WATERLOO SUNRISE
AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF BRITISH RAILWAYS
WATERLOO SUNRISE
A Class 220 Virgin Voyager DEMU waits at Platform 2 of Gloucester station
Gloucester is a friendly, welcoming City with firm links to its twins in Jamaica and Europe. Of these, Gouda in the Netherlands is less than ten hours away by rail thanks to the innovations of the Channel Tunnel, Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now known as High Speed 1) and the Ligne Grande Vitesse (LGV) Belge – the high speed line between Lille Europe and Brussels Midi.
An NS Class EL3 EMU passes through Gouda station
This represents only a slightly longer journey time door to door than combined coach/rail and air travel and has the advantages of significantly lower costs, less of the tiresome formalities associated with flying, and extra capacity for the transport of luggage. Not only is there no weight limit ( except that each passenger carries his/her own bulk allowance of two suitcases and a hand bag on board the Eurostar service unaided ) but all luggage can be supervised by the passenger at all times. Unlike an airline there is no luggage carousel to check on landing and little danger of the luggage being lost.
A THALYS set arrives at Bruxelles Midi
Brussels is now less than two and a half hours away from London while Lille and the Pas de Calais are even closer. Similarly, Eurostars can now reach Paris in 2 hours 35 minutes, the THALYS high speed service connects Brussels with Cologne, a limited number of Eurostars run from Waterloo to the French Alps and purpose built high speed lines are spreading all across North West Europe: each one bringing potential new tourists within easier reach of Gloucester. Among the new Lignes Grand Vitesse are the ones linking Lille with Marseilles (in only 4 hours 30 minutes at an average speed on 197mph) while the opening of the TGV Est from Paris to Strasbourg in 2006 should see journey times drop from the current 4 hours 30 minutes to 2 hours 20 minutes. Paris - Amsterdam times are also set to drop from 4 hours 30 minutes to three hours in 2007 while the existing Neubaustrecke from Frankfurt to Cologne has taken journey durations from a previous 2 hours 30 minutes to one hour exactly. New high speed lines are planned for Spain and Italy and the International Railway Union (UIC) reports that the length of high speed track in Europe will rise from 3260 km in 2002 to 7000 km by 2010. Yet another 25 have been shaved off the London to Paris and Brussels times with the completion of High Speed 1 to St Pancras in 2007 and high speed passenger kilometres also look to grow from 65 billion in 2002 to 116 billion by 2010.
Indeed, railways can offer a more child friendly environment than air travel and offer greater flexibility to those from outside the EU using Inter-Rail or similar tickets.
A German ICE 3 EMU curves across Altenbeken viaduct in Westphalia
However, there is still room for improvement on the British side of the Channel as London presents a barrier to easy travel between the Continent and the West of England. Phase One of the high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link was inaugurated in September 2003 and both accelerated journeys between the Tunnel portal at Cheriton and Fawkham Junction and freed up capacity on existing lines. But CTRL Phase Two ( now known as High Speed 1 ) now terminates at St Pancras. This should offer possible direct links - and simple neighbouring platform connections - to former Midland and London & North Western main lines with the East Coast Main Line being only a five minute walk away at Kings Cross. Indeed, Eurostar's 2004 promise was a three and a half hour Peterborough to Paris journey with London and Brussels being less than 2 hours apart on 186 mph trains - but High Speed 1 represents a step back as far as Gloucester is concerned.
Waterloo International
Nicholas Grimshaw’s multi million pound Waterloo International station - with its Customs and Immigration infrastructure - has been abandoned for Continental traffic now that High Speed 1 is complete. This is not only a waste of a fine terminus but means that - the new High Speed 1 station at Ebbsfleet notwithstanding - people living nearer to Waterloo than St Pancras or Ashford in Kent have lost the Eurostar service from their doorstep. They will have to follow everyone else - passengers from Paddington included - north across a congested city to reach Brussels or Paris! Furthermore, would it not have been sensible to retain two Continental-capable terminii in the Capital in case one of them is put out of action by either planned repairs or unforseen disruption? Or indeed if future traffic grew to fill two stations?
According to The Independent of 9 December 2004, one option for the redundant Waterloo International would be its use for the domestic traffic of what is currently the South West Trains franchise. However, the chairman of South West Trains (SWT) Graham Eccles revealed that only a few trains run by the Stagecoach subsidiary from Reading would be able to use the five quarter-mile-long platforms without "big bucks" being spent on new railway junctions and a track flyover. Despite this, as of December 2007, Waterloo International is being reconfigured for domestic passenger use by December 2008.
