primitivepeople

Well, while the East Coast route heads into a nationalised abyss and an uncertain future, I decided to go and take a look at a brand-spanking-new bit of the railway today, by travelling on a service that only started running on Monday. It's SouthEastern's new domestic high speed service to Kent. The full service starts in December, with trains from St. Pancras to Ashford, Canterbury, Dover and Ramsgate, but for now, a preview service is operating on Mondays to Fridays, with most trains going from St. Pancras to Ebbsfleet International - with a few carrying on to Ashford. The trains have a maximum speed of 140mph (approx 225km/h), which is slower than Eurostar at 186mph/300km/h, but still faster than all our other domestic express services, which have run at 125mph, with no increase in maximum speeds since 125mph trains were first introduced in 1976. So...this modest increase is exciting. It's a massive improvement on the existing 90mph services to Kent, though, which take forever - approx. 80 mins from London to Ashford. The new service takes a mere 37 minutes.

Anyway, waffling aside, I've been itching to ride the new trains, and did so after work today. I wanted to go all the way to Ashford, but I was pressed for time, so I just went to Ebbsfleet and back (journey time 17 minutes). I showed up at the newly-opened platforms 11 to 13, and found one of the shiny new class 395 trains waiting for me...


Exterior #1


Exterior #2 - High Speed logo


Interior

The trains were running practically empty, as Ebbsfleet isn't really a particularly useful destination in itself, but it was a good opportunity to take pictures and enjoy the experience in peace.

First impressions of the train were good - they're pretty comfortable, with good aircon (vital on a day like today) and the seats are spacious and well laid out, with most of them giving a good view from the window. There's power sockets for laptops under them, but you'd miss them if you weren't looking. There's no first class - but the train is considered a "premium" service. Fares are about halfway between first and standard class levels, which is about £4 more on a day return to Ashford, but for a journey more than twice as fast, there may well be lots of people who consider it worth the money.

Proof of the pudding came in the eating, though - departure. The thing accelerates incredibly fast - you can really feel it, it's way quicker than other high-speed trains in the UK, which can go almost as fast, but get to their top speed a bit sedately. It reminded me, almost, of an aircraft take-off run - you get pushed back into your seat a little. The on board announcements were very planey as well.

Almost as soon as you leave St. Pancras, you enter a tunnel, with a short open section around Stratford, then in tunnel again to Dagenham. In tunnels the train can't reach maximum speed due to wind resistance issues, and there's only a short open section before you get to Ebbsfleet, so the train has to slow down again to stop there. The full 140mph comes on the Ashford runs. However, on the short open section I managed to get a GPS reading, and clocked us at 130mph. As I say, it's the phenomenal acceleration that makes the train so impressive, and journey times so quick. It was very comfortable and quiet even at high speeds.

I only spent a few minutes at Ebbsfleet before heading back again, but here's a shot of the train while it was there.



The station felt a bit strange - it didn't look very British! This is mainly because all the lineside infrastructure is based on French TGV technology, and so it looks a lot like a French station. :)

Anyway, back to St. Pancras again at amazing speed. I can't wait to try a full-length trip to Ashford. Really, really impressive in just about every way - when do we get to build High Speed Two?