HS1 Ltd rebrands as London St Pancras Highspeed and seeks growth

High speed line infrastructure concessionaire HS1 Ltd has rebranded as London St Pancras Highspeed. On January 20 London St Pancras Highspeed and Channel Tunnel operator Eurotunnel announced a partnership which aims to grow high speed rail services between the UK and continental Europe. Almost 40 companies expressed interest in a contract to further develop plans for the expansion of facilities for handling international passengers at London St Pancras station, aiming to meet forecast requirements from Eurostar and potentially new operators until at least 2035 and potentially 2040.

Higher capacity UK terminal opens at Amsterdam Centraal station

A larger and more modern terminal for UK-bound Eurostar passengers has opened at Amsterdam Centraal station, allowing its services to London to carry up to 400 passengers from Amsterdam, a 10% increase. The terminal will temporarily close from March 30 for platform renovations, but from April 23 capacity will be further increased to 600 passengers with enhanced facilities, and will reach its full capacity of up to 650 passengers per train by September. Eurostar will also be able to handle 160 passengers boarding at Rotterdam. Eurostar’s ambition is to expand to five daily services between London and Amsterdam by 2026.

HS2 progresses

Siemens Mobility announced that it had won contracts for installation of automatic train operation over ETCS Level 2 on the 225 km high speed line route due to open by the end of 2033, stating that this would be the first implementation on a high speed line to offer attended semi-automated operations at Grade of Automation 2. The first viaduct section on HS2’s Delta Junction east of Birmingham was unveiled on February 12 by the Balfour Beatty-Vinci civil engineering joint venture. The 472 m long single track deck forms part of the River Tame West viaduct located at the northern tip of the triangular junction complex. Overall, Delta Junction will require 13 viaducts using 2 742 deck segments, of which 59% have so far been produced at a factory in Kingsbury.