1. Read the text and choose the best title for it.

a. New train service

b. Eurostar

c. Connection between Europe and UK

It is partly thanks to a railway that the UK’s links with continental Europe are growing ever closer. Eurostar is the international train service that operates from London and Ashford in England through the Channel Tunnel to Paris and Lille in France and Brussels in Belgium.

From these cities, passengers can connect to the railways throughout Europe. Services also run to Disneyland Paris and, in the winter skiing season, to the French Alps.

Eurostar is operated jointly by Eurostar (U.K.) Limited, French Railways (SNCF) and Belgium Railways (SNCB/NMBS). It now carries more people from London to Paris and Brussels than any airline, and research suggests that five times as many people in London and south-east England have visited Paris than before the service started. In return it brings millions of visitors to the U.K.

Each sleek, aerodynamic train carries up to 766 passengers, almost equivalent to two Boeing 747 jumbo jets. At 392 meters long, the trains are over one and a half times as long as the U.K.’s tallest building Canary Wharf. Eurostar reaches speeds of up to 300 kmph, making journey from London to Paris in just less than three hours and to Brussels in two hours 40 minutes. A new rail link now under construction in south-east England will reduce these journey times by a further 40 minutes.

Those who want to take their car through the Channel Tunnel can catch Le Shuttle at Folkestone on the English coast or at Calais in France. Cars, coaches and freight vehicles are carried by 800-metre long rail freight vehicles – the largest purpose designed rail wagons in the world. The journey time from platform to platform is just 35 minutes.