It’s All About Going Dutch For Eurostar!
In today’s Times, there is an article called Eurostar Sets Pace As Channel Tunnel Booms.
The article says.
Passengers on the Eurostar trains topped 3 million in the quarter, in increase of 12 per cent.
Apparently, there has been a big increase on the Amsterdam route, with more to come.
- A third daily service will start next summer.
- Direct return journeys could be possible next year.
- Five London-Amsterdam return journeys could follow.
That all looks good and I’m sure it would be better if the terrible connecting trains to North Germany, that I wrote about in From Amsterdam To Hamburg The Hard Way, were to be improved.
From Amsterdam To Hamburg The Hard Way
You might think that Amsterdam, which is a city of nearly two-and-a-half million people would have a good rail connection to the North German cities of Bremen and Hamburg, which have population of two-and-a-half and five million people, respectively.
But you would be wrong!
- Amsterdam to Bremen is 354 km. and takes 3 hr. 26 min to drive, but the train takes 4 hr. 16 mins with a change at Osnabruck.
- Amsterdam to Hamburg is 464 km. and takes 4 hr. 35 min to drive, but the train takes 5 hr. 14 mins with a change at Osnabruck.
The train to Osnabruck is the same for both destinations and runs every two hours.
I arrived in Amsterdam at 12:32 and the next train left at 13:00, which I didn’t try to catch as I had to queue up for a ticket
So I caught the 15:00, as I had planned, which should get me into Hamburg at 20:14, hopefully in time for supper.
I would need the supper, when I arrived, as I could find nothing gluten-free worth eating in Amsterdam Centraal station. But I did have some EatNakd bars.
The train to Osnabruck, wasn’t one of Germany’s finest and the only customer service was the checking of tickets. I didn’t check, but I got the impression, that the onboard restaurant car had gone AWOL.
There wouldn’t have been anything I could eat, if there had been a restaurant car anyway!
Incidentally, I don’t travel First Class in Germany anymore, as all you get is a better seat, with not even any free coffee.
And you have to pay about five euros for a seat reservation!
The train to Osnabruck wasn’t the fastest either, doing about 80 mph most of the way, which compares badly to the 100 mph typically attained by trains on secondary main lines in the UK like London to Norwich.
There was also an Engine Change At Bad Bentheim.
I’ve had serious delay in Osnabruck before, as I wrote in From Hamburg To Osnabruck By Train.
For a time it looked like it would be episode two, but the Hamburg train only turned up about ten minutes late.
By running at 125 mph part of the way to Hamburg, the train had picked up a few minutes.
So I had a lovely supper as a reward.
Conclusion
I’ve had worse train journeys. But not many!
At 105.61 euros it wasn’t cheap either!
Plans Revealed For £10bn High-Speed Railway To Connect Britain’s Busiest Airports, HS1 and HS2
The title of this post is the same as this article on Global Rail News.
This is the first two paragraphs.
Developers are submitting plans for a new high-speed line to the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) in response to a call for market-led proposals.
Named ‘HS4Air’, the proposed £10 billion railway will connect HS1 at Ashford to HS2 North West of London with stops at Heathrow and Gatwick airports and a spur connection to the Great Western main line.
This map from Expedition Engineering shows the route.
To minimise environmental disruption, the following should be noted.
- There is a North-South tunnel under Heathrow Airport.
- HS4Air follows the M25 to the South-West of London.
- Several miles of the route between Heathrow and Gatwick is in tunnel to the West of Horsham.
- There is a West-East tunnel under Gatwick Airport.
- The Ashford to Tonbridge Line would become part of HS4Air.
There will also be stations at Ashford, Tonbridge, Gatwick and Heathrow.
This further diagram from Expedition Engineering shows the various possible routes.
Note the following about HS4Air.
- Four major airports; Gatwick, Heathrow, Birmingham and Manchester, will be connected to the Channel Tunnel.
- Wikipedia suggests, that the line could be extended to a reopened Manston Airport.
