Terminal Binding

Terminal Binding

Eurostar Terminal Switch in London?

In 2007 all Eurostar Trains in London Will switch from using Waterloo Station to St. Pancreas Station. If I remember correctly Waterloo serves train bound for the south and Southwest, While St. Pancreas serves trains bound North for the Midlands. why are they switching this? wouldn't it make make sence for the trains to stay at Waterloo? The track is already southbound and the use Pancreas they would need to either add through platforms or build new track so that Eurostar trains circle around London to aproach London from the north. It seems like an engineering nightmare. Why are they doing this?

The tracks into Waterloo are the Victorian layouts and routes of the old London and South Coast Railway, and the Dover and Chatham Railway. They weave through south London on a series of viaducts and arches before heading out into the Kent countryside where they have hundreds of stations. This section of Britains railways is one of the busiest in the country, bringing in hundreds of thousands of commuters on a daily basis. South London lacks many of the tube facilities of central areas so people rely on the overground trains much more, hence the overcrowding on the trains is quite unbearable in the mornings.

The trains to the continent are designed to run at high speed. They cannot on the busy suburban lines of south London and Kent as the track would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade and create passing places for slow and fast trains. Hence the best option was to build a new high speed line.

There was much debate about the routing of a high speed line, and as is obvious it is still under construction, more than a decade after the Channel Tunnel opened. Finally it was decided to route trains into Kings Cross St Pancras as this offered the best route for a new high speed line into the city and the area was in serious need of regeneration, with vast tracts of old railway land at Kings Cross, and the semi-rundown sprawl of east London.

When you look at the geography of where the trains come through Kent it isnt actually much of a detour to get to Kigns Cross and the building of a railway and the tunnels is much easier and cheaper in that area due to the areas of open land and wasteland, unlike south London which is pretty much full to the rafters!

Finally when the trains are running into Kings Cross it will free up extra track and platforms for the overcrowded Waterloo Station to be used for commuters and South Coast trains.

Check out the links below for some more info and maps:
London and Continental Railways: http://www.lcrhq.co.uk/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel_Rail_Link
Guardian newspaper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,2763,1493487,00.html
Railway Technology article:

http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/chunnel/

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