Talk:Eurostar

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— Expand article with more information and sections eg History and New development sections
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The route diagram template for this article can be found in Template:Eurostar.

Traffic on eurostar appears to be way below original forecasts when the tunnel was built. I see 7.3m passengers in 2004 [1], compared with original forecast of 17.1m [2]. This explains the financial problems in debt servicing of eurotunnel.

1 Extension
2 Stations and Information for Passangers
3 Satellites
4 Trivia Section
5 References please
6 Eurostar Routes
7 Problem with the route diagram
8 external links
9 Cost of CTRL ?
10 Not a good idea to put Waterloo in the memory hole
11 nonononono
12 'Betrayal' of Ashford International
13 Other languages

[edit] Extension

Are there any plans for extending the Eurostar across Europe in the future? For example extending the line to Berlin etc. Or if it is not planned could it be one day expected to happen?

Generally passengers change at Paris or Brussels onto other international trains. -- malsdavis

The Eurostar trains were designed for the specification of going through the Chunnel Tunnel and operating on the system they do (safety features, electrical pickups...) and as such they are wasted on journeys that don't go through the Chunnel. Three repainted sets are used domestically within France (and the line to Brussels). There are the Eurostar ski-services, the daily service to Disney-Land and weekly service to Avignon, all of which combine extra distance with the cross-channel segment. The only other route that has been talked about (by the CEO of Eurostar) is having a direct service to London->Amsterdam on the Dutch HSL-Zuid. The trade-off of is asking passengers to walk across the platform, verses running an entirely duplicated service; additional passport handling in Amsterdam and of course the signalling and possibly pantograph upgrades for the new High Speed line. Sladen 00:42, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stations and Information for Passangers

The London stations are mentioned breifly but the Paris and Brussels stations are not. It could be useful for future passengers of the Eurostar to include a bit more information on the various stations served aswell as other such journey details.

[edit] Satellites

"Eurostar" is also the name of a line of satellites made by EADS Astrium, as is shown here.

[edit] Trivia Section

Where is this information sourced from?

Whears some of it appears to be true, some "facts" I find hard to believe. I also wonder whether this section could not be reduced, does the article really require the explanation of the conventions used for the 4-digit ID numbers of power cars and other such extremely trivial trivia? Canderra 17:07, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd say you're right to be suspicious. 'Waterloo is the only UK gateway to have French border controls'. Wonder who those guys who looked at my passport in Dover were then? Also, 'franglais' usually is used to designate someone who can't really speak french filling in words they don't know with their english equivalents Indigenius 01:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not really correct practice to include informal "comment" in italics under each bullet point. I am apprehensive about attempting to amalgamate the italic additions with the original trvia, since I am unsure which, if either is correct. But I do feel that some effort should be made to fix this inappropriate tone or maybe just remove the "incorrect" parts entirely. 80.177.20.202 21:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that the Trivia section is a shambles. Personally, I would like to see the trivia section either completely removed or at least reduced down to just a few lines of actually interesting trivia facts. There are other websites where prople can find information on every nut, bolt and serial number of every train, but Wikipedia is not the place for such pedantic information. Would anyone object to the removal of all but the remotely informative trivia pieces? Canderra 21:37, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I've removed all the pedantic responses - I merged in some of the useful bits and deleted some of the stuff that they disagreed with. I've also reorganised the trivia by topic as the first step to making this into a proper article --Dtcdthingy 02:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I have commented out the entire Trivia section for now. Apart from the issue of there being absolutly no references or way to backup any of the claims made, the vast majority of the "trivia" is not really trivia appropriate for an encyclopedia article. Most people seem to agree that it is the main detrement to the article. Information on immigration services at either end of the tunnel, advice for disabled customers and how many frequent flyer miles using the service gains a customer is not appropriate for this article. If anyone thinks that a piece of information contained within the trivia section is valid then it should be intregrated into the body of the rest of the body of the article. In a month or two's time I will completely remove the Trivia section from the source code. Canderra 17:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The "Rolling Stock" section is already beginning to look like the old "Trivia" section also. This definatly needs improvement. This is an encyclopedia article. Not a train fanatic's guide to every little nut and bolt used in the Eurostar trains. Canderra 17:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Canderra for you efforts and action. I truly hope tis is an end to the trivia, which quite frankly was silly. NoelWalley 18:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Done I've incorporated one or two pieces of trivia into the main article, transferred some to other articles, and deleted the rest. Regarding the rolling stock section, I've transferred the technical stuff to the British Rail Class 373 article where it sits more naturally, and re-named the section to Train fleet. I hope this is an improvement. --JCG33 (talk) 18:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References please

The article is fun and well written, but it feels journalistic, not encyclopaedic.

