More and more people are taking advantage of the fast train journey through the Channel Tunnel and on the Eurostar trains from Paris to Cologne and Amsterdam. That’s why the railway company wants to invest in new trains.
The railway company Eurostar wants to invest in up to 50 new trains after a strong increase in passengers and an increase in sales and earnings. Among other things, the trains used from the Rhine-Ruhr area to Paris are to be replaced by new high-speed trains from 2030, as Eurostar announced. This was intended to increase the capacities on the connections as well as the comfort.
In 2023, Eurostar increased its turnover to more than two billion euros with its connections through the Channel Tunnel and from Paris to Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam and achieved earnings before taxes and depreciation of 423 million euros. In the previous year, sales were 1.6 billion euros and earnings were 391.5 million euros. The growth was based on an expansion of operations, with passenger numbers increasing from 14.8 million in 2022 to 18.6 million in 2023, said the company, which is majority owned by the French and Belgian state railways SNCF and SNCB.
Instead of the current 51 trains, Eurostar wants to use up to 67 trains in the future. Older train models that commute from London to Brussels and Paris should be replaced, as should gradually also the trains on the network from Paris to Cologne and Amsterdam, which until recently operated under the name Thalys. This is an investment worth two billion euros, Eurostar said. It has not yet been decided which train models should be ordered by which railway company.
In the past there had been a tussle between industrial groups over the construction of trains for Eurostar. After the French company Alstom initially supplied the trains, the German competitor Siemens later came along with a model. The trains in the Thalys network have all come from Alstom.
Source: Stern
