The thing that has previously meant that as a traveller, to travel by train from London to Berlin we have had to change trains in Paris or Brussels are the safety procedures inside the tunnel, especially relating to evacuation in the event of a fire. Unfortunately with the problems the Eurostar operator has had this winter has proved that these were largely ineffective.

This October German railway operator Deutsche Bahn will run its high speed ICE trains through the tunnel on a number of trial runs, and if all goes according to plan permission could be given to start operating as early as 2012 in time for the London olympics.

Currently the safety regulations mean that to pass through the 50.5km tunnel a train has to be 375m long, and passengers must be able to walk the entire length of the train, so that each end is aligned with a tunnel safety exit. The planned ICE3 trains that DB want to use are shorter than this and have to be coupled together to form a train that long, and because of this passengers in each half can not swap between the coupled trains, but this would mean that they would fulfil another safety requirement as a current Eurostar train can be split in two and each half driven out seperately in the even of a fire. Since the tunnel opened in 1994, three fires have led to the temporary closure of the line, and I believe in each the overhead current was affected causing problems driving the trains out of the tunnel.

The European Union rules that were introduced in January have meant that international train lines are open to greater competition, and it is worth noting that the ICE trains are currently allowed through every tunnel in Europe even the deep Alpine tunnels, but not the Channel Tunnel at present, and the new HS1 line from the English end of the tunnel into St Pancras Internation was built to the wider European loading guage to facilitate continental trains travelling directly to London.

Could this mean the return of 2 trains of old in a new guise, the Trans European Express, and the Orient Express, with both of them starting in London.