A new record has been set bringing Paris to London to only 2h and 3 minutes:

Eurostar breaks Paris-London record on new link to St Pancras | | Guardian Unlimited Business

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My train mad boys want to go on it.
I told them when their are earning money.
Might use it for Mrs & me on my 40th to pop over to Paris, maybe?

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I believe the regular "commuter" will be inaugurated on november 14th and will take you from paris to London in 2.15.
This will connect Britain to the French high speed network that reaches Lyon, Strasbourg and Amsterdam in about two hours and will bring you Germany, Belgium, Spain , Geneva etc.. within a short delay.

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I wonder if it could make a small detour...?

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Nice one Martin. Nowadays it takes a little more than an hour to go from Paris to brussels. I live a little more than 30mn south of Etampes which you can see on the map.

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Brilliant, Martin!

You guys are lucky, here I stand in the periphery of Europe

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Yes but you have the good weather and the warm sea water, we have 9 degrees celsius here this morning (something like 45farhenheit) and it won't get higher than 16 (50 and something fahrenheit) . Not to mention the traffic jams and the smug. On the long run the whole of Europe will be connected on the higspped network. Britian invested billions to catch up and it took 13 years to build the line which included an entire restoration of PANCRAS STATION.

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I love how at the bottom of the story they list four stories of train wrecks.

I think I will just take the plane !!

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

Crossing the Channel (Chunnel) will only take 15 minutes, so it is not so scary and I don't think there were any accidents ever since it was opened in 1994. Besides there is an independent emergeny tunnel parallel , so that rescue could arrive fast and passengers could get evacuated too.

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If you derail going 200 mph you won't need any emergency tunnel, just a wooden box !

I will take the airplane, thank you very much !

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

I am sure Jeremy Clarkson has an answer for that.

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"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
A.H.

Hey Kerem, good to hear from you again! So you did survive the drill Sgt in Cyprus.

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..this is an area of technology where the Europeans are world beaters - high speed rail travel - although the Japanese and Chinese are up there too...portal to portal time on this record run was actually 17 minutes for the 50 km of Channel tunnel of which only about 37 km is undersea..max speed under the Channel is 175 km/h. The record attempt for Brussels-London takes place on 22 September. Trains are equipped with TVM 430 in-cab signalling, ie the driver receives an electronic message on a cab display via track-side beacons to travel at, say, 150 km/h or 320 or 30 ..if he doesn't obey within seconds for whatever reason the brakes come on....technology which will make the kind of accidents referred at the end of the Guardian article a thing of the past where it is in service...

There actually has been a serious fire ( bad enough to melt the rails ) and they were very, very lucky that no-one was killed.....

Channel Tunnel fire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

they are installing bike lanes on either side correct ?? if not...............arg

seriously, wish we had more transportable travel, it would not bother me in the slightest, but hey where I'm from wagon trains are not uncommon

I totally trust the Eurorail and I'd feel safer than taking an airplane. Many countries want to buy our trains, including China and the U.S. When the Paris-Strasbourg line was inaugurated a few months ago (speed record of 572km/h ) the train was full of journalists and potential buyers. Now there are daily shuttles that bring you from paris to Reims in only 45 minutes.

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Reims !

Another French destination of which I am very fond....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

..there was also a fire on board an HGV shuttle train last August but services were disrupted for a mere three hours so well did the 'new' procedures work. The truck that caught fire was completely burnt out ..I was on the train..

I also remember a fire in a field in southern England that caused delays a few months ago, but so far those were only material damages.

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WHAT!!!

What did they do? Bribe a lot of people in high places along with the health and safety lobby.

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Regards, Richard