Queen to open new Channel rail link

Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen will not only open train company Eurostar's new terminal at St Pancras station but also open the finally-completed £5.8bn Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Now to be known as High Speed 1, the 68-mile link runs from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel opening at Folkestone in Kent.

Next week, Eurostar switches its terminal from Waterloo station to St Pancras and will be able to offer quicker journey times on its services between London and Paris and Brussels.

The ceremony will involve three trains arriving at St Pancras. Their three drivers will meet the Queen, who will also be introduced to those who have transformed the late-Victorian building of St Pancras into a 21st century terminal.

The French had their high-speed Channel Tunnel link ready in 1993 - a year before the tunnel was officially opened - while the Belgians completed their link in the late-1990s.

The UK, however, spent years dithering over the cost and route of its link, meaning that Eurostar trains could only reach their ultimate 186mph speed in France and Belgium while comparatively crawling through south London and Kent.

After many years of difficulty and funding crises, the first section of the UK fast link - from Folkestone to north Kent - was finally completed in autumn 2003.

The second section, from Ebbsfleet in north Kent to St Pancras, has now been finished. From next week, London-Paris journey times will be reduced by 20 minutes to about two hours 15 minutes, while the London-Brussels trips will come down to less than two hours.

Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers has written to Ruth Kelly to call for cross-party co-operation on taking forward planning and feasibility studies for more high-speed rail projects in the UK.