- A Paris to Manchester passenger service via Gatwick, Heathrow and Birmingham, is proposed.
- High-speed connecting services from Cardiff, Oxford and Manchester to Ashford are proposed.
- HS2’s major interchanges of Birmingham International and Crewe, are served.
- Freight routes from Liverpool and Southampton to the Channel Tunnel will be enabled.
It looks a good basis to connect the rest of the UK to the services through the Channel Tunnel.
The article also gives some sample journey times.
- Ashford-Gatwick: 25 minutes
- Manchester-Heathrow: 1 hour 10 mins
- Heathrow-Gatwick: 15 minutes;
- Cardiff-Heathrow: 1 hour 40 mins
- Birmingham-Paris: 3 hours
- Manchester-Paris: 3 hours 40 minutes (My Estimate)
Intriguingly, the Manchester-Paris time, is the same as Eurostar’s current time between London and Amsterdam.
Conclusion
The plan seems to be well-thought out and it gives a good increase in connectivity from Wales, the West Country and the Midlands and North of England to Heathrow, Gatwick and the Channel Tunnel.
But I can see a few problems.
- Will the residents of the North Downs accept a high-speed railway through their area?
- If freight routes from Liverpool and Southampton to the Channel Tunnel are established, will residents object to masses of noisy freight trains?
- Will there be pressure for more tunnels?
On the other hand Expedition Engineering are saying that needed extensions to the UK’s electricity grid can be laid underground along the same route.
ERTMS Rollout Between London-Paris-Brussels Agreed
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Global Rail News.
This is the first paragraph.
An agreement has been reached by the infrastructure managers of the high-speed railway between London, Paris and Brussels – one of Europe’s busiest routes – to coordinate the rollout of European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS).
Rollout of ERTMS on these important routes must surely be a good idea, if it can enable extra and faster services on these busy routes.
Getlink Pushes Budget Train Service Between London And Paris To Rival Eurostar
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on I-News.
Getlink is the infrastructure company, who actually own the tunnel and they have commissioned research into the idea, as this paragraph indicates.
Currently, Eurostar trips take around 2.2o hours and depart from St Pancras. The new link between Stratford and Paris would take just over three hours, but 25-30 per cent lower operating costs would mean lower fares for passengers. The numbers come from consultancy firm Roland Berger, and was commissioned by Getlink.
Elsewhere, the article says that the service will go to Roissy, which would be convenient for Charles de Gaulle Airport.
I do wonder, if someone has their eye on a couple of Eurostar’s retired Class 373 trains.
In 2011, I posted about an idea for a Trans Manche Metro.
Heavyweight Backing Expected For £1.5bn Crossrail Extension
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on New Civil Engineer.
This is the first paragraph.
Government infrastructure tsar Sir John Armitt is this week expected to throw his weight behind a £1.5bn extension to Ebbsfleet.
The article also says.
- Circumstances have changed greatly since the 2008 Crossrail Act.
- Canary Wharf Group, who contributed £150million to the building of Canary Wharf station, may be prepared to contribute, as this will give access from their site to Eurostar.
- The extension could support the construction of 55,000 new homes and 50,000 jobs.
The extension would take ten years to design and construct.
Eurostar
After my forays to and from Europe recently by Eurostar, I feel that a Crossrail link to Ebbsfleet will be heavily used.
- As more destinations are served by trains from St. Pancras, more passengers will find Ebbsfleet a more convenient station for the Continent.
- Ebbsfleet will be linked directly to Canary Wharf, the City of London, the West End and Heathrow.
- Crossrail will give an easy Undergound-free link between Wales and the West Country and Ebbsfleet stations with a single change at Paddington station.
- When HS2 opens, there will be an easy Underground-free link between the Midlands and the North and Ebbsfleet stations with a single change at Old Oak Common station.
- St. Pancras only has four platforms with no space to expand, but it could be relatively easy to add capacity at Ebbsfleet.
If I was in charge of designing and building the Crossrail extension, I’d make sure that Eurostar made a contribution, as they will be big winners from the extension.
