20 YEARS AGO
NOVEMBER 2003
High-speed line opens
BRITAIN’S first high-speed rail line, Section One of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL, now HS1), was opened by Prime Minister Tony Blair on September 16. The 46 mile railway from Fawkham Junction to Dollands Moor has been completed on time and on budget – words that seldom feature in major railway engineering projects in Britain.
Costing £1.9 billion, or less than a fifth of the cost of the still incomplete West Coast upgrade, the new line has been built from scratch in less than five years under a private public partnership between the Government and London & Continental Railways, including LCR’s partner companies, Union Railways South, Rail Link Engineering and Eurostar.
From September 28, Eurostar trains are able to travel through Kent at the full European TGV speed of 186mph instead of an uncompetitive 90mph maximum on ex-Southern Region third-rail metals. The ‘Eurostars’ will still have to travel 20 miles to access the new line, but the faster speed once on Section One will see 20 minutes knocked off journeys to Lille, Paris and Brussels.
Blair hints at more
OPENING the CTRL at Waterloo, the prime minister dropped the strongest hint yet that the success of the CTRL compared with the WCML upgrade could set the mould for future rail projects.
“The imagination and vision that has created this project should give us some optimism and also some spur as to what we could do in the future,” he said. “The truth is we need to renovate a large part of our transport infrastructure in this country and we have shown through the Channel Tunnel Rail Link that it can happen.”