STP-BRU Eurostar – Standard Premier

Operator: Eurostar

Headcode: 9I16

Route:    STP-BRU

Class:    Standard Premier

Seat:     C1 S43

Date:     Friday 5^th January 2024

Back at the start of January it was time for my annual ‘big’ trip and this year I’d named it ‘Snoozing to Split’ as the majority of my travel would be onboard some of Europe’s night trains. However, despite some undelivered ambitions in the 1980s as the Channel Tunnel was being constructed, there are no night trains between the UK and Europe. As such my trip started as many do, with a train to Kings Cross and then a walk across the road to the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International.

I’ve always been quite lucky when travelling with Eurostar in the past as I’ve managed to avoid the ‘horror’ queues that make the front pages of the British tabloids. Unfortunately, my luck didn’t hold out on this occasion and I was faced with a queue that winded around the Eurostar area, before continuing past St. Pancras’ high-end shops and reaching its end not far from the Thameslink gateline. However, with plenty of time in hand and the positivity coming from going on holiday, I joined the end and we were soon moving forward albeit slowly.

It took me around 20 minutes to reach the ticket gates, with those of us for the 0901 departure directed towards separate gates and even the back-up entrance in the case of those without much luggage. From the ticket gates it only took a few minutes to pass through security, with everything in either my bag or coat and me only needing to remove my belt. Given for Eurostar I don’t have to remove anything from my luggage and there are no liquid restrictions, I do wonder why this is still the case in aviation.

After security I hit what was seemingly the cause of the problem, passport control. This was a mess and that’s putting it politely! Not only was not every booth open, the agency staff in charge of sorting the queuing out also kept changing their minds as to whether a queue was EU or non-EU. I was lucky as I think I managed to get into the Business Premier passport queue, however it still took me 10 minutes to get from security to the departure lounge.

The advantage of these delays at passport control were that the passengers for the 0801 and 0816 departures were being sent straight to their trains and with me being one of the first to make it through for the 0901, the departure lounge was very quiet. Settling down with a coffee from Pret, I only had a 30 or so minute wait until we were being allowed to board on platform 7.

Out train was formed of a pair of e320 units, 374019 and 374020 with my seat being in coach 1 at the ‘London end’ of the former. Usually this is a ‘Business Premier’ coach, however with passenger numbers seemingly fairly low, Eurostar had taken the opportunity to sell more ‘Standard Premier’ upgrades. The carriage was a mainly laid out in a 1-2 configuration, however my seat 43 was one of the few where it is 1-1. As would be expected there is a mix of airline style seating as well as both twins and groups of fours around tables.

Whilst the 0801 Paris and 0816 Amsterdam services had both departed around 20 minutes late as a result of the issues at passport control, our service departed at 0902, just one minute late with coach 1 being around ¼ full. We had barely left St Pancras before the onboard staff were bringing around the breakfast which is included in Standard Premier, consisting of coffee or tea, water, orange juice, a cheese twist, a fruit salad and a yoghurt.

Our journey to the coast passed through Stratford International, Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International, three stations that do not currently have international services stopping and, in the case of Stratford, has never had international services stopping. The journey under the Thames just before Ebbsfleet was thankfully much drier than it had been the week before when a pump had stopped working, resulting in the tunnel having water above the rails and causing widespread disruption to both Eurostar and Southeastern Highspeed services.

Whilst the scenery in Kent was a beautiful as ever, it was quite a grey day across the south-east of England meaning the Medway didn’t sparkle as it usually does in the sun. As we slowed down to enter the channel tunnel, we passed one of the Eurotunnel class 9 locomotives, 9008 sat in the sidings with a rake of HGV carriages taking a break between duties.

Our crossing through the tunnel passed without incident and we were soon in France, speeding towards the one intermediate stop on our journey, Lille Europe. This underground station feels like a dungeon, however, serves all of the high-speed operators that call at Lille and so is a major interchange between ‘blue’ Eurostar and ‘red’ Eurostar (formerly Thalys) services. In fact Eurostar have now adjusted their winter ski service to require an interchange here between their two service types.

Leaving Lille, we passed a large rail yard that was disappointingly empty with only a couple of two-car EMUs hiding at the back and a pair of shunting locos waiting for some wagons to turn up. We soon crossed the Belgian border and zoomed past the wonderfully named town of Silly as we crossed the province of Wallonia.

As we approached Brussels Midi, we crossed over many of the lines that form the station throat by a large viaduct which also provides great views of the dome of the Palace of Justice, unfortunately still covered in the scaffolding that has been present on all the occasions I’ve passed it. Pulling into platform 1 five minutes late, another pair of e320s, 374005 & 374006 were in the adjacent platform 2, waiting for departure back to London.

Brussels Midi is undergoing some renovations to its Eurostar terminal and as such half of platform 1 is fenced off, resulting in some congestion as everyone headed for the two escalators midway down the platform to exit. However, despite this congestion is was just 7 minutes from the doors opening to me exiting into one of the domestic concourses.

All in all my journey in Standard Premier with Eurostar was okay, although it definitely wasn’t the best I’ve experienced. The issues with passport control in London put a dampener of the start of my trip and some of the staff really didn’t have a clue what they were doing with the queues. Thankfully the onboard experience made up for this and it was a great two-hour journey to Brussels. Again the station experience at Brussels was marred by the construction works, however this didn’t really cause much issue and is required to make things better.

Lounge              0*

Seat/Facilities     4*

Food                4*

Service             3*

Punctuality         4*

Overall Rating      15/25 (read about my rating system here!)