Class 442 set 2403 Driving Trailer Standard Open 77408 waits at one of Waterloo's older platforms in 1995. These London to Weymouth Electric Multiple Units are now operated by South West Trains
However, there could have been a practical solution to the prospect of SWT being left with a £ 130 million white elephant even without further large scale enginering works - so long as Eurostar continued to run even a few of its services from Waterloo International.
First Great Western could run some of its Adelante services – or even redundant InterCity 125s – from Gloucester direct via Reading and Richmond to Waterloo – thus avoiding the need for a journey of between thirty minutes and one hour on the London Underground via Paddington. Indeed, South West Train's Bristol - Bradford on Avon - Trowbridge - Warminster - Waterloo service is already so popular that in November 2004 pressure group Transport 2000 successfully campaigned against any plans by the Train Operating Company to axe it due to possible rolling stock shortages.
The diversion of InterCity 125 trains off the Great Western Main Line into Waterloo was proved to be technically feasible after the Southall accident of 19 September 1997 and would require no new track or infrastructure to be built. Indeed, if such services could also stop at Staines and Clapham Junction, new markets in Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, North West and East London could be opened up for tourists by way of Network Rail’s North London and London Regional Transport’s District Line, both of which terminate at Richmond. Another exciting – and fully proven – timetabling option would be to connect Gloucester – Waterloo trains with Basingstoke – Norwich services at Feltham. This would open up whole tracts of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk to West Country travel with just one change of train – and Norwich services could even be extended to Portsmouth Harbour, offering an addition to the present South Wales – Bristol - Salisbury axis.
Jubilee Line extended unit 96119, the Hitachi Class 395 mock up, a 360 low emission hybrid bus and some bicycles were displayed at the Jubilee Line's Stratford Market Depot on 30 October 2006 in connection with the 2012 Olympics Transport Plan
The first of South Eastern Train's Class 395 Javelin EMUs was despatched by sea from Hitachi's Kasado factory in Japan in July 2007 with an estimated time of arrival at Southampton during August. Having undergone extensive testing prior to despatch, the six car unit was scheduled to be taken to a purpose built depot at Ashford in Kent for commissioning prior to beginning night time testing in the autumn on both Network Rail metals and High Speed 1. Four units were due before the end of 2007 with the balance of the £260 million order - 25 units - due in 2009. Externally the current South Eastern mainly white livery has been replaced by a shade not unlike the old British Rail blue.
A further boost to this scheme would be the introduction of Class 395 EMUs proposed for Kent commuter services from 2009. The 30 strong fleet of EMUs are scheduled to cut 40 minutes off average journey times from Ashford to central London, running on both existing domestic lines and parts of High Speed 1. The six carriage Japanese trains will feature CCTV, passenger information systems and facilities for the disabled and be operated under a new Kent rail franchise being issued at the end of 2004. The £20 million Hitachi built multiple units will also operate an eight minute "Javelin Shuttle" between central London and Stratford during the 2012 Olympic Games. Indeed, backers of the Cockney Games will have to live up to their promises to the International Olympic Committee over the quality of exisiting transport facilities.
Although the "Waterloo Sunrise" service described above would offer great advantages for Gloucester with no new infrastructure costs, even a few minor tweaks to the physical railway network would have benefits to outweigh expenditure.
BOTTLENECKS AND GUINNESS
Possibly the most obvious of these would be to reinstate a second track to the current single line section between Kemble and Swindon. With such a bottleneck thus avoided both freight and passenger trains could run more frequently between Gloucestershire and the Great Western Main Line (GWML). Indeed, all that would be needed apart from plain track would be a set of points moved from Kemble to just outside Swindon station. The ballast is already in place next to the existing single track.
Northbound approach to Toddington on the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Railway
In contrast it would be much more difficult – although equally desirable - to re-connect the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway to Network Rail: either from Cheltenham Lansdown to Cheltenham Racecourse or from Honeybourne to Toddington. In both cases new bridges would have to be built and local vested interests placated – although the local economic geography would be transformed in Gold Cup Week with punters able to travel directly to Cheltenham Racecourse from London by way of either Oxford or Stroud.
Class 220 and 158 trains cross in the wide cutting at Churchdown
In the jaws of this pincer also lies the possibility of the reinstatement of the four-track railway between Gloucester and Cheltenham through Chuchdown! This was built during World War II for the extra military traffic building up to D-Day and lasted up until the 1960s when the route was rationalised back to two tracks and Churchdown station closed. However, the bridges, cuttings and embankments are still wide enough to take the extra two tracks and even 10 extra miles of four track main line would be a godsend on an overcrowded system. Not least as there are very few suitable overtaking opportunities between Bristol and Birmingham.
