Camden New Journal - News: KX refurb is on track as Eurostar blazes home

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Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 27 September 2007

Staff at the newly refurbished St Pancras station celebrate the arrival of the first Eurostar train from Brussels

KX refurb is on track as Eurostar blazes home

Celebrations as 186mph train breaks magic two-hour barrier from Brussels

SEVEN hundred guests spilled from a Eurostar train onto the newly restored platforms of St Pancras on Thursday to the sound of a five-piece jazz band and the news that they had just been present at the breaking of a record.
The first-ever train from Belgium pulled in to St Pancras station at 11.50am, one hour, forty-three minutes and fifty-two seconds after leaving Brussels Midi, having set a new record for a trip from a continental capital to London and for the speed at which it had crossed the Kent countryside – 186 miles per hour.
As hard-hatted builders continued to work on the sky-blue girders of St Pancras’s William Barlow train shed, Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown hailed the journey as an addition to the ‘two-hour club’, placing Brussels closer to London than Cardiff.
This reporter was among the journalists and trade correspondents invited on the inaugural trip and lavishly hosted by Eurostar, which is constantly at pains to stress the competitiveness – and environmental advantages – of its European links compared to air travel.
But while the 68-mile sprint through Kent was compelling in its novelty as the fastest rail journey on British track, the experience of travelling at speeds close to 190mph – a frictionless glide that confers a great sense of superiority over motorists labouring on the M20 – would make little news in France and Belgium, where they have been commonplace for over 13 years.
The train operator has been handicapped by the UK’s 125mph national rail speed limit until the completion this summer of the £5.68 bn high-speed link into north London – which the plentiful railway enthusiasts on Thursday’s trip declared to be the leading edge of a revolution in British rail travel.
It will also, when the Queen opens the station officially in November, bring the impact of the Channel Tunnel rail link- now called High Speed 1 – rushing into Camden.
The use of St Pancras as the rail gateway to Europe is at the heart of the £2 bn transformation of the King’s Cross area by developers Argent and station-owners London Continental Railways.
Although it has met resistance from both those who believe that Camden Council sold residents short in terms of affordable housing on the railway lands, and conservationists troubled by the loss of Victorian industrial architecture including the Culross and Stanley buildings, the project is on course for completion by 2015.
Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown, flushed with the success of the first voyage, waxed lyrical.
He said: “St Pancras is a magnificent station – it was always the most beautiful station and it is much more strategically accessible (than Waterloo), linking us to the rest of Britain.
“I hope Eurostar is going to have a very positive impact on the area – certainly it will bring a lot of jobs and it raises the whole profile and attraction of the area.”

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