Talks about a train to journey from London to Bordeaux…no changes
duration time 5 hrs ticket prices under 100 euros!
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This one?
yes
exciting and good for Bordeaux.
Just hope that the French rail unions do not put a stop to it happening, that is allowing other railway operators to run trains on the French railway lines other than SNCF.
Thallus and Eurostar already run their trains on French tracks. DB might well too.
I would find a direct train useful and it would give an option other than Easyjet.
Does not make any sense for anyone to stop it really.
All good buisness sense.
2 years is a long time to wait.
Thalys and Eurostar are controlled by SNCF albeit in another name, like you not sure about DB I know they stopped routing their freight trains on French metals a few years back because of the high access charges but do not know what arrangement they have with SNCF with regards to running their passenger trains on their lines, both company’s are very shy when it comes to making any information public.
That would be brilliant ! Let’s hope it happens!
Surely Thallus is a Belgian company.
Thallus? don’t you mean Thalys.
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We’d certainly try it.
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Possibly. I just know that the Belgian company with those phonemes runs from Germany to Paris. Does the spelling make any difference to the facts. Perhaps Eurostarr wouldn’t run through France either?
Would be good for us too as we could pick up a connection from Bordeaux direct to Carcassonne. It would take three hours but only an extra £20. Fingers crossed!
OK, putting the spelling to one side the company was formed in 1996 between SNCF - NMBS/SNCB and DB with the idea of running high speed trains between Paris - Brussels - Amsterdam - Cologne and Dortmund.
The trains that they use are French built TGV sets but painted red.
The company is set up with SNCF owning 62% with NMBS/SNCB 28% and DB 10%.
Eurostar already run trains within France going from London to Marseille and to Avignon but some of these trains are only seasonal.
The biggest problem with running Eurostar trains is the weight of them which then incur very high rail access charges, meaning that they have to be 95% full to show a profit, which limits there destinations.
Lisea the company which owns the new high speed railway line from Tours to bordeaux is behind running the new London to Bordeaux service and is offering Eurostar a 20% reduction on it’s access charges if it would run these trains from London.
That sounds like good news for the new London Bordeaux link then.
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exciting
I hate flying to London…
That’s probably the lowest possible price and will rarely be available. I can’t even get London to Calais on the Thalys for this price. Don’t find the ticket prices on the Eurostar to be reasonable at all, really…having lived for 1.5 years in London and going to France often, we’ve only taken the Eurostar once because the tickets are either unavailable and/or sky high. You never know, hopefully, it will happen and the prices will be reasonable.
I picked my son up in Lille last year, we spent a couple of nights in Germany and I dropped him back in Lille. He used Eurostar to travel to and from Lille. The tickets that he bought were very good value, much cheaper than getting from Central London to Stansted and using a budget airline. Monday mornings and Friday evenings were expensive so he didn’t travel at those times.