Enquiry about southeastern’s class 395

[Pompey00]

Evening I was wondering why southeastern’s class 395 goes from St Pancras instead of other stations in London used/owned by them.

 

[Discuss223]

Good evening. This is because the Class 395 operate the High Speed One route from the south-east coast, that feeds solely into Saint Pancras, as that's the Eurostar terminal. Long story short. The Eurostar and 395s operate a special line towards Kent from London that has linespeeds of over 140mph. Therefore, these need to work on an assigned line from Saint Pancras.

 

[Pompey00]

makes sense thank you , also do they have pantographs

 

[Doomotron]

makes sense thank you , also do they have pantographs

Yes, they have pantographs. High Speed 1 is equipped with overhead wires, so between St Pancras and Ashford the pantograph is used and everywhere else they use the third rail.

To answer your original question, 395s were also meant to run to Victoria during disruption and for a period driver route retention runs into Victoria happened, but these are long gone. If HS1 does need to be closed, Southeastern high speed services simply don't run at all.

 

[Pompey00]

So most of the journey is pantograph the rest is 3rd rail. Thank you

Basically they’ll happily shut it off no services at all if they can’t go their original route