Even with only one extra track - as modern Health and Safety guidelines on the spacing of lines are more strict than in the 1940s - a dynamic loop of more than two miles could be created. Rather than have a local train enter a loop slowly and stop while an express passes by on the main line, a dynamic loop with high speed points at either end allows such a relatively slow train to keep moving at its established speed, thus cutting out time and cost penalties otherwise incurred.
First Great Western Adelante crosses the Barnwood By Pass Bridge
High speed Voyagers and Adelantes could overtake slower freight and passenger workings, the latter being able to stop more profitably if a new Gloucester station was to be built either at Barnwood ( near Unilever ice cream ), Elmbridge or near to Staverton airport.
FLY ME TO GLOUCESTER!
A Siemens built Class 332 Heathrow Express EMU waits at Paddington station
Indeed, one relatively small addition to the railway infrastructure of London would also make Gloucestershire much more accessible to the outside World. Namely a West to South curve linking the Great Western Main Line with the existing Heathrow Express route from Airport Junction west of Hayes and Harlington to Terminals 1,2 and 3. This would allow trains to run direct from Gloucester – and other points west – to Heathrow, thereby challenging the need for an indirect Rail-air coach link from Reading General Station and the National Express 412 service. As long as they had suitable acceleration to work in among the Siemens built Class 332 Heathrow Express EMUs arriving from Paddington, these trains could be diesel powered in the absence of the GWML – and Swindon-Gloucester line – being electrified. However, given running speeds on the GWML, such a West-South curve might have to be built in a similar way to the existing flyover at Airport Junction, thus adding greatly to the costs involved.
IT’S FAST UP NORTH
AC electric engine 91 107 "Newark on Trent" leads an IC225 service at York
Despite this, one other benefit to Northern England would be trains running directly from off the Heathrow to Hayes and Harlington line, along the GWML to Acton East Junction and then by way of Neasden and Cricklewood to St Pancras. Once again, these trains – running over existing infrastructure - would not necessarily have to be electric if enough acceleration and line speed could be developed by diesel traction. However, such services would form a vital link for passengers landing at Heathrow from long-haul destinations but ultimately travelling north along either the Midland or East Coast Main Lines – journeys that are today difficult by rail ( especially with heavy luggage ) and also laboriously slow by National Express road coaches. Similarly, with the physical links planned between the two classic routes as part of CTRL2, it might even be possible to run Class 91 / IC 225 and /or Eurostar trains direct from Heathrow to Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Indeed, it might even be possible to run Eurostars direct from Heathrow – reversing at St Pancras - to Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and Cologne, allowing trains and planes to work in much closer harmony in transporting people around Europe. Were there to be a problem at Heathrow for instance, jetliners could easily be diverted to Charles De Gaulle and the passengers forwarded via the Channel Tunnel with minimum delay. The only technical difficulty with this proposal would be westbound trains crossing nominally high-speed tracks at Acton East Junction. East of Acton, IC 125 and Adelante trains do start decelerating for the approach to Paddington, but if westbound journeys by St Pancras – Heathrow trains were still deemed to be unacceptably intrusive into GWML workings then an alternative presents itself. While Heathrow- St Pancras trains could still use Acton East Junction and Cricklewood, St Pancras-Heathrow westbound workings could travel via Acton Central and Old Kew Junction to Brentford, where a new connection might possibly be made to the existing Brentford –Southall freight only line. In this way a new route would be created for the benefit of both local and international travellers alike.
AIRTRACK
An even simpler concept was put forward in the pages of New Civil Engineer magazine of 27 May 2004. Known as Airtrack, this would involve a 5 km double track branch line from Staines (as mentioned above) alongside the present line to Reading and also inside the M25 to the new Heathrow Terminal 5, due to be built south of the existing runways. It has been estimated that this could attract 15 million passengers a year and remove 5 000 road journeys during the three hour morning peak.
RING AND CROSS
Beyond these fairly modest civil engineering works however, further improvements to rail access from Gloucester to the Channel Tunnel and deep-water ports of East Anglia will have to rely on much more ambitious projects, namely RingRail and CrossRail.
RingRail – a railway equivalent of the M25 London orbital motorway – was first put forward by consultants S.B. Tietz & Company in 1992 and makes an interesting comparison with the Aussenring – or outer ring of railways - built by Deutsche Reichsbahn around Berlin between 1950 and 1961. The purpose of the Aussenring was to allow trains to travel around the old East Germany without having to penetrate Berlin’s British, French and American sectors. And RingRail had the promise of connecting not only existing railway routes out of London but Heathrow and London City airports, the Croydon tramway and park and ride stations too.
