On Jul 25, 11:57 am, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

Both of these problems can only be rectified by changing the treaty
between the UK and France that allowed the tunnel to be built. While not
impossible, it would take a great deal of time and effort to make it
happen, and most discussion on these two newsgroups has come to the
conclusion that it is highly desirable from a railway perspective, it is
unlikely to happen any time soon.

Not forgetting that it suits Eurostar to have what is in effect a non tariff
barrier to competing new entrants to the cross channel route, so they aren't
likely to propose a relaxation of the standards. It will be interesting to
see eventually if that extends to buying high cost like for like
replacements for the existing trains, rather than 'off the shelf' units from
the then current range of TGV type trains.

We've since had EC Directives on interoperability. That is another
argument against maglev systems, especially those that use proprietary
technology, according to a report placed on the DfT website
yesterday. Possible implications for revising Tunnel regs?