The City Of London
The extension may be beneficial to the City of London.
- The extension would add more stations within easy reach of terminal stations in the City.
- The extension might give an easier route to and from the City.
- After Brexit, I suspect the institutions of the City will want more good connections to Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris.
,Perhaps one of the big City companies might like to finance construction and charge a royalty on each rain?
London City Airport
Should the project to build the extension also include building a Crossrail station at London City Airport?
This would mean that passengers between places like Aberdeen, Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Isle of Man and Manchester, and Continental destinations served by train would have a more convenient interchange in London.
Ebbsfleet Valley
Ebbsfleet Valley is a proposed new town of 16,000 homes being built on brownfield land close to Ebbsfleet station.
£300million of government money has been pumped into the project. But according to Wikipedia, there has been criticisms of the project.
London Paramount Entertainment Resort
London Paramount Entertainment Resort is described like this in Wikipedia.
London Paramount Entertainment Resort (commonly referred to as London Paramount) is a proposed theme park for the London Resort in Swanscombe, Kent. The project was announced on 8 October 2012 and it was estimated to open by around 2023.. In June 2017, it was announced that Paramount had pulled out of the project[2]. However, London Resort Company Holdings still insist the project is going ahead.
I’ve never been to a theme park, as I prefer the real thing!
But others will like it!
Conclusion
The beneficiaries of extending Crossrail to Ebbsfleet, include a lot of big players with possibly large financial resources.
I would suspect that some could be persuaded to fund particular parts of the project.
After all, if a housing developer invested say £10 million, in a new station for a development and then found it easier to sell the houses, there comes a point, where they make more profit and house buyers get a much better place to live.
Eurostar To And From Amsterdam
On Tuesday I took Eurostar to Amsterdam.
The trip took three hours and forty-one minutes with stops at Brussels and Rotterdam.
The Brussels stop allows passengers to leave and join, but Rotterdam only allows passengers to leave.
As the number of passengers grow between London and Amsterdam, could there come a time, when some or all Amsterdam services don’t need to stop at Brussels.
If so, how much time would this save?
Current stops by Eurostar take the following times.
- Ashford – 9 mins.
- Calais – 3 mins
- Ebbsfleet – 6 mins.
- Lille – 14 minutes
These times have been calculated by looking at similar services that have different stopping patterns.
Note that, Calais and Ebbsfleet are faster as they are stops on the direct route.
So I suspect that if an Amsterdam service could go through Brussels without stopping, something between 9-12 minutes could be saved.
This could bring the journey time between London and Amsterdam closer to three and a half hours.
What would that time do for sales of tickets?
Eurostar Hold A Lot Of Cards
Eurostar are in a very good position on this route.
- They could run a flagship express service twice a day for those in a hurry.
- This could be backed up by slightly slower services calling at places from or to where passengers want to go. These would include Ebbsfleet, Ashford and Antwerp.
- Immigration and security clearance is probably under thirty minutes at the start of the journey and perhaps ten at the end.
- Immigration and security times will be reduced, as procedures get better.
- St. Pancras, Rotterdam Centraal and Amsterdam Centraal are all very well-connected stations.
- Extra services can be added as demand dictates.
- Eurostar is more diabled-friendly and those in smaller scooters can drive in!
- They could extend some Brussels services to Amsterdam.
- I estimate that just under 4,000,000 people live within the North and South Circular Roads and have easy access by public transport to St. Pancras.
They can also create a very intelligent booking computer system, that optimises their services. Budget airlines have been doing this for years.
What About The Airlines?
Note the numbers of passengers who fly.
According to Skyscanner, there are upwards of two hundred flights a day between London and Amsterdam. An Airbus A320 holds 150 passengers, so if there are only a hundred per flight, that is 20,000 passengers per day.
Looking at the 6th of June, Eurostar are running nine trains between London and Brussels. As each new Class 374 train can hold 900 passengers, that is around 8,000 seats per day.
So the airlines have much more capacity than Eurostar and they can add and remove it, easier than Eurostar can?
