The first project for 2025 takes the #CrossBorderRail model, and will apply it to another international rail problem – Channel Tunnel through trains.
Since the tunnel opened in the early 1990s there has always been the hope that there will be more direct high speed trains connecting the UK with additional destinations in continental Europe, beyond the current services to Paris, Bruxelles and the limited service to Amsterdam.
Summertime services to southern France, wintertime trains to the Alps, and trains to Disneyland Paris have come and gone, and Ebbsfleet, Ashford and Calais have lost international trains since the COVID pandemic, and Stratford has never even been served. Meanwhile prices for Eurostar tickets have risen, and a whole bunch of startups are proposing to enter the market.
#CrossChannelRail is motivated by the reactions to this long blog post from January 2024 about the Channel Tunnel – I am now turning this into a research project.
How will the project work?
Between Monday 17th March and Friday 4th April 2025, I, Jon Worth will conduct a tour of all of the sites of interest for future Channel Tunnel through trains. This will be done predominantly by train, but I will also take a folding bicycle with me to reach the places public transport cannot take me, and take a drone with me for aerial photographs. I will explore four sorts of things en route.
Firstly I will go to all the stations from which Channel Tunnel through trains could depart – this includes existing, former and possible future stations.
Secondly I will visit all of the operators who either operate trains or infrastructure currently, or have plans to do so in the future.
Third I will examine infrastructure relevant to future tunnel operations – including maintenance facilities and crucial junctions on the rail network.
Fourth I will take all of the types of trains that are either already approved for Channel Tunnel through operations, or could be in future.
Throughout the project there will be public meetings, meetings with operators, and off the record conversations with contacts in the rail industry. If you would like to meet me at some point during the project or help me organise something, please contact me.
When and where will public meetings take place?
At the moment public meetings are in planning in the following locations:
19 March, evening – Barcelona
20 March, evening – Marseille
26 March, evening – Düsseldorf
27 March, evening – Den Haag or Amsterdam
28 March, afternoon – Bruxelles
31 March, evening – London
1 April, evening – Ashford
3 April, evening – Paris
Want to help organise one of these events? Or suggest an event somewhere else? Please get in touch!
What’s the detailed timetable and route?
As ever the most detailed timetable is the Excel sheet PLANNED.xlsx that can be found in NextCloud here. The route is mapped in detail on umap here.
How can I follow the project?
There will be a daily thread on Mastodon (my account, #CrossChannelRail tag), with a live video to start and end each day, explaining what I will be investigating that day, and summarising what I discovered. These posts will also be used for daily live blogs here on the #CrossBorderRail website. There will be some posts on Bluesky as well (my account, #CrossChannelRail tag), and some of the events will also be live streamed. Photos will be posted to Flickr, although sometimes it can take a day or two before I upload them.
Conclusions – both in writing and in video – will be presented after the conclusion of the tour, and will be Creative Commons licensed for anyone to use.
Can I come along for part of the project?
Yes! Plenty of people have joined me for parts of previous projects, and it is the same this time. The more people I can meet and learn from the better! Please just be aware you will have to join at your own costs, and if you wish to come along for any part that involves cycling you might need a folding bike as not all bikes I am going to take accept regular bikes. Please just let me know when and where you plan to come along.
What about media?
Part of the reason for investigating Channel Tunnel through services in the first place was because any time anyone says anything about new services to London the press goes wild. So this project ought to offer some wider media resonance. There is probably enough material in this to make a whole documentary as well. If you would like to speak to me about any of these ideas then please contact me. I have done plenty of radio and television work before, and previous #CrossBorderRail projects have been featured in plenty of newspapers.
What is included in the investigation?
Any place in continental Europe that would have a maximum journey time of c. 7 hours to London, and any station along any route to London. Any potential Channel Tunnel compatible rolling stock. Any company that has expressed the intention to run through trains to the UK through the Channel Tunnel. Any infrastructure that is relevant to any of that, and the companies operating it.
What about passport checks and bag scans?
I am personally no fan of excess security theatre to use a train, be it through the Channel Tunnel or anywhere else. But I see no politically acceptable option for the UK Government other than to maintain the requirement to check passports before passengers enter the Channel Tunnel. Same for bag scans. So this investigation will accept these constraints, and will only propose ways to streamline these processes – it will not propose to abolish them.
What is out of scope?
Trains serving other destinations in the UK beyond London will not be examined – the choice to not connect HS2 to HS1, and the difficulties with the UK having a non-standard loading gauge mean UK destinations other than those along HS1 will not be covered. Night trains to the UK will likewise not be examined – it is already too complex to run night trains across much of Europe (hell, I have a whole website about it!) without adding the Channel Tunnel complexity on top! Train + ferry connections to the UK will likewise not be examined – those probably merit a project of their own, but I cannot add those here – for financial and time reasons (the tour for this project is already 3 weeks long!)
How will this project be financed?
Like all the #CrossBorderRail projects before this one, the project will be crowd financed – so as to be independent of all governments and rail operators. Crowd funding will start in early 2025. Also offers of assistance in kind (a place for me to stay for example, or a venue for an event) are most welcome – please contact me.
Is this the end of #CrossBorderRail checking cross border railway lines?
No, absolutely not! There are at least 70 more border lines in Europe I want to check, and those will be put to the test in a further project later in 2025.
Image used
The header image of this post is Creative Commons Licensed.
The Loop by Gabriel White, December 12, 2006, CC BY-SA 2.0
