Beginnings
When the Channel Tunnel was first announced in the 1980s it was part of the proposals to operate high-speed rail services through it on both sides of the English Channel with a substantial network envisioned. This was gradually reduced to a core service, along dedicated TGV-style high-speed lines, between the three capital cities, regional daytime services to Glasgow (via the East Coast Main Line) and Manchester (via the West Coast Main Line), and Nightstar sleeper services to the same cities as well as Bristol and Cardiff via the Great Western Main Line.
A depot for the regional Eurostar services was constructed at Longsight in Manchester (Manchester International Depot). Trial runs were undertaken using the NoL units on both the East and West Coast Main Lines and passenger information signs and Eurostar lounges were installed at stations along the route. As the high-speed rail line between London and the Channel Tunnel, High Speed 1, was not under construction Eurostar services within the UK were forced to use existing rail lines and connecting junctions were built to allow Regional Eurostars access via the congested North London Line. In all British Rail invested £140 million in infrastructure to allow the services to operate.
Read more about this topic: Regional Eurostar
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)