Why is Eurostar so slow between Brussels and Amsterdam?

[zwk500]

No, but that wasn’t in the original statement I replied to.

but it was in the original question that @Bald Rick was replying to.

 

[quantinghome]

Paris doesnt have a through station right in the middle if the city.

Fair enough. Given the Brussels North-South connection is extremely busy, and if bypassing Brussels entirely is a bad idea, then at least they should build a dedicated tunnel for high speed trains to avoid the crawl, as London and other cities have done. At the moment the arrangement in Brussels is a bit like routeing Eurostar down Thameslink. Yes, it's 6 tracks, not 2, but even if Thameslink had the same sort of capacity as the North-South connection, sending high speed services through it would still be a bad idea.

 

[30907]

Fair enough. Given the Brussels North-South connection is extremely busy, and if bypassing Brussels entirely is a bad idea, then at least they should build a dedicated tunnel for high speed trains to avoid the crawl, as London and other cities have done.

Have I missed something?
I can think of tunnels used by high speed trains (Warsaw, Berlin, Madrid, Stuttgart eventually....) but the only ones that are remotely high speed are Lille and Bologna.
In Brussels you might need extra capacity but a minute or so saved between Nord and Midi wouldn't amount to much (Eurostar is the only service to omit Nord).

 

[quantinghome]

Have I missed something?
I can think of tunnels used by high speed trains (Warsaw, Berlin, Madrid, Stuttgart eventually....) but the only ones that are remotely high speed are Lille and Bologna.

Within a mile of St. Pancras' buffer stops, Eurostar services enter a dedicated tunnel with a linespeed of 200 increasing to 230 kph.

In Brussels you might need extra capacity but a minute or so saved between Nord and Midi wouldn't amount to much (Eurostar is the only service to omit Nord).

It's not a minute or two though is it? It's a 6km crawl from Midi to Schaerbeek before the high speed trains get onto their dedicated high(er) speed infrastructure - and even then it's not properly high speed until you're past Antwerp or Leuven. There is no sensible reason to have multiple city centre stops for high speed services. So why not have a dedicated line starting in a tunnel as close to Midi as possible which heads west, surfaces close to the E40 and then continues on to connects into HSL2?

 

[RT4038]

Within a mile of St. Pancras' buffer stops, Eurostar services enter a dedicated tunnel with a linespeed of 200 increasing to 230 kph.


It's not a minute or two though is it? It's a 6km crawl from Midi to Schaerbeek before the high speed trains get onto their dedicated high(er) speed infrastructure - and even then it's not properly high speed until you're past Antwerp or Leuven. There is no sensible reason to have multiple city centre stops for high speed services. So why not have a dedicated line starting in a tunnel as close to Midi as possible which heads west, surfaces close to the E40 and then continues on to connects into HSL2?

Why not indeed, apart from a load of cash required and not benefitting the Belgians anything like as much as transit/international passengers. Hard to see how building it would be a priority.