57.8 miles of RingRail’s 99.9 mile length would be along existing tracks with new works only causing minimal disruption to property and the scheme would also compliment existing Thameslink and proposed Crossrail ( see below) schemes. Costing £ 650 million at 1992 prices, RingRail would be within one mile of 600 000 residents and within three miles of 2 700 000 potential customers, not to mention those in Gloucestershire wishing to travel to the Home Counties.
Although involving less track mileage, the CrossRail scheme could cost even more to build as it largely involves tunnelling under central London rather than skirting round it. Linking Paddington with Liverpool Street via Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road and Faringdon, CrossRail would also use three bridges, a cut and cover tunnel and part of Old Oak Common Locomotive Depot to reach the former Great Central line to Aylesbury. The £ 1.7 billion (1990 prices) scheme would be electrified to 25Kv allowing EMUs to run between Shenfield in Essex and Reading, Aylesbury and perhaps Heathrow Airport. The extension of the overhead wires to Reading would also be another argument for continuing the catenary to Bristol, Cardiff and Gloucestershire. However, the tunnels bored from Bethnal Green and Royal Oak ( and meeting in a shaft at Tottenham Court Road ) through the London Clay and more sandy soil at either end were only projected to be six metres wide rather than the continental loading gauge needed for Eurostars.
A Berlin S-Bahn train
Although first put forward in the 1980s, CrossRail is now seen as a more urgent project because London’s current Underground railway infrastructure frequently breaks down. Off peak passenger numbers are also set to double by 2020 and increase by 15% at rush hour – the upper limit being decided by the number of standing passengers that can be shoved on to a tube train. Indeed, the original CrossRail idea has been developed into a "Regional Metro" concept ( rather like the RER system around Paris or the Berlin S-Bahn) with a second north-east-south line funnelling trains from Finsbury Park and Hackney Wick to Wimbledon via Tottenham Court Road.
More up-to-date details of these schemes are available at www.crossrail.co.uk, the website of Cross London Rail Links (CLRL), jointly owned by the Strategic Rail Authority and Transport for London.
London bound Class 423/1 (4VEP) EMU 3572 crosses Class 411/9 (3CEP) at Rainham, Kent, in 1999
However, at least one section of Crossrail that would have been particularly beneficial to travellers betwen Gloucester and Continental Europe seems to have been compromised by lack of investment in surrounding lines, as New Civil Engineer of 2 December 2004 reported:
Lack of rail capacity in north Kent last week forced the Department for Transport to ditch a key section of London's £ 8 billion Crossrail project. Trains on Crossrail's south eastern branch will now terminate at Abbey Wood, eight stations short of the original planned terminus at the Ebbsfleet Channel Tunnel Rail Link station in Kent. The decision to cut out this part of the route comes just four months after it was decided to drop a link to Richmond in south west London. A Crossrail spokesman said the project team had advised the DfT to drop the Ebbsfleet sections as efforts to draft the enabling bill for the project intensified. The Crossrail bill is due to go before Parliament early in the New Year. It will enable construction of an east west link across London with 24 trains an hour running through the central tunnelled section. East of London the route splits with trains heading for Essex [Shenfield] and Kent. Project promoter Cross London Rail Links (CLRL) originally developed plans for a service to Ebbsfleet. This involved running the Kent bound service as far as Abbey Wood, with four trains per hour continuing to Ebbsfleet on Network Rail track. But CLRL has since found that the logistics of turning trains around at Abbey Wood were complicated by the fact that the rail network there was only twin track. This and the need to fit Ebbsfleet trains between Kent commuter services on the North Kent line weakened the case for running trains beyond Abbey Wood. "CLRL concluded that the risk of delay caused by Crossrail trains having to interleave with North Kent Line services and the subsequent disruption to Crossrail's high frequency pattern was unacceptable." said CLRL in a statement, "A new cross platform interchange will be built at Abbey Wood to ensure smooth connection for passengers wishing to travel to and from north Kent," it said.
A map illustrating this article also showed the western limit of Crossrail as Maidenhead rather than Reading and did not include a branch to Aylesbury.
