Is there a min connection time at Brussels South?

[paddington]

On an any Belgian station ticket to London, you are supposed to check-in to the Eurostar at least 30 mins before.

Now I know the earliest Belgian train you can take is up to 24 hours before, but what would be the latest? Would you be protected if you took a Belgian train scheduled to arrive at Midi/Zuid e.g. 35 minutes before the Eurostar departure, but it is late by 5 minutes and you miss the Eurostar. What should be done if this happens?

Also, can anyone comment on the time it is currently taking to get through security and passport control on Sunday evenings? I have experienced immigration delays when departing the Schengen zone by air recently due to the new requirement that European passports must all be scanned into the computer rather than just a glance at the photo page, so I suspect the same may be happening at the trains.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Yes, it will be busy at the Channel Tunnel terminal at Bruxelles on Sunday evening but not as bad as what you have seen on TV (which is mainly about Spain). In principle, all passports are read electronically on exiting Schengen and in my experience the Belgian Police do this pretty efficiently at Brussels. UK Immigration is where the queues build up, because of the large variety of nationalities and visa arrangements that passengers have. I would suggest you arrive 45 mins before departure, irrespective of whatever the official advice is. Although the local cut off time for checkin is normally 15 mins ahead of departure it is possible that if you arrive too late and there are long queues you won't get on the booked train (and will be put on the next one). NB also that SNCB/NMBS may hold a departing train up to about 12-15 mins, if they want to, without messing up the timetable too much and this is what they often do when there are large crowds. But you can't rely on it.
The other thing I'll mention is that quite a few travellers tend to think -- presumably based on airport experience -- that there are lots of other trains leaving from the CT Terminal other than the one they are on, so get quite worked up and want to go up to the head of queue as departure hour approaches. But of course there is never more than one train leaving the terminal at the same time and everyone in the queue is booked on it (they won't let you through to the departure lounge ahead of time in the way they do in London): so everyone is in the same boat!!