Eurostar’s new fleet of e320 trains will allow it to expand its network and start to reach its potential, says Alex McWhirter

Twenty years after it was launched, Eurostar is finally showing the promise that travellers have been expecting.

During all this time, other than a couple of seasonal services and Disneyland specials, the rail operator has continued to shuttle back and forth between London St Pancras, Lille, Brussels and Paris.

However, at long last, in May it will extend its operations beyond Paris to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Plans are also in hand to run beyond Brussels to Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam from December next year.

Amsterdam is possible thanks to Eurostar’s new fleet of 17 Velaro e320 trainsets, the first of which was unveiled in November and is due to go into service at the end of the year. Built by Siemens in Germany, the e320 can hold a whopping 900 passengers and, unlike existing trains, will be equipped with power points and wifi. (Eurostar said its trains would be fully revamped with wifi and at-seat video in time for the London 2012 Olympics, but this hasn’t yet materialised.)

Unlike today’s 750-seat trains (which are really a slimmed-down version of France’s TGVs), the e320s can cope with additional technical requirements on the European national rail network. This means they can cover more routes than the present rolling stock.

There is no doubt Eurostar has been a success on its two core routes. Although the current annual number of passengers (more than 10 million) is well down on original projections, it has managed to sweep up customers from competing modes of travel.

Why has expansion taken so long? When the company came into being, regular train users envisaged a rebirth of Continental rail travel in which many more people would choose this option for journeys between London, the regions and mainland Europe. But this never happened to the degree expected.

In the late 1980s, Eurostar’s planning teams devised an ambitious network in which day and night trains would run to mainland Europe from London and other UK cities. The regional day trains would depart from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester and other destinations in the Midlands and the West Country. They would bypass London and run through to Brussels and Paris.

Much money was spent on modifying north London’s rail tracks to accommodate these longer, larger trains.

The “Nightstar” trains were intended to depart both London and other areas. These sleeper trains were luxurious by today’s UK standards. Comfortable and with dining cars, en suite cabins and the like, they would run from the UK regions to Brussels and Paris. From London, they were scheduled to operate as far as Amsterdam, Cologne and Frankfurt.

Consisting of conventional locomotive-hauled rolling stock, the Nightstars would circumvent the problems faced by the trainsets when running over various networks.

Reader feedback suggests they would have proved popular, especially now that short-haul air travel is more of a chore than 20 years ago. But despite hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ pounds being spent on the regional trains and Nightstars, the projects were shelved at the last minute.

Why? Partly because the planners felt that these services would not be competitive with the growth in air travel from the regions – especially as low-cost carriers were now appearing on the scene – but also because of UK Border Agency requirements.

It is hard to imagine today, but in a simpler era, passport checks were carried out on board. The trainsets were built with special compartments to accommodate customs and immigration officials, and even had secure areas or “cells” where illegals could be detained until arrival.

But tougher Border Agency rules and Channel Tunnel security regulations put paid to this.

Ticketing is another issue. There are still far too many destinations both in the UK and mainland Europe where travellers cannot benefit from more attractively priced through fares.

In Rail magazine last November, author Christian Wolmar noted: “It is possible to buy tickets to travel from around 100 destinations in the UK, but that is pretty poor given there are some 2,500 overall.

“The situation for mainland Europe is even worse. For the most part, people turning up at Eurostar’s St Pancras ticket office, seeking to buy tickets for Continental destinations, are despatched to other [independent rail] agencies.”

The matter of ticketing is complex and has been covered on these pages before. While efforts have been made by computer reservations firm Amadeus and by the rail industry itself with its Railteam brand, the problems remain.

Eurostar is 40 per cent owned by the UK government, 55 per cent by French operator SNCF and 5 per cent by Belgium’s SNCB. Our government has said that it intends to sell its share before the general election, hoping to raise up to £300 million, but no date has yet been set.

In the meantime, the company’s future looks bright. In the absence of something truly futuristic, it will always offer the fastest city-centre to city-centre journey times on its core routes.

Four years ago, there were hopes its dominance would be challenged by Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, which wanted to launch a Frankfurt-London service, but it never happened. While DB will not comment, it’s believed the plans were ultimately defeated by the rules and regulations surrounding international rail travel to and from the UK.

So Eurostar retains its rail monopoly for the foreseeable future. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, only you, the traveller, can decide.

ISSUES AHEAD

When Eurostar runs well – which it does almost all of the time – the service is praised by passengers. But when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong.

Despite the best efforts of management, on at least two occasions passengers have had to spend the night on the train.

In November, a power failure in northern France turned what should have been a two-hour Brussels-London trip into a marathon lasting more than nine hours. In December 2009, five trains failed inside the Channel Tunnel overnight.

Eurostar was blamed in the official report for a lack of communication and disaster recovery. All told, 2,500 passengers were trapped on these trains and 100,000 were left stranded. It had to pay £10 million in compensation.

Other problems concern the overcrowding that occurs at the main terminals when there are delays. While existing trainsets carry a maximum of 750 passengers, the new e320s will accommodate 900 – the equivalent of two A380 superjumbos.

The operator also has to work around draconian UK Border Agency rules. UKBA no longer undertakes onboard passport inspections so passengers can no longer amble off the train on arrival. Instead it specifies that full passenger immigration and security be provided at every Eurostar station.

In the absence of checks at originating stations, this means inbound passengers from Marseille will have to clear customs, immigration and security at Lille Europe en route to the UK. It is expected that passengers from Amsterdam will be checked either at Brussels Midi or Lille Europe.

As the Channel Tunnel Act demands that all baggage be security screened before entering the tunnel, passengers will have to disembark with their luggage before rejoining the train – a process for which Eurostar has scheduled an additional 75 minutes at Lille, it has been reported.

This laborious practice, as well as adding to journey time, will not go down well with business people. Terminals, especially Paris Gare du Nord, are getting more crowded, with irate passengers posting pictures on social media when things go wrong.

Where Eurostar has shown a lack of innovation is in its failure to modify its product to reflect modern trends. When it first started, it modelled itself on full-service airline practice, but since then low-cost airlines have evolved, and with them has come a no-frills style of service.

That’s why Eurostar should also have a no-frills option, similar to the Ouigo TGVs that SNCF operates in France.

The e320s will free up existing trainsets, so it could experiment with such a product sold at cheaper fares. As with Ouigo, this would ease congestion at St Pancras and Paris Nord by operating from out-of-town stations such as Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Marne-La-Vallée.

e320 IN NUMBERS

  • 900 seats in each train
  • 20 per cent more capacity
  • 16 coaches
  • 210 kmph maximum speed
  • 17 trains on order
  • 400 metres long