Wendover Productions - 2026-09-04
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5:30, so thatcher wanted to prove that the free market could do anything, and the “free market” demanded the government to suppress competition…
"Free market" advocates only make their profits when they use their investor cash to bribe governments to suppress potential competitors in the so-called "free market."
Not at all, the government also had to guarantee minimun usage
It often takes a whole lot of socialism to make 'unadulterated' capitalism work for it's CEO's & investors
and pay minimums so yea as usual, the free market is a MYTH
It is hilarious to watch the free market fight to make itself less free. Usually, imo, a truly free market is indeed best. Ironically, the government must fight tooth and nail to regulate it to keep it free
18:37 y'know, credit to Virgin's media people "terms and croissants apply" and "may cause discomfort to existing providers" are both pretty funny
The service might be hit or miss, but Virgin always is on point with marketing.
Pity about their customer services.
What good is funny?
Just wait until more of the truth about Branson come out. Brand won't be more toxic if Sir Jimmy Saville was the CEO.
@iain4295 the sins of a CEO are not the sins of their employees, the joke is funny even if made in aid of a bad company or a bad person. Idk dawg, just let people enjoy things from time to time? My comment isn't deep and isn't trying to be? Joke funny.
Marketing is quite literally manipulation and propaganda.
It's a form we've all come to tolerate because it's been normalised but it's still nothing more than a manipulation to make you like a company more than they deserve.
Sure it's mildly humerous, but it's also soulless corporate shilling. Enjoy it if you like.
As Banksy famously said know that advertising is "taking the piss out of you everyday."
I'm taking a Eurostar from Amsterdam to London for the first time next week. Now I'm extra stoked!
Worst route to take. Paris, Lille or Brussels are a hundred times better!
We hope you enjoy London!
@felixvergara-e6d there always has to be that one person eager to put down another person’s excitement. What a buzzkill.
@felixvergara-e6d they're only better if you actually want to go to those cities.
@felixvergara-e6dif you happen to live in Amsterdam it's nice to have a direct train to London...
Why would you go over Paris or Lille then?
They should just call it "HS" because at this rate there's never going to be a HS2
It was originally called CTRL (channel tunnel rail link) which is def more fitting
It was called HS1 in November 2006, before HS2 was even proposed
Then it would just sound like High School
hs2 is going fast
@TheKewlPerson we don't call it "high school" though... I don't even know if high school is secondary or sixth form tbh...
So depressing that the requirements to make money have crippled our capabilities on this once in a lifetime project
the problem isn't the requirement to make money - it's more the lack of respect towards us europeans self enriching migrants show, who think they can just arrive in the homelands of others and live off the natives. If it wasn't for the need to defend our border from the colonisers, we could have a great train system.
Are you always willing to lose money on a project that doesn't prove its value?
@jeong-ilkajokaya3849 you woulda hated the us highway system, that shit was unprofitable for a while. alot of big infrastructure projects woulda never made it off the ground with that mentality. its important to stay within budget, but some things arent ever gonna be profitable. for ample, why do we not monotize air, its a big place where we could really make money, lungs are using free oxygen when private insterests need more money.
@jeong-ilkajokaya3849 In that case if your house is burning down, don’t call 911. Fire departments lose money. Don’t use the postal service or freeways either.
Would you rather pay billions in taxes to the Govt to subsidize them? Or, would you rather it not exist? Socialist like you can’t think one step in front of you!
Ashford closing was a massive blow to those of us outside London. It had lots of hotels nearby and it had reasonably priced parking at the station. We used it, along with many families, to go to Disneyland. I really hope sense prevails and it'll reopen.
My Dad was very unsympathetic about that plight and would much rather have cross Channel services north of London, but the difference is that when we have to go to London to get the Eurostar we're travelling in basically the same direction as what we would on a hypothetical direct service, whereas people in Kent have to double back on themselves! It's kind of like how if they stopped the service from Liverpool to London and we had to go to Preston instead
Agreed. Kent county has a population of almost 2 million people in an area of almost 4000 km2, which is very much high enough to justify its own stop. Now the fastest way is to go by car, but it is far less efficient for a train to carry cars through the tunel than just carrying people.
