Want trains to continental Europe from Stratford? Here's how

So Sadiq Khan says getting international trains at Stratford International in East London is within “touching distance” in an article in City A.M. this morning (full article here). OK, so the Mayor of London wants it, and is saying so, which is important. But the article written in his name says very little about how to actually do it.

So let’s have a go at that aspect.

The station is a sunken concrete box, with tunnels at both ends, and a single track on a bridge rising through the middle to access Temple Mills depot. There are two platforms on the outsides (north and south) that are 400m long and were foreseen for international services and currently stand unused, and two shorter platforms (c. 300m each) in the middle that are currently used by Southeastern Javelin services from St Pancras to Kent, using HS1.

Above the platforms, on a kind of multi-level bridge building, is the area foreseen for the terminal. Escalators, steps and a lift connect this to the international platforms below. Passengers would have passports checked and bags scanned here, before then descending to the platform below to board a train.

Contrary to what Sadiq Khan implies in his piece, nothing in this building was ever kitted out, because only through services from continental Europe to Birmingham and Manchester were meant to stop here – and those services never materialised. When checking all of this last year for my #CrossChannelRail project I was told by a source that the total capacity of the terminal here was only ever meant to be 250 passengers – so not even a third of a 400m long Eurostar train. And here, just like at any other possible new station for Channel Tunnel services, someone has to staff the station – with border guards to check passports, and to man bag scanners.

So the questions, first and foremost, for Khan are these: who is going to pay to equip Stratford International? And who is going to pay for its staffing?

Which brings us to the issue of two other stations that are better prepared than Stratford. Both Ebbsfleet and Ashford have fully equipped terminal buildings, but international services do not stop at those as no one wants to foot the staffing costs. Eurostar sees the stations as not profitable, and Kent County Council seems to not want to stump up the cash, or come up with an appealing financial model. Why should Stratford fail where Ebbsfleet and Ashford are failing?

A further aside here: I have argued that re-opening only 1 of Ashford or Ebbsfleet would make sense, and the same sort of calculation would also apply to Stratford. A combined ticket from Stratford to

Then we come to the operators.

London St Pancras Highspeed Ltd (formerly HS1 Ltd) as operator of the tracks and stations wants more trains, and more passengers, and wants to keep the lid on the costs – so they are not going to stand in the way of the Mayor of London trying to do something at Stratford. More importantly, HS1 Ltd and their clear minded CEO Robert Sinclair, realise that one way to decrease the pressure on the congested St Pancras terminal is to get passengers to board Channel Tunnel services elsewhere, so Stratford would fit their thinking.

The challenge is more: which train operator both could and would want to serve Stratford?

It is beyond the imagination of the incumbent company Eurostar that any passenger would possibly want to travel anywhere other than London St Pancras and Paris Gare du Nord, so Eurostar’s interest in Stratford is pretty much zero (just like for Ebbsfleet, Ashford and Calais too). Even were there a little money to be made by serving interim stations, or by decreasing the pressure on St Pancras, why would Eurostar want to, when the status quo serves your money masters in Paris just fine? I cannot see Eurostar going for it.

So we instead come to the potential new entrants. Neither Virgin Trains nor Trenitalia have mentioned Stratford, but as a means to differentiate themselves from Eurostar it could be of some interest – promise a more pleasant experience prior to boarding than the cramped St Pancras, and a shorter journey time for those in East London, and you could see how this niche could be appealing.

It is the third new entrant – Gemini – that has been keenest on Stratford, and even proposed to start and end its trains there and equip the terminal, and not serve St Pancras at all. But Gemini’s issues are twofold – the track layout at Stratford (see OpenRailwayMap here, and remember UK trains run on the left) makes terminating trains there difficult (you have to run almost all the way to St Pancras before you can reverse), and the company lacks a maintenance facility (Virgin was granted access to Temple Mills, and Trenitalia is building a facility near Paris) – although Gemini and the Department for Transport are making noises about trying to make use of a site in Ashford. Nevertheless the chances Gemini even gets to the starting line look tricky from here.

So that then is how I would do it. Find the funds to equip the Stratford terminal and staff it, and then hope that is appealing enough to a new entrant to want to use it – and more likely it would be Virgin Trains or Trenitalia for now than Gemini. And do that as a stop on the way to/from St Pancras, rather than use Stratford as a terminus (as the station is not suitable for that).

[Background]
Stratford International and many other aspects of the future of Channel Tunnel through services were covered in my 2025 #CrossChannelRail report – details of that can be found here.

Source: https://jonworth.eu/want-trains-to-continental-europe-from-stratford-heres-how/