Future possibilities for additional Eurostar services
Eurostar currently serves two main routes: London - Paris and London - Brussels, both with intermediate stops on some trains. There are also seasonal services to French Ski destinations (winter) and Avignon (summer), plus daily service to Disneyland Paris. With the opening of phase 2 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link high speed line from London St. Pancras station (the new international terminal in London, replacing Waterloo station) and the Channel Tunnel on November 14 of this year and the corresponding reduction of travel times between London and Paris to 2 hours 15 minutes, the focus of service expansion and improvement might shift to the addition of service to new destinations.
One obvious candidate of such an expansion would be to finally start service to cities north of London - this was already planned for the original opening of the Channel Tunnel service, but the idea was then abandoned because it did not look promising enough. The connection through/around the city of London would have been cumbersome at best. But with the new high speed line that terminates on the north side of London, such connections will become much better - there will even be a direct link between the high speed line and the West Coast Main Line (already visible on Google’s satellite images) to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and points north. So a direct service between Paris and, say, Birmingham should be very easy to implement. Taking current Virgin Trains timetables as a guide, travel time between London and Birmingham is around 1 hour 30 minutes with 3 intermediate stops. Thus, a nonstop trip between Paris and Birmingham should be around 3 hours and 45-50 minutes.
East Coast service would also be possible, but would probably - at least initially - require a reversal of the trains at St. Pancras. Also, the option seems less attractive since cities on the ECML are smaller than on the WCML (and Scotland is too far away for attractive travel times).
One obstacle for starting services on routes with lower expected ridership is the fact that until now, the only trainsets allowed through the Channel Tunnel are the original Eurostar trainsets that consist of 2 motor cars and 18 coaches. 7 additional trainsets were originally built for the “North of London” services with 14 instead of 18 coaches, but that still seems like a lot. Regular TGV trainsets used on domestic lines in France only have 8 coaches.
Maybe the North of London trains could also be scheduled to stop at Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Ashford - at the same time, the London - Paris trains could run nonstop and thus provide an even more attractive travel option.
Other options for new Eurostar destinations would be service to Amsterdam over the new HSL Zuid line or possibly service east of Brussels to Cologne and other points in Germany. For these services, new trainsets would have to be built however - since the currently existing trains are not able to run over those lines.
All in all, the future looks promising - as all the various high speed rail lines in Europe are growing together and are starting to form a truly continental network.