@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 And even if they feel that neither Kent nor the North can on their own justify services, they can always combine the two and have services from the North stop in Kent, then maybe between them they'll provide enough traffic to fill the trains!
@Inkyminkyzizwoz Birmingham-Kent-Mainland would be an interesting service, enables more people to go from the UK to the EU and back without competing with domestic rail in the UK.
@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 And it would still allow the services starting in London to be non stop
Hi! I'm a rail freight planner in the UK. There's a few other hurdles when it comes to freight through the "chunnel" which I want to mention...
Firstly, I think there might be even less than six daily non-shuttle freight trains through the tunnel now. The most frequent is bottled water from Danone-owned water companies Evian and Volvic from France to the Daventry International Railfreight Terminal, the only other is cars to and from Toton near Nottingham. A 3rd service which was operated for a company called Novellis, which transported steel girders from Neuss to Widnes, and on the return Jaguar car parts for export from Halewood, recently ceased.
When BR was privatised, all the cross-channel traffic fell in the hands of EWS (English, Welsh & Scottish railway), which at the time became the largest Freight Operating Company (FOC). About 10 years later, DB Cargo bought the business which is where it stands today. However, this presents an issue for any other FOCs wanting to get involved with new cross-channel freight, as DBC themselves own the infrastructure and train paths in the timetable in order to run services like this. The Dollands Moor freight yard at the Channel Tunnel, which is owned by DBC, requires an additional £197.60 per-train access charge to use for other operators, plus additional charges for stabling trains for longer periods, but the big problem is actually with the fundamental agreement signed between the UK and France when the tunnel opened.
This is called the Treaty of Canterbury, and amongst other things, it dictates the rules for how the tunnel can be used. One of these rules is that there can only be a maximum of 35 freight train paths in the timetable per day to/from the tunnel, and about 97% of these are now owned by DB Cargo, and completely unused. In the UK, if a FOC owns a WTT (Working TimeTable) train path, and doesn't use it for any workings within a 90-day period, any other FOC can take it off them through a process called "failure to use" or "Part-D". This is the case for all freight train paths, EXCEPT all those protected under the Treaty of Canterbury, thus DBC have a chokehold on all freight services, and the nature of said treaty (which was written before privatisation) effectively prevents competition in the freight sector.
Another issue is with the signalling system used in the Chunnel and HS1. It uses French TVM-430 signalling, which is an old French high-speed line in-cab signalling system. The issue with this is that there's only one kind of locomotive in use in the UK with it fitted, the Class 92, which was built for cross-channel work, but in privatisation, only two FOCs own this type of loco (DBC and GB Railfreight), and a number of locos have been exported to other countries after cross-channel freight dwindled. As these locos have aged, they're only able to haul up to 1,000t each, meaning heavier trains have to be split in two to divide the weight; another strain on the operation.
On the bright side however, Network Rail have recently purchased the Ripple Lane terminal in East London from DBC and intend to turn it into a European Railfreight Hub, with it's connection to HS1 at Dagenham meaning trains with full continental loading gauge wagons can access the terminal, including taking lorry trailers by rail directly into London. This site's refurbishment hasn't been finished and no new services have been announced yet, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Definitely more complicated than planning in Domestic logistics
I still think it's a crying shame that JLR stopped running the car trains, as someone who was local to the yard where they put them onto the wagons. Hopefully they reconsider that mistake some day
why can't they do a continuous loop of freight cars, loading and stripping automatically. can just be the containers or trailers and hitched to tractor cabs at the other end?
DB ruining all things train related, huh
What brings them to Toton?
The French and Belgium governments did not sell their share of Eurostar and, as such, Eurostar is 75% owned by the French and Belgium state railways.
Don't know what to make of that, but it is an interesting fact not mentioned in the video.