The Sunday Telegraph of 15 April 2007 meanwhile added:
It has been talked about for 17 years and has cost the taxpayer £ 250 000 000 without a spade breaking the ground. But a £10 billion cross-London railway - the biggest urban project in the World - is finally to be approved. Government ministers, already facing a £ 9 billion bill for the 2012 Olympics, are locked in tough negotiations over funding for Crossrail, but senior Whitehall sources said that "barring a disaster" a deal would be approved in the next few months. The new route will run from Maidenhead to Heathrow in the west, go underground for nearly 13 miles from Royal Oak, resurface in east London and continue to Essex and Kent in the east. For the first time, twin tunnels will be built wide enough to carry mainline passenger trains beneath the heart of the capital. The tunnels will have a diameter of six metres compared with the 3.8 metres of the Tube. The route will have 24 trains an hour running in both directions at peak times, each carrying up to 1 500 people in and out of London. A Crossrail Bill going through Parliament is expected to receive Royal Assent by the end of the year, and construction could begin in mid 2008 with some sections opening in 2015. Most of the 350 objections to the project - mainly about noise and vibrations - have been resolved. Crossrail, a government company, is confident that improved "sound-proofing" for tunnels will allay remaining fears. Ministers accept that the project needs to be started urgently to cope with London's rising population - expected to grow by 50 000 to 8 100 000 by 2016 - and ease the growing strain on the Underground. The key question yet to be answered is how much of the funding will come from taxpayers and how much from the private sector.
FROM WEST TO EAST…AND SOUTH TO LONDON!
Bicester Town Station
Massively useful though they would be, both RingRail and CrossRail rely on expensive new civil engineering works on valuable, overcrowded land in London. But why not take Ring Rail’s "Aussenring" idea one step further and link West and East England – including the continental ports of Ipswich and Felixstowe - through the south Midlands?
More specifically, East-West Rail (EWR) could use existing ( but in some cases freight only and under-used ) tracks between Oxford, Bicester Town, Bletchley and Bedford. Between Bicester Town and Bletchley, a branch could also run south from Claydon Junction to Aylesbury and Marylebone. A brand new formation would then be needed to run trains south from Bedford to Sandy on the East Coast Main Line where a new flying-junctioned north-to-east curve would take them on to Letchworth and the existing route to Cambridge, Newmarket, Ipswich and Felixstowe. Further freight-friendly features would include a chord at Ipswich to avoid trains of imports and exports having to reverse and a southern avoiding curve at Ely so that trains of international standard 9’6" tall containers could avoid Warren Hill Tunnel between Cambridge and Newmarket. However, even this feature could have its floor lowered as an alternative.
170 201 arrives at Kings Cross from Hull
As well as linking the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (perhaps Professor Stephen Hawking could drive the first train. Well, for a brief time, in a nutshell…) EWR could offer a 75 mph service linking Bristol with its opposite ports on the North Sea, giving a better utilisation of ships and de-congesting the English Channel. From the Gloucestrian point of view, through trains to Norwich via Swindon would also be a possibility, as would services heading south of Sandy to Kings Cross. In the same way, changing trains at Bletchley and Bedford would provide new routes to Euston and St Pancras.
EUROSTAR TO GLOUCESTER?
So far I have considered options for improving travel between Gloucestershire and Europe by taking British domestic trains to either Continental seaports or to Eurostar terminals in London. But how about taking Eurostar services further West?
After all, French TGV services to Geneva, Milan, Marseilles, Nice and Montpellier have already provided a springboard for British tourists wishing to tour Switzerland, Spain, the Riviera or the French Alps by local coach. If the 430 mile journey from Paris Gare du Nord to Annecy takes less than 4 hours, why not a TGV from, say, Lille to Kemble or Moreton in the Marsh for a coach tour of the Cotswolds?
Some "North of London" Eurostar sets now form GNER services from Kings Cross to Leeds
Lack of electrification west of Airport Junction is the simple answer, but there is political backsliding to consider too. On 18 December 2000 Gywneth Dunwoody, Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, Chair of the Commons Select Committee for the Environment, Transport and the Regions tabled a Commons question asking why British taxpayers had been cheated out of millions of pounds by the abandonment of regional Eurostar services. This followed a 1999 report by her Select Committee, which concluded that enormous economic benefits would have been accrued to regions of Britain beyond London by direct rail inks with Europe. These links were enshrined in Section 40 of the 1987 Channel Tunnel Act after North Yorkshire County Council petitioned against it, arguing that "Three Capital" trains alone would only benefit London and the South East.
More practically 139 carriages, to provide services from Manchester and Scotland to Paris and Brussels, had been ordered by Eurostar from train builders Alstom before the services were discovered not to be financially viable. This left Alstom £ 120 million out of pocket, British taxpayers finding the difference after the carriages already assembled were sold to Via Rail Canada for just £ 13.5 million. A further £ 109 million went to companies who had arranged to lease the trains to Eurostar although £ 140 million spent on upgrading the West Coast Main Line to take the Continental services was needed for other trains there anyway.
