The Daily Telegraph reports that Eurostar will quit Waterloo in 2007.

I think this is a good idea. Even from Waterloo, it would be quicket
to take the tube to St Pancras and then take a fast Eurostar.

The question is, what will happen to the 4 400m long platforms. On
previuos form, the rail companies will consider the issue in 2007,
make a decision in 2009, order rolling stock in 2010, and start using
them properly in 2014.

My suggestion. Act now, build extended, 400m platforms at a few outer
London station (perhaps Surbiton and Staines), and use these to
consolidate 8 carriage trains into 16 carriage trains for the final
trip through London.

This needs preperation now, but SW Trains, or DfT, will probably do
nothing till 2007.



Eurostar will drop Waterloo services when link opens
By Paul Marston, Transport Correspondent
(Filed: 15/11/2004)

Eurostar has dropped long-standing plans to continue to run some
services from London Waterloo when the high-speed link to the Channel
Tunnel is completed in 2007.


The Anglo-French company is expected to announce today that it will
close Waterloo International, from which it had previously intended to
operate about a third of trains to the Continent, when the faster
route into St Pancras opens.

The decision means that customers from south of the Thames will have
to travel considerably further to reach trains to Paris and Brussels,
though the track and platform capacity vacated at Waterloo will become
available to improve the reliability of domestic commuter services.

The international station, built for £130 million in 1993 and famed
for its glass roof, has four platforms and controls about 50 train
pathways a day, which could be transferred to South West Trains to
relieve overcrowding.

More than 1,400 Eurostar staff are employed at Waterloo and its
associated train depot at North Pole in west London. All will be given
the opportunity to transfer to St Pancras and a £300 million
yet-to-be-built depot at Temple Mills, near Stratford, in the East
End.

Senior executives at the train company have deliberated for almost a
year over whether to desert Waterloo, where Eurostar services began 10
years ago.

Some managers argued that lucrative business passengers in London's
affluent south-west suburbs would fly from Heathrow rather than
struggle across the capital to St Pancras if the Waterloo link were
severed.

They also maintained that French and Belgian business demand might
fall because Waterloo's dedicated non-stop Underground route to the
heart of the City was felt to be superior to the four-stop run on the
Northern line from St Pancras.

However the company's management board eventually decided that the
cost of maintaining two London bases would be too great.

It also concluded that the fact that journeys to Paris and Brussels
would be 20 minutes faster from St Pancras would lead inevitably to
the Waterloo route becoming viewed as a second-class option. Opening
of the final section of the high-speed link in early 2007 will cut
London-Paris times to 2hr 15min and London-Brussels to 1hr 53min.

Growth potential is seen as greater at St Pancras, because the station
- with adjoining King's Cross - has direct feeder services from the
East Coast and Midland main lines, Thameslink and six Tube routes.

Considerable debate took place over whether to change the station's
name because the fourth-century saint sparked little recognition among
the French and Belgians but St Pancras was a widely known name in
Britain.

Eurostar's board accepted, too, that the shift of London's
"International" rail title would spare French passengers any lingering
resentments about Napoleon's defeat in 1815.