Holiday | LifestyleLetters to the editor

PARIS TO ST PANCRAS

11/09/2013 00:00

by MONITOR
THERE was plenty of symbolism about the first run of a Eurostar train from Paris to St Pancras station in London yesterday.
There was a jazz band to speed the train on its way from the Gare du Nord in Paris and a brass band to welcome it in London. French passengers no longer had to swallow the indignity of arriving at Waterloo station. But the discovery of arriving from Paris in just over two hours only to find that onward travel by London's underground was impossible because of a strike was perhaps the strongest symbolism of all.

Eurostar hoped that Monday's showpiece journey would take exactly two hours but it overran by three minutes; even so it was a record. Eurostar has a two-hour club which embraces Brussels, Lyon and Strasbourg from Paris but when regular services to London start in November they will probably take two hours and a quarter. That should still be fast enough to compete effectively with air travel, even from the City of London airport. Return fares will continue to start at 59 pounds; from London the first train will reach Paris by 9am local time and the last will leave there for London at 9.13pm.

Put after all the euphoria over the Eurostar service has died down time should be found to welcome the transformation of the run-down St Pancras Station to its former Victorian glory, an superb example of 19th century engineering with the widest span structure in the world.