HIGH NOON AT WATERLOO
But what of existing Eurostar services operating out of Waterloo? Certainly after ten years of service they are no longer a novelty. In the first six months of 2002 the number of passengers Eurostar carried were down by 7.00% and its revenue by 6.00% and despite its monopoly of cross Channel rail services it was believed to be losing £ 100 million a year. It was suggested that this is partly due to its website at www.eurostar.co.uk not being very user friendly (fewer than 7.00% of customers book on line) and because its lengthy airline style check in and queuing procedures are too rigid for many people.
There were also issues of late running, although to be fair this is sometimes hard to avoid on a crowded part of Network Rail that is also prone to subsidence. French and Belgian rail strikes also helped take punctuality down to 85%, just as the events of September 11 2001, Foot and Mouth Disease and the 2002 World Cup held down general loadings.
This TGV Poste unit can trace its ancestry back to GWR Railcar 17 - built in Gloucester!
More urgently though, Eurostar services were under threat from low cost airlines flying to Paris from Britain. In particular, easyJet services from Luton to Charles de Gaulle Terminal 9 – just 400m from TGV and RER trains, buses and taxis - were priced as low as £ 17.50 one way including taxes. Rivals BA and bmi British Midland also dropped the rule that return passengers must spend a Saturday night in France – something that Eurostar still clung on to. However, the yellow trains with the overpriced food (I always take my own sandwiches!) still offered 19 services to Gare Du Nord every day compared to only two easyJet morning flights to Paris. Significantly though, November 2002 saw Eurostar cut its fully flexible fares to Paris and Brussels by up to 30% to recapture travellers who had switched to low cost airlines.
In an effort to overcome these difficulties, rolling stock ( 31 train sets, each with 770 seats), lounges and staff uniforms were revamped from French designer Philippe Starck. Premium First sections were also scheduled to have 14 rather than 24 seats to give an environment comparable to that of a private jet.
The moves seemed to have worked. According to The Times of Thursday 7 October 2004 passenger numbers on Eurostar surged by 19% in the first half of 2004. The cross Channel railway company can also claim 59% of the rail and air market on London to Brussels routes and 66% of the markets between London and Paris while British Airways and easyJet have seen a fall in passengers. In the first 6 months of 2004, Eurostar carried 3.4 million passengers through the Channel Tunnel, up from 2.85 million in 2003. Journey times have been shortened with the opening of the high speed link through Kent and nine out of ten trains arrived either on time or early. Numbers on the Brussels route have been boosted by an "all-Belgian stations" ticket policy, which allows passengers to travel on to any station in Belgium at no extra cost.
However, it is not impossible for budget airlines to continue fighting back against improved rail links - especially if the train journeys are more than three hours long. Hapag-Lloyd Express has used fares as low as 19 euros to see off an overnight Hamburg- Cologne train service. However, in the long term airport congestion and environmental pollution concerns may tip the balance back in favour of trains - rail travel creating only a tenth of the carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometre of jet aircraft.
People travelling on business within Britain are also returning to the railway, encouraged by new trains, improved punctuality and better facilities to help them work on board. The Guild of Business Travel Agents has increased ticket sales by 11% year on year and Eurostar is capitalising on this with the bonus that its trains run city centre to city centre rather than from obscure airports. Newly refurbished First Class areas feature laptop computer and mobile phone recharging sockets, table lights and enough room to work and snooze-friendly reclining seats. Standard Class areas will also have less seats and more luggage space.
Indeed, passenger service developments aboard Eurostar for 2005 should include wireless internet connectivity - an advance on the narrow band email currently offered on TGVs between Paris and Marseilles.
TGV - wired for email
In November 2004 return fares from Waterloo to Paris and Brussels started from £ 59.00 ( bookable through Rail Europe on 08705 848848 or www.raileurope.co.uk ) Other useful websites are www.eurostar.com , www.thalys.com and www.tgv.co.uk
At the same time day returns to France from Cheriton aboard le Shuttle started from £ 39.00 and could be booked through 08705 353535 or www.eurotunnel.com
THREE CAPITALS EXPRESS
To put a more personal angle on the current possibilities of Anglo-European rail connections, here is the experience of Mail on Sunday correspondent Frank Barrett, as published on 31 October 2004:
Ten past five in the morning, crossing the Thames, I glimpse the dark bulk of Waterloo Station slumbering under the cheerful, neon-lit gaze of the London Eye. Waterloo is Britain's biggest railway station but not its loveliest, especially at this hour. Even the spectacular glass-covered Nicholas Grimshaw-designed International Terminal - showered with architectural prizes on its completion 11 years ago - looks a little worse for wear. Inside the terminal the information board flashes up the first service of the day: the 05.34 to Paris. Groups of bleary-eyed passengers with roll along suitcases stumble like zombies into the departure lounge. Before boarding there is just time for a quick cup of coffee and a croissant, then it's up the moving walkway to the platform, where the quarter-of-a-mile-long Eurostar train - big enough to carry more than 750 people ( equivalent to the capacity of two jumbo jets ) - stretches out of sight. frequent travellers quickly claim their places, settle back and close their eyes. By the time the train eases its way through dark and deserted London suburbs, some are already asleep. A woman behind me manages to doze the whole way, snoring loudly. In little more than two-and-a-half hours we shall be at the Gare Du Nord in Paris. Just 20 years ago such a journey would have seemed like the very stuff of science fiction, and yet it has now become pure routine.
