Eurostar high-speed train crosses the Medway Viaduct in autumn sunshine en route to St Pancras on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
The Channel Tunnel Rail Link route from London to the Channel Tunnel was designed to stay close to the existing traffic corridor to minimise environmental impact. Here the Eurostar Medway Viaduct is situated alongside the M2 motorway. The Eurostar is Europe's first international train. Taking advantage of the Channel Tunnel, it provides a high-speed rail service between the UK and destinations in Continental Europe. It began service in 1994 and is operated by a consortium comprising French Railways (SNCF), Belgian Railways (SNCB) and Eurostar UK Ltd. Eurostar is the world’s longest passenger train, comprising 20 cars and is around 400m long (quarter of a mile) but unlike a conventional TGV, it’s designed to be able to be broken in the middle for safety reasons when within the Channel Tunnel. Eurostar’s train length is to do with passenger capacity. Because of height constraints in the Channel Tunnel, it cannot grow upwards (like double-decker trains) but only in length. Eurostar shares many French TGV features but its technology is equally shared between French and British manufacturers. Eurostar’s distinctive nose was designed specially for operation in the Channel Tunnel where aerodynamic considerations are vital and it has to operate in the UK, Belgium and France under seven different signalling systems and several different power supplies. All in all, Eurostar is exceedingly complex train and each one costs around 24 million GBP. The £ billion Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now High Speed One) was built between 1998-2007 and partly funded by the European Union, it forms a section of the Trans European Rail Network.
Size: 2953px × 1965px
Location: Medway Crossing, Kent, UK.
Photo credit: © qaphotos.com / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: a2, aerodynamic, amazing, anti-rail, anxiety, assessment, atp, automatic, blight, bridge, brownfield, brussels, build, building, business, caternary, channel, civil, commuter, concession, concessionaire, connection, construct, construction, continental, contractor, corridor, crossing, ctrl, current, demonstration, du, eec, electricity, emr, engineering, environment, environmental, europe, european, eurostar, eurotunnel, fast, finance, future, futuristic, gare, greenfield, high, historic, hostility, hs1, imaginative, impact, infrastructure, initiative, integration, international, line, link, locomotive, london, m2, m20, media, medway, minimum, motorway, negative, network, nord, ocs, operate, opposition, overhead, pancras, paris, partnership, passenger, pfi, power, ppp, private, privatisation, protection, protest, public, rail, railroad, railtrack, railway, railways, requirement, road, rolling, route, scrutiny, signal, signalling, significant, site, speed, st, station, stock, streamlined, system, technology, ten, tgv, tourist, tra, track, trackwork, traction, traffic, train, trans, transport, transportation, tunnel, tunnelling, uk, union, urban, vehicle, viaduct, waterloo