Sold off for a one off cash windfall, British government now looses out on any future dividends from those services which whilst there are less services than pre covid are busier.
Well certainly one consequence which wasn't touched on in this video is it doesn't really connect Britain (or even London) to Europe, it connects it to France and Belgium (and the Netherlands, four times a day). The Chunnel really isn't a practical option from Germany, for instance, as you have to allow to 90 minutes for check in, and then another hour because your train from Germany will be late and Eurostar are unsympathetic (unlike most other European operators), which means even if you can get to Paris or Brussels in two hours from somewhere like Cologne or Karlsruhe, it becomes a 7 hour journey... And if you want to go to southern Europe, you have to cross Paris. Enjoy 🙃
@domstafford1894 such a long journey dosent make any sense doing on a train.
20:55 Britain is renationalising its passenger rail system, so perhaps this is be an opportunity for the rail network to be run in a more holistic way, in the years ahead.
And that’s a good thing. One of the things that blighted privatised operations was that everyone had forgotten what it took to govern multiple companies accessing the track.
At least being all under one company makes it possible for it to be run as a “system” with the goal of providing transport. It also makes it possible to automatically subsidise necessary low revenue routes (it’s sorted out in the one company’s accounts and doesn’t get any more complicated than that.
Rail works in Japan largely because (as you put it) it’s a holistic system, and because in their culture service trumps profit. The train operators own their tracks, and where track is shared the companies are motivated to share “properly”. No nasty tricks like running extra hard wheels that grind down the track too fast.
I think that is rather stating the obvious. Unfortunately, as far as I can see GBR does not appear to have any real plans to achieve any improvements. The only thing I have seen up to now is the announcement of a rather bland re branding of rolling stock. That is quite ironic as the individual and regional labelling is one of the few good things about the old system.
Not quite. It's renationalising the franchises that own and operate the portions of Britain's railway network. But they won't be unified into one company. They will still remain independent portions, just government owned. It's better than what we have now. But it's miles away from true nationalisation and the unified operating procedures that allows. Especially as, while the Train Operating Company franchises that operate services are being nationalised, the rolling stock owning companies that lease trains to the train operating companies aren't. So it is still private companies who decide what rolling stock exists on Britain's network and how it is deployed
@jeremycooper8978
Whilst the ROSCO system has proved to be quite expensive. I think that a return to rolling stock procurement controlled directly by central government would be a disaster.
@perkinscrane I’m really curious, how so?
One of those engineering projects that sounds impossible until you realize humans actually built it beneath the sea.
And now it could be done using a floating tunnel that goes through the water itself.
@SmallSpoonBrigade That idea is even crazier. A tunnel suspended in the water sounds more like science fiction than engineering, but it could genuinely be the next step.
@Theunknownepoch Next? Those already exist. They're great for when you'd have to go too far down in order to get under the water.
I'm not sure where they all exist, but Norway has some.
@SmallSpoonBrigade I think you mean subsea rock tunnels. Norway has plenty of those. The submerged floating tunnel idea is different, and as far as I know none are actually in service yet.
The National Railway Museum in the UK has a 5 hour oral history with the person who was Project Lead for the North of London project (Ross Spicer), due to be made publicly available in the next month or so.
Thanks Ross's Mum 🙏🏻
nice
@markclawrie007😂😂😂😂 ah
Hi. I take the Eurostar a lot. It's phenomenal. 2h15 between London and Paris is a level of luxury within an engineering marvel that is hard to put into words. It's one of my favourite things ever built.
The journey from Tokyo to Kyoto is about the same and has stops and is still faster.
Really is. Especially when you're straight into the centre of Paris with no airport transfers. It's so much more convenient than flying
@ichibanmanekineko Well there is a tunnel in between...keep in mind the speed is limited to 160 km/h for around 50 km to get through the tunnel
Plus the minimum check-in and security time...
@ichibanmanekineko Didnt know about the kansai underwater tunnel
I’ve actually used the Eurostar a few times now to visit people in the UK starting the journey in Rotterdam(going there via local NS transit), and honestly I’m always pretty happy how it goes. However there is one thing I think this video touches on that is so incredibly important: The stations.. are not built for it.
