‘Forget Waterloo’: New Train Route Bringing ‘Two Old Foes Closer’

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  11.21.07 | 11:52 AM ET

imagePhoto by markhillary via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

France’s high-speed rail network, which has been coping with a labor strike, was hit by fires and other acts of sabotage overnight, according to reports. But in unrelated news, there’s at least one glimmer of good news coming from some rail service in the region. Historical enemies France and England are getting soft-eyed over the new high-speed rail link between Paris and London, according to the New York Times. A recent full-page ad in the French newspaper Le Figaro declared “Oubliez Waterloo”—forget Waterloo. And the English were talking not about Napoleon’s last stand but the former Waterloo rail terminus station.

That’s because, as John F. Burns reports, “That Waterloo, on the south bank of the Thames near the Houses of Parliament, was supplanted as the Eurostar terminus in London…by St. Pancras station, four miles away in north-central London.”

The new St. Pancras station cost $1.7 billion dollars to restore—in its heyday more than a century ago, it was a Gothic “railway cathedral.” The new London-Paris route runs from St. Pancras to the Gare du Nord. The opening run took place recently despite the French transit workers’ strike. (Eurostar was not affected.) The new route cuts 20 minutes from journey times.

Both countries have railway stations named for 19th-century military triumphs: In London there’s Waterloo, and in France, there’s Austerlitz.

“But now,” Burns writes, “St. Pancras station seems likely to bring the two old foes closer in a very tangible sense.”

Horreurs anglais notwithstanding, of course.

 

 

Tags: Train Travel, Europe, England, London, France, Paris, News and Briefs

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


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