The Comfort Factor
I haven’t travelled in steerage on the new trains, as I always pay about thirty-forty pounds extra for Premium Economy, so I get the following benefits.
- A very pleasant gluten-free meal.
- A much more spacious environment.
- It’s also rare that I don’t get a window seat.
But if I did use steerage, it would be a more pleasant experience than flying on a budget airline.
I think it’s been about ten years since I flew to a city within a two-hour flight of London, where there was a rail alternative.
I also tend to come home by rail, where I often get a connection to Brussels or Paris to catch a late Eurostar to London.
Comparing London-Amsterdam With London-Edinburgh
Both routes take about four hours by train, with the Dutch route slightly quicker.
Generally, trains operate between London and Edinburgh half-hourly for much of the day, whereas Eurostar only runs twice a day.
Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Schipol Airport is surely a much bigger market in terms of possible passengers, than the Edinburgh catchment area.
I think we’ll see the astute Dutch, using Eurostar as a marketing tool to attract more passengers to the Netherlands and London’s next airport at Schipol.
Especially, as the British seem very happy with a four-hour train ride in comfort.
Eurostar Will Grow Between London And Amsterdam
For these and other rambling reasons, I think that Eurostar to Amsterdam will grow to be a successful route.
The one thing they must do, is to make it possible to come back to London, without having to clear immigration and security in Brussels.
But Eurostar know that!
Amsterdam Is Just The Hors D’Oeuvre!
Once Eurostar and the Dutch get the route between London and the Netherlands working smoothly, I don’t think it will be long before other routes are inaugurated.
Eurostar have said these could be.
- Bordeaux
- Cologne and Frankfurt
- Geneva
The key will be getting the immigration and security smooth.
I think it will continue to improve, as it seems to do, every time I travel.
Remember, the Belgians, Dutch, French, Germans and Swiss will want it to be smooth, as they will want to market their delights to a whole new market, so suspect a lot of co-operation, despite the decision of Brexit.
But, I think that a limit on a journey time of four or five hours would cut out a lot of other destinations.
Although many of the destinations like Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, Geneva and Paris will be places to have an enjoyable day or two before taking another train ride further afield.
The 15:00 From Amsterdam Centraal To Berlin
This train that leaves Amsterdam Centraal just under two hours after the Eurostar arrives and can take you all the way to Berlin, arriving at 21:22.
But this train with a change at Osnabruck, gives you a stopping-off point to Bremen, Hamburg and the Northern part of Germany.
I first came across Osnabruck, when I was left there without a train by Deutsche Bahn, as I wrote about in From Hamburg To Osnabruck By Train.
But I found a delightful hotel on the station forecourt, called the Advena Hotel Hohenzollern.
Trip Advisor give it four out of five and currently say deals are available at under seventy pounds a night.
Osnabruck is not a tourist town, but it sits where the North-South and East-West rail routes cross.
Conclusion
As the network develops, I believe that a whole new form of tourism will take advantage.
Direct Fast Train To Bordeaux Opens Up Grape Expectations
The title of this post is the same as that as an article on Page 11 of today’s Sunday Times.
Points from the article.
- SNCF and Eurostar are talking seriously about the route.
- The journey would be less than five hours.
- The service would go through Lille.
- Preferably, customs would be in Bordeaux.
- Markets include lovers of fine wines, those with holiday homes in the Dordogne and the 1.4m passengers, who fly.
- Servies could be launched by 2022.
- Fares could be as low as £90 return.
- Eurostar would probably run the service.
Points from the Internet and myself.
- SNCF already run a direct service between Lille and Bordeaux, that takes four hours thirty-two minutes with eleven stops.
- It skirts to the East and South of Paris.
- London to Lille can be achieved in one hour and twenty-two minutes.
- All of the other possible intermediate stops like Charles de Gaulle Airport and Marne-la-Vallée–Chessy for Eurodisney are covered by other services
- Under five hours is a necessity for sales and marketing purposes.
On the face of it, it would appear that under five hours is challenging, but what would happen to the times, if the journey was non-stop?