I start in Rotterdam, the border check and waiting area here is incredibly small, but that’s fine as it’s not a very large starting area with most people getting on in Brussels/amsterdam. However on the way back I start in St. Pancras and.. it is absolute hell. It is CLEARLY not built for international service, it’s cramped with barely any place to sit, often requiring sitting on the ground while waiting for the train. They tell you to come roughly an hour(and a half iirc) early, but once your through there is nothing. It’s not built like an airport, it’s built for you to sit down a few minutes and then get on your train. And fundamentally.. this is what makes it so much more of a pain compared to when I for example go from Rotterdam to Paris/Brussles.
Because funnily enough, before my train that heads to London there is one that heads to Paris, and while the one heading to London requires everybody to go through checks, cramped and annoying, the Paris one is just.. get on as if it’s a normal train, cuz that’s how it’s treated, because passport is not needed to be checked, and honestly I don’t think the channel route will be able to be made a lot more convenient purely because of this fact
Yeah... I've never understood why they insist so much on having all the checks before boarding. Europe has been carrying out border checks on trains for ages, even before Schengen, and they still do for non-Schengen countries.
Like, what's the issue with the train stopping for 30 mins - 1 hour at the border when, with the current system, you need to be at the station 30 mins - 1 hour before departure anyway? Literally almost all of Eurostar's problems could be solved by this.
I rode it once in the summer of ‘22. We missed our initial train, and had to wait for a long time to get our tickets, and even longer in security. I think it wasn’t even too much longer after we got on the train that it left. I know I am biased, as my local airport has very efficient security, but it definitely needs to be improved.
*you're through
@riccriccardoricc It's not the border checks so much, it's the security requirements for the Tunnel. Even if we were to rejoin the EU and go full in with Eurozone and Schengen and everything, those checks would still be required!
seems to be quite an oversight to miss out mentioning eurostar's most critical problem
2:30 Margaret Thatcher was not a Eurosceptic when she was first elected. Actually she was quite a Europhile. She became a Eurosceptic later.
Never got why. She entered with the mentality that "The empire is dead", but changed her mind quite fast after
@JamesAdams34869cause Europe is dead
@JamesAdams34869
I recall that she saw the eec/eu as a means of entrenching the single market as being something above and beyond the democratic remit of national governments, essentially using the eu to override national interests. This was fine for her, because she believed in the market. But the French understood the concept, and used the same logic to force the social chapter through Brussels, and again take that above and beyond the control of national governments.
The proof of this is actually seen within the eu laws that smashed up the state railways of the eu (a process not yet complete, but gathering pace).
See eu laws 440/1991 & 1370/2007 for the evidence that it is actually eu law that is responsible for the fracturing and privatisation of the railways.
@JamesAdams34869 she favoured the EEC as a free trade bloc and campaigned to remain in it in 1975. She opposed political union though
@chrisj9700 Similar to Theresa May, campaigned to Remain in 2016 but once she became Prime Minister she had pressure from the Tory Eurosceptic old boys club with the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg.
This video im my time zone means i should have slept already
My father was one of the engineers dispatched by the SNCF to work on HS1 in the latter half of the 90s. Suffice to say, it pretty much shaped my life as a kid, migrating to London for a few years and taking the Eurostar regularly.
Spot on with your views about lack of systems thinking in the 🇬🇧.
Too many NImbys(not in my backyard).
Same with aviation.
I live near the channel. Local people get upset with truck traffic and long truck queues on the motorway. When plans are announced to build a truck waiting area everyone who complains about the traffic also hates the idea of having a place for the traffic to go to.
Same with immigration "not in my backyard"
@BigBlueNickWe're an island of wingers.
@raysworld-b1d2c Immigration only benefits the immigrants and in the short term, capital. Infrastructures benefit everyone.
