Eurostar Runs “Love Trains” to Announce Restored Timetable
Magyarul a pendolino.blog.hu-n.
Eurostar announced extra trains for this weekend for their London-Paris service via the Channel Tunnel. Besides supporting romantic trips to Paris for the Valentine’s, the British-French-Belgian train company has also prepared for Scottish fans watching the Six Nations rugby match in Paris right now. Tickets cost from EUR67 and the journey time is just over 2 hours. According to bookings, some 100,000 passengers are expected.
The ‘Love Trains’ have been part of the marketing campaign to announce the restoration of Eurostar services to full speed (topping at 300 kph) and capacity beginning 23rd February. Train services through the Eurotunnel have been disturbed since 11 September 2008, when a fire broke out slightly injuring 14 people, caused by a heavy goods vehicle (i.e. truck) on a Eurotunnel Shuttle train. As restoration works completed this week, journey time between London St Pancras Int’l and Paris Gare du Nord has been restored to 2h15 (compared to almost 3 hours in the recent months, or 1h10-1h25 for flights, but don’t forget to add airport transfer times) and daily frequency to 19 trains (10 trains London-Brussels) in the following days.
More background on the Eurostar:
Eurostar is a joint venture of the three countries involved to operate high-speed passenger trains in the Eurotunnel since its opening in 1994. They share the link with freight trains and the Shuttle trains carrying cars and trucks between the entrance stations.
To enable the trains to operate on the electric and signalling systems of all three countries, Alstom delivered a heavily modified version of its TGV trainsets (classified as British Rail Class 373 and series 373000 TGV in the UK and France respectively) with several details (especially parts specific to UK standards and systems, such as 3rd rail feeding) delivered by British manufacturers (according to Oliver Keating). The trains support no fewer than 7 signalling systems, and both overhead line and third-rail electric feeding (as seen on the picture on the right), although the latter has been removed now after relocating the London terminus from Waterloo to the newly refurbished St Pancras Int’l (below) in November 2007 and the opening of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the first and only high speed line in the UK.
Alstom also had to decrease the size of the trains (the loading gauge), but not because of the tunnel (as it is designed to carry shuttle trains of trucks and double-deck car transport), but as the TGVs do not fit into the UK clearance envelope. To compensate loading gauge limitations (i.e. it is not double-decker) and the bottle-neck nature of the tunnel, the Eurostar consists of 16-to-20-car sets, being one the longest trainsets in regular service.
Photos by slimmer_jimmer, Juliang, slideshow bob and kpmarek.
