Eurostar trains to cut London Paris run to just two hours

The UK is poised to enter a new era of rapid train travel as a new generation of Eurostar trains gear up to whisk passengers from London to Paris in just two hours. The trains were unveiled yesterday.

The trains will link up with high speed bullet trains across Europe including those planned for Britain and cut journey times from major cities across the UK to Europe.

With the arrival of the new e-320 trains, built by German company Siemens, London to Paris journey times could be reduced to just over two hours from the current 2 hours and 15 minutes.

However, whether the second generation Eurostar trains, which would run across the European high speed network would be allowed to run at 200mph when they reach Britain is not clear.

The speed limit on the UK stretch of the current line is 186mph that matches the top speed of the existing trains. However, over much of the journey between the Channel and London they will run at much slower than the top speed.

According to Eurostar, technically, it was possible to raise the limit to 200mph once the new trains were commissioned.