200mph trains included in £700m eurostar investment

Eurostar, which operates high-speed services to Paris and Brussels from London’s St Pancras station, will buy 10 German-built e320 trains which will carry 900 passengers.

This is a 20 per cent capacity increase on the existing trains which will be overhauled and refurbished.

The arrival of the new trains, built by Siemens, could see London-Paris journey times reduced to just over two hours. The trains will be able to run across the European high-speed network.

French rail company SNCF is one of the three shareholders which own Eurostar and the decision to opt for German-built trains will anger the French government which had been hoping for the contract to be awarded to French company Alstom.

The Eurostar announcement was welcomed by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond who earlier this week announced further details of the £33 billion UK high-speed rail network - known as High Speed 2 (HS2).

Mr Hammond hopes work can start on HS2 by 2015 and studies are going on to see if the new network can be joined to the London to Folkestone Channel Tunnel link, now known as HS1.

HS2 would initially run to Birmingham and Mr Hammond this week signalled his preference for a Y-shaped network north of Birmingham, with separate legs from the West Midlands to Manchester and Leeds.

Mr Hammond said: “The transformation of Eurostar into a single entity has created a company well placed to attract the resources and investment needed to deliver a world class service.

“That’s good news for passengers but also for the UK taxpayer as well, who owns 40 per cent of Eurostar International.” Eurostar chief executive officer Nicolas Petrovic said: “Over the last 16 years Eurostar has revolutionised travel between London, Paris and Brussels but our sights are now set on expanding our business across Europe.”