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Eurostar Rolls On
For those of you fellow train lovers, here's a bit of news. The awesome London-to-Paris Chunnel train, the Eurostar, is moving next year from its home at Waterloo station to the St. Pancras station.
This train is nothing to sneeze at: central London to central Paris in under 3 hours, in quiet, smooth high-speed (186 mph max speed!) luxury, through the Chunnel, for as little as 29.50 pounds ($58USD).
Apparently, the tracks to Waterloo aren't modern enough to handle better speeds, severely slowing the train as it rolls into London, so they're moving the terminus to another station, northwest of London.
In November next year, renovations to London's St. Pancras station will be complete, allowing eight trains to sit side-by-side in a modern new station. Trip time will drop by a half hour or more. And the St. Pancras/Kings Cross station is pretty centrally located, and on the Circle Line Tube.
Some folks aren't too happy, though. After all, Waterloo is placed well for those south of the center, and those working at Parliament.
Filed under: Europe, France, United Kingdom
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sqaaak Jan 27th 2007 2:28AM
Why not retain the existing Waterloo Eurostar Terminus, and have both termini available, so that passengers from both the Waterloo area (including govt offices!) and the Northern, St. Pancras side of London can be served? This would seem an excellent solution!
Merely moving the location to St. Pancras, and depriving the whole of the Central/South/West End — a vast constituency! — seems a flaky and cheap idea, for all that the St. Pancras loop may be, trackwise, better suited to HS operation.
In any event, at some point in the future — nearer than further, one would hope, assuming a certain degree of intelligence on the part of politicians and planners — the Waterloo Eurostar Terminus will have to be upgraded to HS operation, so why not retain it?!
Is it a budget thing?
There's a saying...buy cheap, GET cheap.