With the aim of reawakening some of that excitement, I am planning a three-capital day trip: an early morning start in London, a decent breakfast in Paris, lunch in Brussels and - inspired by its pre-dawn magnificence - a celebratory glass of champagne aboard the London Eye on my return. If all goes well... Once we're out of the London sprawl, the Eurostar gathers pace as it joins the recently opened high speed section of line that leads via Ashford in Kent to the Tunnel. It will be three years before the second part of the link is completed to the new Eurostar terminus at St Pancras and then the London to Paris journey time will be cut to two hours 20 minutes and Brussels will be just one hour 53 minutes away. Through the big windows of the train come a rapid succession of snapshot images of the Kent countryside, glorious views bathed in watery morning sunlight: oast houses, duck ponds, horses darting from the onrushing sound of the train. from a plane you see nothing: from a train you see everything. Ten years ago I travelled on the inaugural Eurostar service from Paris with the Queen ( and Lord Archer and, er, Jeremy Beadle - the great and the good were about that day ). The official inauguration of the Channel Tunnel was a news event that 20 or 30 years previously would have been guaranteed to monopolise the front pages. Ten years ago, however, the launch of the National Lottery on the same day largely eclipsed the Chunnel, as it was then routinely called. After Ashford the train ducks down for its dash through the Tunnel - still a thrill even ten years on. Then, in less time than it would have taken to reach Bath by train, we find ourselves in France, spearing through the fields of Flanders. I doze and wake in Paris as we rattle past different commuters in a different city. The coming tenth birthday of the Tunnel may have triggered little excitement in the Uk but in Paris the anniversary is being celebrated on the front of the Gare du Nord at least. "Happy Birthday Eurostar" says a big sign - in English! - with ten birthday candles each in the shape of Big Ben. I settle down to a substantial £ 3.00 bargain breakfast at the handsome Terminal Nord brasserie across the road from the station. I came here for lunch after the inaugural service. My principal memory of arriving in Paris that day is a confused Lord Archer asking me how to use a French payphone.
Our ultra high speed line may end in Paris but from the French capital, there are fast rail services heading in all directions. from Paris, for example, you can travel on the TGV to Marseilles in three hours 15 minutes - or to Geneva in just over 3 hours 30 minutes. But I'm on the second leg of my triangular journey, boarding a THALYS train to Brussels, a non-stop, 190 mile trip of just 85 minutes. THALYS is a high speed rail consortium of French, German, Belgian and Dutch railways offering rapid connections principally between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam,Frankfurt and Cologne ( the 300 mile journey from Paris to Cologne takes three hours, for example ) - and all that at very affordable fares. During the short ride we are offered a meal and drinks. Compared with the helter-skelter, hurry-up-and-wait world of air travel, trains are a glorious haven of peace and quiet. Is there any greater treat than sitting on a fast train quaffing a glass of Bordeaux while watching the French countryside flash past? It must have a hypnotic effect - within minutes I was asleep, brought awake by the announcement that we were arriving at Brussels Midi station. In 1972 I took advantage of the first Inter-Rail ticket to travel around Europe by train for £ 59.00, going up to Copenhagen and down to Barcelona, including a stop at Munich days before the PLO attack at the Olympic Games. I found that the enjoyable part was travelling on the train - visiting the cities was generally a nuisance. This time I planned to head into Brussels for lunch and sightseeing, but when I heard the announcement that the next Eurostar to London was departing imminently, i went straight to the gate, where they changed my ticket with minimum fuss ( getting an airline employee to change a ticket is usually like asking them to donate a kidney ) I boarded the 12.58, had a cheese baguette and another very drinkable glass of red wine and - bang on time - at 14.25 I was back at Waterloo, just under nine hours after I had left.