I'd lke to see either more references or a serious rewrite. While I would regret the lack of fun, the wiki ethos means we need to have this backed up with references or ot should go. Thsi is, in partm, the trivia section.

Fiddle Faddle 22:57, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Quite right Fiddle Faddle, I entirely agree. NoelWalley 18:09, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Done I've re-written quite a bit of the article, and re-organised most of it. I've also added some references, although it probably needs more. I hope you think it's more encyclopaedic now. --JCG33 (talk) 18:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eurostar Routes

How bad can computer graphics get? We would be far better of without these clumsy lists. NoelWalley 18:09, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to agree somewhat, although the idea of including a schematic sounds good to me. By far the main current route served by Eurostar is the London Waterloo to Paris Gare du Nord and vice versa (with slightly less, but still a significant number, serving Brussels Gare du Midi). The graphic shown though hardly makes it obvious these are even routes. The graphics seems to concerntrate more on routes that either don't exist yet or are only served by special services. Canderra 18:58, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Sevenoaks -

Swanley

To Rochester

Otford

M26

From Sevenoaks

Kemsing

Paddock Wood - Rochester

Maidstone

Bearsted

M20

Charing

M20

From Tonbridge

Ashford

To Hastings

To Canterbury

To Folkestone

Perhaps you prefer this? I am not sure whether it is correct, but you can adapt it if you like. See Wikipedia:Railway line template and have fun. HandigeHarry 17:16, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I see what your trying to do, give a while and i cna correct it Pickle 20:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I've used HandigeHarry 's worka bove to create the table at Ashford via Maidstone East Line. Eurostar's haven't used that since CTRL stage 1 opened so the above table would need copious work before it acuratly represented what takes place. There has been a rough table over on the CTRL page, but it dosen't exploit the excellent feautres of the WP:TRAIL template. Pickle 22:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with the route diagram

The station at Disneyland is actually Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy and not Marne-la-Vallée. The latter is a region/area. I can't work out how to edit those boxes so I thought I'd inform you all.Martin Leng 21:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I've updated the template (Template:Eurostar) and hope this is now correct. Adambro 22:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] external links

90.193.31.50 has twice added "http://www.findeurostar.co.uk/directory.html Eurostar Directory" which IMHO appears to be linkspan. Is it valid ? (i don't want to go into a WP:3RR breaching edit war). Pickle 12:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the website in question being down, it looks very linkspamish to me! Sladen 23:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Same again, slightly different IP - 90.193.31.33 this time. sjwk 23:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Rethinking this link: I see this discussion took place in May, but I was tooling around this talk page after reading about Eurostar yesterday and found the link that you have classified as SPAM. It may in fact technically be such per Wikipedia policy, but I actually went to the website http://www.findeurostar.co.uk/directory.html and found it quite useful. It has links that could take days/weeks to find on ones own. Any thoughts on putting it back into the article? I think to a traveler or someone curious about Eurostar, it could be quite useful. Believe it or not, I find myself increasingly turning to Wikipedia articles for good external links since you don't have to sort through 100's of inapposite links on the leading search engines. I am sure others are doing the same. I stand four-square with you in preventing purely commercial links, but I think this link is not commercial and moreover, the official Eurostar link *is* de facto commercial and we've obviously made an exception for that and every other official website in articles having to do with commercial enterprises (General Motors, Harrods, Tesco, Mercedes Benz etc.) Your kind thoughts please. Bundas 11:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

"DMOZ" or Open Directory Project appears to be the answer. On several pages i watch, a link to DMOZ has been used to stop the external links section degenerating into a list of external links. Pickle 10:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cost of CTRL ?

