EUROSTAR carried over 700 invited guests on an inaugural train from Brussels Midi to London St Pancras International on September 20, setting a new time record for rail travel between the capitals.

Train 9125 left Brussels at 11.05 and took 1 h 43 min to cover the 373 km, running at 300 km/h on the 109 km High Speed 1 line between the Channel Tunnel and London. Regular services on the completed Channel Tunnel Rail Link begin on November 14, when the scheduled non-stop time between St Pancras International and Brussels will be 1 h 51 min, which Eurostar said cuts at least 20 min off the current journey time from London Waterloo station.

Eurostar also announced that through fares will be available from 70 UK cities to Paris and any station in Belgium from November, emphasising the greater frequency of services when compared with regional airports.

Chief Executive of Eurostar Richard Brown said 'the connections between domestic rail services and St Pancras International mean that travellers from across Britain will be able to reach Brussels, and cities throughout Belgium and France, in journey times that are competitive with flying, using trains that are more productive for business travellers, more relaxing for leisure travellers, and greener for all.'

Eurostar expects traffic to grow by 25% over the next three to four years – 'we are hoping for 10 million passengers in 2010', Brown said. He told Railway Gazette International that a London – Amsterdam Eurostar service remains a long-term ambition, but technical problems relating to ETCS on the Belgian and Dutch high speed lines rule this out for the moment.

Guests on board the special included Marc Descheemaecker, Executive Board Chairman and CEO of SNCB, who said that it now takes 'less than 2 h to link the political and financial capitals of Europe'. Also on the train were board members of London & Continental Railways which had built High Speed 1 and German Railway's Board Member, Passenger, Karl-Friedrich Rausch.