I wanderd straight over to the London Eye for a celebratory glass of bubbly. British Airways not only puts its name to the Eye but interestingly the airline also has a ten per cent stake in Eurostar ( a smart move - for since its launch Eurostar quickly established itself as the leading player on the Paris and Brussels routes, siphoning off a substantial part of the airlines' business). As I waited in the queue to board the Eye I couldn't help reflecting on the fact that there was more popular excitement about the opening of the London Eye and the retiring of Concorde than there ever was about the launch of the Channel Tunnel. An Eye security guard spotted my mini-bottle of champagne and said he would have to keep it until I got off because bottles and sharp objects are banned on the wheel for security reasons. So on my spin over the rooftops of London I have to raise a metaphorical glass in a modest birthday salute. For Eurostar it is appropriate, perhaps, that the celebratory champagne continues to remain on ice.
My first Channel crossing was on 8 August 1963 on a battered car ferry with a wooden turntable that allowed burly matelots to heave your vehicle around so that it could drive off the way it came on. But if things were bad for us in 1963, they had been much worse before. Until the advent of steamships in the 19th Century, cross Channel travel had been a very chancy business. Passengers could spend up to a week at Dover or Rye waiting for favourable winds to carry them to France. And their port of arrival was probably not where they thought they were going to end up, causing further complication. Given these hazards, travellers fully expected to take at least a week to get from London to Paris. The combination of steamships and steam railways made dramatic improvements in journey times - and comfort. Cross-Channel travel reached its pre-Tunnel zenith with the launch in 1929 of the famous Golden Arrow rail service, which ran with Pullman cars to Dover where passengers boarded a purpose built ferry to Calais for the onward journey in Wagon-Lits comfort to Paris. Leaving London Victoria Station at 11.00 am, passengers would reach the Gare du Nord in six hours 40 minutes for the fare of £4 12/6 ( £ 4.621/2 )
Common motive power for the Golden Arrow from the 1940s onward were Bulleid Light Pacifics like 34101 "Hartland" seen here at Basingstoke heading a Waterloo to Bournemouth train on 13 March 1965.
In business terms, the Golden Arrow was never a great success. The service started in the same year as the Wall Street Crash ushered in the Depression and the subsequent economic slump through the Thirties affected business badly. After 1945, continuing post-War austerity followed by the rise of air travel eventually killed off the Golden Arrow which made its last journey in September 1972. As a boy I remember standing on a platform and seeing the Golden Arrow with its uniformed waiters pouring expensive wine into crystal glasses and spooning vegetables on to china plates. In May 1991, little more than five months after the breakthrough allowed French tunnellers finally to shake hands with their British counterparts, I was invited to take a trip through the Tunnel. 'Don't wear your best clothes' I was advised. Well over three years before it officially opened I became probably the first journalist to ride through the Tunnel to France on a worker's train. I travelled with the then Minister of State for Transport, Roger Freeman, and Christopher Garnett, who was commercial director of Eurotunnel. That day was one of the most memorable of my life. Halfway between England and France was a padlocked gate which had to be opened by hand so that we could pass through and get on a different train. We eventually emerged on a hill near Sangatte to look back at the White Cliffs of Dover. Just over three years later I took my first trip through the Tunnel on the car-carrying Le Shuttle. Since that day I've not been on a car ferry to France again.
Napoleon first showed genuine enthusiasm for a Channel tunnel. This helps to explain why, for the next 150 years, successive British governments considerd the idea more of a potential problem than an opportunity. The Duke of Wellington - the hero of Waterloo - probably had more reason than most to be suspicious of the French. But it wasn't just the idea of a tunnel that he didn't like; he wasn't even keen on railways - he thought they would 'enable the working class to move about unnecessarily' (He was also concerned that the noise of trains travelling from Bristol to London might disturb Eton schoolboys.) Wellington, particularly, was keen to ban the construction of a railway from Portsmouth to London on the grounds that it could be useful to an invading army ( who would presumably come ashore and hop on the 08.15 to London, where they would simply seize the capital ) Wellington's anxieties about national security coloured government thinking about tunnel schemes throughout the rest of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Winston Churchill wrote in 1936: 'There are few projects against which there exists a deeper and more enduring prejudice than the construction of a railway tunnel between Dover and Calais.'
Surprisingly it took Margaret Thatcher, never famous for her internationalism, working in an unlikely partnership with socialist President Mitterand to turn the dream of a tunnel into a reality. Unfortunately traffic through the Tunnel has not come anywhere near the original estimates. The most likely reason is that it is of most benefit to people living in or near the South East. This bias is expected to be eased when the main terminal for Eurostar shifts to St Pancras three years from now, making it more convenient for people living north of London. When Eurostar is relaunched on that occasion, perhaps they ought to choose a day on which they can guarantee front page coverage.