According to the Daily Mail [5/9/07/pg4 & search for- queret] the new Eurostar line from Dover to London is mentioned to have cost (effectively)~£45000 per meter. Can anyone explain why the amount is so (extortionately?) high?
--83.105.33.91 11:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Two-thirds of the money went on one-third of the distance: the three sets of twin-tunnels reaching under the Thames and all the way into North London. CTRL1 (long and "cheap") opened in 2003; CTRL2 (short, underground and expensive) is the part that will open fully later this year (2007). Tunnelling is a really expensive business; the nearest equivalent of somebody trying to built a tunnel motorway under a major city is Boston MA's Big Dig ($14.6bn for 5km ≈ US$3,000,000 per metre). —Sladen 12:07, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not a good idea to put Waterloo in the memory hole

I think the former London terminus "Waterloo" should be put back into the route diagram, using the "xHST" version. An encyclopedia is not only to show a fotographic reflection of the current reality, but should inform about the history, too. --L.Willms (talk) 12:22, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, Waterloo only has a connection with Eurostar through the fact that it used to terminate there, this should be and is mentioned in the article, however, Eurostar no longer terminates at Waterloo thus it can't be included on the route map. Hencetalk (talk) 12:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I had been considering putting it back in as it should be there for consistency with most other rail maps. In the end the reason I didn't was that although it might be logical to show it with "x" version pictograms, standard usage of pictograms is that where the line/station is still open then one doesn't use the 'defunct' version, hence it would comfuse people looking at the routemap if it appeared to show both the old and the current termini as open. Leave it to the text, therefore. --AlisonW (talk) 00:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] nonononono

nobody owns the sea. We have already owned the ground, but we cannot do this in the sea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.55.28.116 (talk) 21:34, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Go away and stop looking for attention you stupid little child. Sacharin (talk) 12:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 'Betrayal' of Ashford International

The material about reduction in service to Ashford following the opening of Ebsfleet has recently been reworked into its own section with the above heading. I think there are two problems with these changes:

The words/phrases "betray", "forced to defend", "severely cut", "scrapped", "residents ... were forced to travel" etc imply that Wikipedia supports the view that the service cuts were a bad thing. This is against Wikipedia:Words to avoid#Sorts of terms to avoid
I don't see that this issue justifies its own section. While no doubt of great concern to the residents of Ashford and the surrounding area, the article is about the train service as a whole. The situation prior to 19 Feb 08 when this was mentioned under Current routes and services seemed more balanced.

Any other views?--JCG33 (talk) 20:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The high speed rail link caused great disruption for the people of southern kent, but it was done with the promise that trains would stop at Ashford and so they would benefit. Lets call a spade a spade, Eurostar lied to them and betrayed their trust.

Besides, the words used looks like they were quotes in the reference (betrayed, severely cut, etc). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.29.190.44 (talk) 20:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

We already know that 86.29.190.44 and I have a different opinion about this because it was 86.29.190.44 who made the original changes (on 19 Feb 08). It would be helpful to get some 'neutral' views.--JCG33 (talk) 20:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

It is very bad that the Eurostar no longer stops at Ashford. I used to travel from Paris to Ashford and it is very annoying that the train stops no more there. I know get the TGV to calais and boat. It takes nearly an hour longer but is much cheaper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.212.203.236 (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to remind people that we are on an encyclopedia, NOT a general forum, please discuss the article ONLY, not your own personal experiences, that's the reason we have discussion pages. Otrin (talk) 10:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Otrin and JCG33. The "betrayal" section is unduly emotive, whereas the previous format stated the facts and alluded to public reaction neutrally. Sad to note that the author of the "betrayal" section, 86.29.190.44 appears to be responsible for replacing the article on SeaFrance with a line of abuse; this user seems to have problems with his/her cross-channel operators, but this is not the right place to air his/her grievances. -- Timberframe (talk) 12:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've deleted the 'Betrayal' of Ashford International section, but incorporated some of its less emotive material into Current routes and services. I hope people feel that's a reasonable compromise. --JCG33 (talk) 20:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep. -- Timberframe (talk) 21:25, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other languages

I notice that many of the "other language" versions of the Eurostar article linked via the languages panel are actually about the Class 373 rolling stock rather than the Eurostar service which is the subject of this article. Would it be too pedantic to suggest transferring such links to the Class 373 article? I'm up for doing the work if concensus is that it's worthwhile. -- Timberframe (talk) 21:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

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