Another reason why ferry wins hard over train for trucking - comfort. A few summers back when I was teen I would have 'roadtrip' vacation by joining either my dad or granddad as they did a long haul across Europe leg of Russia - <insert Western Europe country> (mostly Germany and Netherlands, but had one trip to Spain too), and one of such trips was to middle of UK, so we had to take the ferry.
Not only do you get to do your mandated 45 minute break, but you also get to get out of truck and enjoy what's essentially a mini-cruise - spacious lounges, opportunity to wash up proper, meal that's included in the ticket price (which is paid by company card, not your personal (pocket) money) (both times was in mornings, so it was pretty much comparable to any hotel breakfast buffet). Meanwhile, while you do get to ride in a 'club car' if you do LeShuttle instead of being stuck in the vehicle like other cars, there's little in terms of comfort - stuck with vending machines for refreshments and smallish seats, with little to no opportunity to walk around and limber up.
Ships are the most comfortable yes, but they are slower than bicycles. Also, in my expierience of trains you can get up and walk arround all you want.
Tho it depends on the exact trip overall my ranking of transport methods is
1 trains (and trams)
2 bicycles (and walking)
3 cars
4 airplanes
5 ships
6 busses
I wish the UK would build great infrastructure projects like this again
Still does just differently, Nuclear power is a good example ( lets not talk about HS2)
HS2 kinda died, I don't think it's ever getting built. And there was talks about building a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland because the undersea is too unstable to build a tunnel within a reasonable budget. That latter one is still of interest to people on both sides of the Irish Sea, but it doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
@safebox36 we could also mention the wind farms but even wind farms and nuclear power plants don't really come close to the scale of the Euro Tunnel
@safebox36With such a bridge you run into the issue of gales and storms and the fact you have to deal with two railway gauges and loading gauges.
@safebox36 HS2 is currently being built. Granted, it's only a shadow of what it should have been... But the line between London and Birmingham will — eventually — be completed.
As much as the Tories wanted to cancel it, they just couldn't justify the loss of all the heavy infrastructure that has already been built between the two cities.
A slight correction: 15:10 shows the normal Stratford station and its reconstruction for the Jubilee line extension. Stratford International station (both domestic and never-used international) is an entirely separate station to the north, contained within a concrete trench.
Took 30+ years to finally get another companies trains through. Madness.
Capitalism working as intended.
@fireiceuk9221 No. It's just successive inept UK governments with no vision.
*company's
@MattG2725 does the term walled garden mean anything to you? Companies interoperating and unifying standards is the exception and not the rule. And is usually forced by the state.
@sulljason It is simple, every time free market leads to a monopoly (which is every time), it wasn't a true free market. /s
Great video but honestly a big too negative. Taking a train from London to Paris is fantastic, even if you need to change at St Pancras to get on it. The car train from Folkstone is also very good and cost competitive with the ferries. I'll also say, having spent 4.5 hours on a rough crossing back on the ferry, the tunnel has far fewer people vomiting on it.
Find a lot of these videos are negative, especially whenever the UK is mentioned.
@JnthnpgOr the US. It's hard to take these productions seriously when they're made by disillusioned people.
3:50 Sam pronounces "legislatures" correctly.
wow I wish my northern train could be as punctual as I was in finding this video
The French definitely couldn't anticipate the 'unintentional' consequences of placing a migrant camp right next to the channel tunnel trains...
You make it sound like there was some seedy conspiracy by France to push Migrants there, when in reality Migrants trying to get to the UK have always flocked to Calais to because of the ferry service and the short distance between the two coasts.
The migrants were already there and more were coming before the Camp was build, they just slept on the streets and camped in the land surrounding Calais, the camp just made it more visible.
Likewise the demolition of that camp didn't get rid of the migrants, because they never came for that, they came to try and get to the UK.
As an American lover of British and European rail/trains, this video makes me really excited, while simultaneously very sad at the dire state of the Chunnel.
honestly, It's fine. Brexit has made the St Pancras waiting area a bit too small and Brussels for some reason doesn't have duty free, while having a duty-free look alike shop. It can be a little expensive but you can often get to Paris for £30. It just need more competition.
