"EE507" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Jul 24, 12:25 pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

The first train from London to Paris on 14 Nov is the 12:30 - I
always suspected that a truly 'overnight' move from Waterloo would be
a little ambitious to say the least.

Is that definite? If so I have a £59 day return on the first public
service
out of St Pancras International - bargain. I was assuming the earlier
trains might have been fully booked.

Deduced from online booking engine. The 12:30 is showing fully booked
for some categories of business/first class, consistent with VIP
getting the best seats...

I managed to get 2 Leisure Select 1st singles on the 12:30 departure at (I
think) at £79.50 each. Only downside is we can't use the Eurostar Lounge at
Kings Cross (if it will even be open on that day) but it's a great deal
considering we're on the first St Pancras-Paris service. Plenty of Leisure
Select availability the next day coming back.

David Walters wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:25:18 +0100, Paul Scott wrote:

The first train from London to Paris on 14 Nov is the 12:30 - I
always suspected that a truly 'overnight' move from Waterloo would
be a little ambitious to say the least.

Is that definite? If so I have a £59 day return on the first public
service out of St Pancras International

I'm afraid there appears to be an 11:06 to Brussels so you aren't
on the first public service.

Won't the first trains to use the new line be coming in rather than going
out? Or will they travel ECS from Waterloo to St Pancras?

David Thornhill wrote:

David (Who has yet to do Waterloo - Paris, despite several trips each year
to Brussels.)

What is the exit from Brussels like now?
The only time I went, the queue seemed to go along half of the train,
and took around 40 minutes to get through the barrier, I only had a 1
hour connection, and needed to buy an onward ticket as well so was a bit
worried about getting it.
Then I saw the long queue for tickets - luckily there was 1 window for
'International' tickets with no queue, to which I went, and was berated
for asking to go to Rotterdam, when I should have queued in the
'domestic' queue. I was served though, and just made it.
Alan.
--
To reply by e-mail, change the ' + ' to 'plus'.

"John Rowland" wrote

Won't the first trains to use the new line be coming in rather than going
out? Or will they travel ECS from Waterloo to St Pancras?

AIUI E* are transferring from North Pole to Stratford depot at the same time
as they transfer from Waterloo to St Pancras. So I'd expect that trains
coming out of service at Waterloo on the last day there to run ecs towards
North Pole as usual, but to continue round the NLL and HS1 to Stratford.
Trains already at North Pole would be transferred to Stratford, and trains
coming in to service at St Pancras will arrive ecs from Stratford.

Peter

On Jul 24, 8:59 pm, brixtonite wrote:
On Jul 24, 5:14 pm, Mark Morton wrote:

Dr Ivan D. Reid wrote:

Guardian has a double-page of the DLR boring machine broken through
at Woolwich Arsenal -- haven't found a link on their site yet.

Once the DLR is open at Woolwich Arsenal, is there going to be an
increase in National Rail services calling there?

If you're going to/from Kent, at what point along the DLR Woolwich
branch will it be quicker to go via the DLR and change at Woolwich,
rather than go via Canary Wharf and change at Greenwich on NR?
From anywhere between Bank and King George V. The DLR website gives

Woolwich Arsenal to Bank as 27 minutes, while Greenwich to Bank is 22
minutes; and the train takes 11 - 13 minutes to get from Greenwich to
Woolwich.You'll only be better going via Greenwich if you're
travelling from stations between Pudding Mill Lane and Lewisham.

If you're at Bank, then just get on a train at Cannon Street.

I am trying to work out the main use of the extension. Anyone wanting
the City will just stay on the train to Cannon Street. Anyone wanting
Canary Wharf will need to change at Greenwich or Lewisham or else have
to change again at Poplar or Westferry.

So the real link it adds is for people who want to cross the Thames
and head towards places like Stratford, which for the moment they
can't without changes, or London City Airport. It's a pedestrian
alternative to the Woolwich Ferry and foot tunnel, and can't be much
more till new connections are build north of the Thames.

