On Mar 12, 10:30*pm, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 21:39:43 on
Fri, 12 Mar 2010, Paul Scott remarked:

There hasn't been an monopoly on international rail services since the
start of the year.

There's something very like a monopoly unless they make a decision to allow
other rolling stock to be used...

Didn't they do that too?

I don't think the Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission (IGC)
has actually made any changes to the requirements yet. I think it was
just Eurotunnel saying that they don't see the need for the
requirement to have splitable passenger trains - but whilst Eurotunnel
might have a strong position in terms of pushing for the change, they
don't have the final say.

And there are other requirements aside from that one - I think there's
a load of fire resistance stuff. How many modifications an ICE set
would need I've no idea, though my guess is that it'd need to be
custom built from scratch rather than having it retrofitted.

Simply because the press keeps on coming out with stuff saying that DB
are on the cusp of running Chunnel services don't mean it is so...
There's a few entities interested in keeping this idea ticking over in
the public consciousness, such as Eurotunnel and HS1 who both want the
extra traffic and hence extra income (the masterplan being that the
government will flog HS1 soon, so talking up its traffic growth
potential makes some sense).