Eurostar Squandered

It's a missed opportunity of epic proportion.  It should have been a transcendent success, a triumph of romanticism and modernity, a steampunk fantasy, a smug grin to the weary & wistful.  Instead it aims to evoke nothing more romantic than modern air travel at its worst, and succeeds with an appropriately inefficient mix of misery and tedium.

Rail travel should be simple and unchanging.  Arrive at station.  Find platform. Step onto train. Eurostar prefers to first require "check in", involving either or both of unhelpful machines and unfriendly staff.  From there, it's passport control.  (Civilized countries perform this while a train is crossing a border.) From there, an airport-style drill of metal detectors and x-rayed bags & coats. Why? Why is this necessary?  I can take a train from London to Edinburgh without this, or from Paris to Berlin without this, why is this necessary for London to Paris?  It can't be the tunnel:  if you would like to drive to Paris, you can drive onto the train, no x-ray, no metal detector.  So if I travel on foot, my boxers get scanned, but if I travel on wheels, a couple tons of metal and 40 litres of petrol are waved on without question.

On board, seating is cramped, lighting is a harsh and dingy fluorescent, and cabins are fitted in dreary grey from floor to ceiling -- industrial grey fabrics, scuffed dull-grey metals, and grey plastics that low-budget automakers would be embarrassed to use.  In two weeks I will be aboard regional trains from Munich into Austria.  They may be old or even run down, but they will be more pleasant and evocative of the romance of rail than eurostar's appalling excuse for a train.  One of the great joys of rail travel at night is gazing out at passing towns & homes.  The darkness and humble lights add a charm and sympathy most homes would lack in daylight.  But the view from a eurostar cabin is of reflected grey striped and off-white lighting panels.

It could have been so much more.  It could have been an end itself rather than a means.  It's clear the architects of the eurostar did not, and do not, ever travel by rail.  Dull-eyed businessmen blessed with neither heart nor brass have squandered one the turn-of-the-century's greatest opportunities to leave a legacy romantics of the future.