Eurostar facts
It’s too easy to whinge about the state of the British railways, particularly when you have to ride them each day, so it’s cheering to read The Observer’s list of amazing facts about High Speed 1, Britain’s first high speed line, which will carry the Eurostar from the capital to the coast.Among the most mind-blowing facts it’s dug up about this £5.8bn project:
Just two minutes after leaving St Pancras, the train enters the beginning of what will be 19 miles of tunnel along the route. First come the two parallel tunnels, divided by a new station at Stratford in east London.These ‘twin bore’ tunnels pass under 2,600 properties, seven miles of surface railway, 12 existing tunnels - including four London Underground stations - and 600 gas, water and sewage pipelines. For most of the way, engineers had to send ahead 10 pumps to remove millions of gallons of water in front of the tunnellers. The misleadingly named Thanet Sands were so hard the stretch wore out six £10m boring machines. Special vents will allow excess pressure to escape from the tunnels so the trains can go at 140mph.
