How does the Eurostar get from St Pancras station to the main south east rail line through London?

Question

how does it go through a station using northbound trains even though the train is going south. Is there a brand new tunnel underneath london or does it have to circumnavigate the whole of london just to get to Kent,Dover and paris.

Answer 1

Yes, there is a tunnel . Although St. Pancras station faces north, the Eurostars will use the Channel Tunnel Rail link - or High Speed 1 as I think it is now called. They will turn right beyond the station into a tunnel which runs along (roughly) the north bank of the Thames, until the river is crossed just east of Gravesend to a new station at Ebbsfleet. A map is available here:- http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/transportiss...

Answer 2

They've got a new 12mile long twin tunnel, which can be seen on Google Earth just North of St.Pancras / Kings Cross stations.

Here's the links to find it:

GOOGLE EARTH Community:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded....

On GOOGLE MAPS:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://bbs...

(Zoom out, and left a bit)

On GOOGLE EARTH:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?...

Answer 3

Eurostar is a train service connecting London and Kent in Britain, with France (primarily Paris and Lille) and Brussels in Belgium. Trains cross the English Channel via the Channel Tunnel. In Southern England, a new railway line has been built to the same high-speed LGV standards used in France. The two-phase Channel Tunnel Rail Link ("CTRL") project has been partially in operation since 2003, reducing times to and from London Waterloo. Eurostar have announced that from opening of the CTRL into London St Pancras on November 14, 2007 it will be branded as High Speed 1.

Since the first revenue-earning Eurostar trains ran in November 1994, Eurostar has established a dominant share of the market on the routes it serves. In November 2004 Eurostar stated that their share of the combined rail/air market share had grown to 68% for London⇔Paris and 63% for London⇔Brussels. The company noted that these passenger figures represented a saving of 393,000 carbon dioxide-producing short-haul flights.

Works about to finish near Brussels South will additionally provide a four-minute improvement for all Brussels-bound services. Completion of the dedicated rail link on the British side will allow a significant potential increase in the number of Eurostar trains serving London. Separation of the CTRL from UK domestic railway services through Kent means that timetabling for Eurostar train paths will be unaffected by peak-hour restrictions. After CTRL2 is completed, up to eight trains per hour in each direction will be able to travel from London to Continental Europe, moving the bottleneck in capacity to the Channel Tunnel.

Some Eurostar services stop en route to Brussels and Paris. Current intermediate stations are Ashford International, and Calais-Fréthun and Lille-Europe in northern France. Eurostar also run daily services to Disneyland Paris, a weekly summer-time Avignon service, and twice-weekly to Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Aime-la-Plagne and Moutiers in the French Alps for the ski season.

Answer 4

It is done with tunnels.