On Jul 24, 11:21 pm, D7666 wrote:
On Jul 24, 11:44 am, Boltar wrote:

How different are these standards to those required for the rail
tunnels in the alps?

Has been discussed ad nauseam in uk.railway over the last 10 years.

Well excuse me for not trawling back through a few hundred thousand
posts from the 90s.

B2003

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:05:10 -0700 someone who may be Boltar
wrote this:-

How different are these standards to those required for the rail
tunnels in the alps?

Has been discussed ad nauseam in uk.railway over the last 10 years.

Well excuse me for not trawling back through a few hundred thousand
posts from the 90s.

I'm sure a search engine would reduce the number of postings to look
through, by a large number.


--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

David Hansen wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:05:10 -0700 someone who may be Boltar
wrote this:-

Well excuse me for not trawling back through a few hundred thousand
posts from the 90s.

I'm sure a search engine would reduce the number of postings to look
through, by a large number.

Surely that's the point of the Google Groups archive. It takes seconds to
pull up postings from the past.

Boltar wrote:
On 24 Jul, 12:28, PhilD wrote:
Only if they can be modified to comply with Channel Tunnel safety
standards, plus whatever signalling systems are necessary. This is
not easy, so it would probably be easier to build new.

How different are these standards to those required for the rail
tunnels in the alps?

This subject has been covered to death on both uk.railway and
misc.transport.rail.europe. In summary, services other than London -
Ebbsfleed - Ashsford - Lille - Paris/Brussels are not practicable in the
current situation for two main reasons:

1) All platforms at which the trains call must be secure zones, will the
only entry to the platform through security. This has the effect that
if you have more than a couple of trains a day, you need dedicated
platforms. Useful destinations such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Cologne,
Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester have no spare platforms and no space to
build new ones. This could be solved by dealing with security and
Immigration on board the train between London and Ashford (outbound) or
Lille and Calais (inbound), putting undesirables off the train at
Callais/Ashford.

2) Trains through the tunnel must meet very stringent safety
requirements. Probably the most awkward of these is the need to be able
to didvide the train to use part of the train to remove passengers so
that a disabled and dangerous half-set can be abandonned in the tunnel,
and the passengers can be evacuated. Conventional TGVs are indivisible
sets, and coupled sets have no access between the two halves. ICE3s
suffer a similar problem for different technical reasons. To solve this
would either require the safety regulations to be eased, to something
closer to those in place in other long tunnels in Europe (eg the Severn
tunnel, the various alpine tunnels &c.).

Both of these problems can only be rectified by changing the treaty
between the UK and France that allowed the tunnel to be built. While
not impossible, it would take a great deal of time and effort to make it
happen, and most discussion on these two newsgroups has come to the
conclusion that it is highly desirable from a railway perspective, it is
unlikely to happen any time soon.

Robin

"R.C. Payne" wrote in message
...

2) Trains through the tunnel must meet very stringent safety requirements.
Probably the most awkward of these is the need to be able to didvide the
train to use part of the train to remove passengers so that a disabled and
dangerous half-set can be abandonned in the tunnel, and the passengers can
be evacuated. Conventional TGVs are indivisible sets, and coupled sets
have no access between the two halves. ICE3s suffer a similar problem for
different technical reasons. To solve this would either require the
safety regulations to be eased, to something closer to those in place in
other long tunnels in Europe (eg the Severn tunnel, the various alpine
tunnels &c.).

Both of these problems can only be rectified by changing the treaty
between the UK and France that allowed the tunnel to be built. While not
impossible, it would take a great deal of time and effort to make it
happen, and most discussion on these two newsgroups has come to the
conclusion that it is highly desirable from a railway perspective, it is
unlikely to happen any time soon.


Not forgetting that it suits Eurostar to have what is in effect a non tariff
barrier to competing new entrants to the cross channel route, so they aren't
likely to propose a relaxation of the standards. It will be interesting to
see eventually if that extends to buying high cost like for like
replacements for the existing trains, rather than 'off the shelf' units from
the then current range of TGV type trains.

Paul