more hidden fees (sfgate.com)]

I also like his comment about, well, the non-existent U.S. rail program. Although there might be some good news: Apparently, Senators Lautenburg, Lott, Inouye and Stevens are planning to re-introduce the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act next week - if you support this, call your senator to encourage him/her to support this bill!

Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Trent Lott (R-MS), Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
and Ted Stevens (R-AK) plan to re-introduce the Passenger Rail Investment
and Improvement Act next Tuesday.

[Quoted from an email newsletter from NARP]