It must be under five hours!
I can’t wait for it to start.
Where Next?
Eurostar currently runs regularly to the following places.
- Amsterdam
- Avignon
- Brussels
- Lille
- Lyon
- Marne-la-Vallée–Chessy
- Marseilles
- Paris
- Rotterdam
In addition, various ski resorts are served in winter.
Frontrunners for services must be Cologne, Frankfurt and Geneva, but then Eurostar will be tracking ticket sales to make sure they add the right destinations.
Cologne is my preference for another destination.
- Cologne is an hour and fifty minutes from Brussels.
- It is well-connected to the rest of Germany.
- Frankfurt is only 62 minutes away on the Cologne-Frankfurt High Speed Line.
- Eurostar’s Class 374 trains, would appear to have sufficient power for inclines of the Cologne-Frankfurt High Speed Line.
I estimate that the time from London to Cologne will be something like three hours and forty minutes.
But if the service were to be extended to Frankfurt along the Cologne-Frankfurt High Speed Line, London to Frankfurt should be under five hours.
More Details On 30th April 2018
There is an article on Global Rail News, which gives more details.
This is the first two paragraphs.
The owner and operator of the UK’s first high-speed line has revealed it is in advanced discussions with three international operators to launch a direct high-speed train from London to Bordeaux.
HS1 Ltd, Lisea, Eurotunnel and SNCF Réseau are working on agreed timetable slots and train routes and hope that a new international train operator will be able to get the route up and running “in a couple of years”.
Who is Lisea?
Lisea is the joint venture, that built the LGV Sud Europe Atlantique to Bordeaux and now operate the line. This is all explained in this extract from the Wikipedia entry for the line.
The line was built by consortium LISEA consisting of Vinci Concessions (fr) (Vinci SA subsidiary) – 33.4%, Caisse des dépôts et consignations – 25.4%, Meridiam – 22.0% and Ardian – 19.2%. The consortium will operate and maintain the line until 2061, and will charge tolls to train companies. The consortium invested €3.8 billion, French government, local authorities and the European Union paid €3 billion and €1 billion was contributed by SNCF Réseau (fr) (subsidiary of SNCF. Another €1.2 billion was spent by SNCF Réseau on the construction of interconnecting lines, control centres, capacity enhancements at Bordeaux and remodelling the track layout at Gare Montparnasse.
It looks very much like a French PFI.
Who Are SNCF Réseau?
This definition of SNCF Réseau is from Wikipedia.
SNCF Réseau is the infrastructure division of SNCF, and carries out track and other infrastructure maintenance, design and construction. Subsidiaries in the group include Systra, Inexia and SNCF International.
I have read that SNCF Réseau can be thought of as a French Network Rail.
More On Where Next?
The Global Rail News article also says this.
HS1 is also in discussions with operators to launch routes to Frankfurt and Geneva and has appointed a new market development lead, Edmund Butcher, to develop these plans.
As I said earlier, London-Frankfurt times would appear to be under five hours.
I can’t find a definitive time between London and Geneva, but I suspect it’s under six hours.
Other places and times could be.
- Barcelona – Under ten hours – But gorgeous views through the Camargue.
- Nice – Under nine hours – I did it once, as I wrote in Cambridge to Nice by Train.
It should also be noted, that as the French and German high speed networks grow, there will be large numbers of places accessible within a day, with a single change at places like Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt, Geneva, Lille, Lyon and Marseille.
I haven’t mentioned Paris, as changing at Paris often involved a trek across the city!
Eurostar Announces Launch Date For Amsterdam Service
The title of this post is the same as this article in Global Rail News.
This is said.
- The service will start on April the 4th.
- London to Amsterdam will take three hours and forty-one minutes.
- London to Rotterdam will take three hours and one minute.
- Trains will leave London at 08.31 and 17.31.
But going to London will require a stop at Brussels to clear UK Immigration and security.
Hopefully, by the end of 2019, they’ll be a direct service in both directions.,
The Anonymous Widower 