London to Paris in Two Hours

[Nickodell]

At long last the high-speed line from London to the Channel Tunnel has been completed (the French side was done before the tunnel was finished). Prior to this, trains had to travel from London to the tunnel by track first laid down 150 years ago, with a 45 mph speed limit in place, then they could accelerate to 150 mph in the tunnel and more than 200 from the exit in France to Paris.

The new High Speed Line 1," allowing a cruising speed of 186 mph has cut 20 minutes off the trip. A test train, doing 200 mph on the English side, did London to Paris in 2h 3m 39secs. It is now much faster to go by train between the two capitals than by air, due to the travel from the cities to their airports, and security delays.

Makes you think.

P.S. I made the trip in 2002. The trains are special sets, with the cars permanently joined (except for servicing), all very quiet and air conditioned, great food. At the point where the countries officially meet, the train master (conductor to Americans) announces that you have now crossed over between the island and the continent, something that could not previously be done since the ice age except by sea.

On the French side the scenery goes past very quickly indeed. When they laid the track they essentially took a ruler and drew straight lines. The vast reserve power of the electric locos means that for the first time there was no real need to survey the topography so as to restrict gradients to some 2%. The trains just gallop up and down the hills. The same goes for the TGV (Train a Grand Vitesse), i.e. High Speed Trains. Although they cruise at 200mph, one on a test run hit 357mph.

 

[Bill Blue]

Nick, made the trip at about the same time you did. The only downside to the whole thing is the compression encountered when going under bridges. Painful to the ear. Did you notice that? We were in the last car, does that make a difference? All in all, awesome. 180 mph with zero sensation of speed and a perfectly smooth ride.

Even with the 45 mph cruise through the English countryside, we were told it was quicker overall than going by air. We really need to get our act together. Maybe a few hundred more instances of people setting on the tarmac for 8 hours in an aluminum tube will get people interested.

Bill

 

[Jim E]

Way past that now Bill. I recall when I was a kid we had electric street cars, early 60s in Sandusky Ohio was nice you could get around down town pretty easy. Then they went away, my guess is GM was the doer of the dead cause they certainly bought up all the street cars around the rest of the country and shut them down. YOU WILL BUY A CAR or ride our busses.

Lived in Honolulu while in the Navy, now there is a place that needs a train..... during rush hour it is about 2-3 hours to go 12 miles. I rode a bicicle to work. Think it took them about 50 years to build one of the shortest ?interstate? freeway systems in the country. Mainlanders thought it was funny to call it an interstate being it is a long way to the next state.... They should have brought some folks in from Japan to show them how to build a train system.

 

[Nickodell]

Bill: I remember the compression, and being surprised in view of the "sealed" carriages. We were in the middle, and a knowledgeable passenger who commutes daily (!!!) said that it's worse up front. The only time I've traveled faster on land was the 260-270mph before the Concorde left the runway.

With the opening of the Chunnel, London businessmen bought very cheap property near Calais (where it emerges in France, and the only stop before Paris) and commuted daily to work in about 75 minutes. Now, with the high-speed line across Kent, their journey time is down to a bit over an hour.

Prior to the Chunnel, the fastest way across was via the hovercraft. I made a couple of round-trips on this in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was an amazing experience. You sat in what exactly resembled a Jumbo airliner interior, and when the engines started the whole affair rose up and then turned round on its axis and slid down the concrete slipway into the sea, like a magic carpet. You felt nothing when it met the water. After threading its way out of the harbor, it accelerated to about 70 kts, and you got an amazing view of large tankers and freighters rushing by. Dover to Calais took about 25 minutes. They still run on many short sea routes around Britain, as they are usually four or five times faster than ferries. British invention, by Sir Christopher Cockerell in the 1950s, although another Brit. engineer, Sir Isaac Thorneycroft had experimented with something similar 80 years earlier.

Britain introduced some relatively high-speed trains in the 1960s, called the Intercity 125, the number referring to the maximum cruising speed. These operated between some large cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester. They were similar to the Eurostar trains that serve the Chunnel route, and the TGVs, in that they had a motive power unit car at each end, both powering the train, so they did not have to use a separate loco and simply reversed direction at the end and beginning of each trip. They were diesel-powered, as much of Britain is still not served by an electric catenary system.

This was a revolution in Britain, as it allowed people who worked in London to commute to places as far as 100 miles (or more) from the city, and still only take an hour for the trip; this allowed them to buy houses at much lower prices. My brother had a very modest house in a suburb of Birmingham. When the Intercity 125 began operation between that city and London, it made an intermediate stop at a station called "Exhibition Centre," which was just a 10-minute walk from his house. Suddenly, London businessmen started buying up all the houses in the area, as they could get them at 1/4 the price of London. When his house value soared, my brother sold it and bought a nice place at the shore.

Timing is all.