The tunnel is in a good state; I assume you mean the people who operate it are in a dire state. The fact that there won't be a new operator on the route until 2030, in Virgin, is definitely dire.
The tunnel is fine. This is just super negative for no reason.
2:56 Never in a million years thought I'd see the steelworks from my little Scottish hometown in a Wendover video, I still walk my dogs where those three cooling towers once stood
The main reason the tunnel is underperforming is the security theatre and the immigration checks. These make it harder for Eurostar to serve more destinations. Eurostar trains need separate areas in the terminals, and they cannot transport domestic passengers. If you look eg. at long distance trains in Europe you see that they do not just serve their end points. A Zurich - Vienna train also transports people from Salzburg to Vienna, or from st. Gallen to st. Anton. Without the security theatre and with on board passport checks (like it is done on other trains) you could eg. run London - Brussels - Amsterdam hourly, with the train also serving eg. Brussels - Amsterdam market. You could have a cross channel commuter service linking Kent and Nord-Pas-de-Calais. You could have a Glasgow - London - Paris service that could be used by people just going Glasgow - London as well...
I guess one of the solutions to this could be to have both passport checks at the final destination - e.g., for the Glasgow > London > Paris service, you could have no passport checks on the UK side, and passengers could get on and off on the UK side at will. Then you could do UK exit checks and EU entrance checks at the Paris station on arrival.
Few fun Le Shuttle facts I learned as a frequent monthly user :)
Air suspension on all the carriages doesn't always work anymore...they're getting pretty old now :( you can notice sometimes the ride in your car during the crossing is insanely bouncy as a result!
Motorcycles are always parked last in the same carriages, and the Chef de train before departure will make sure the air suspension is working in carriages with bikes so they don't end up falling over which would happen if the carriage had broken air suspension.
When you take your motorcycle, you're now loaded at the back. It's after complaints from some staff that the fumes of the bikes were spreading throughout the carriage during loading, which made the whole train a bit fumey, even with the exhaust extraction they have
The floor of the carriages is wearing out so is patched up with metal plates... but if those plates are in the middle of the carriage they're super temporary / loose and end up being quite the death trap on a motorbike. Advised to not ride in the middle because they do move around...
It still blows my mind this even exists, but it's getting a little sad to see the trains get so neglected and unreliable. In the past year, I'd say only 20% of the trains I took ever left on time :( When it works though...an amazing futuristic experience still!
I did think it was weird that they put me (on a motorbike) in a train car, two empty train cars behind the automobiles. Thanks.
I used this tunnel in the early 2010s a few times, always with the car carrying train. It's a special experience for sure. Just a long line of train cars filled with cars, and the train cars were massive. You spend 30 minutes in the dark and come out on the other side and drive off. Back then it was just as cheap or sometimes cheaper than taking the ferry. I can recommend anyone to at least give it one go before it's gone.
But the ferry was more convenient as a drive break
And a good spot for a lunch break
Actually it's more expensive now than the ferries.... As it's the speed which makes people pay.
As for passenger trains: Eurostar rocks. It killed flights from London to Paris and Brussels.
I took the eurostar a few years back when visiting friends for comic con and I loved it.
And if you ever consider needing bags instead of just a backpack it was way cheaper then flying
Ahh, can't wait to see 21:01 in the correction video next year. The UK government has been retiring out private train contracts since covid forced them to become the operator (google term: operator of last resort). So far the government has recaptured 13 of the TOCs, and the remaining 6 are to be renationalised anywhere between 16 days time (as I type this) to some point in 2028. But even if this hadn't happened, it's not operated by "hundreds" of companies. At peak it was just 25 (and some will possibly run the numbers and arrive closer to 30).
That and Coilery at 4:16
It was a bummer of an ending when in fact, UK rail has the potential to be revitalised in the near future (as long as it isn't contracted back out as soon as another party knocks Labour out.)
@Paul_Me_Once
The video conveniently also failed to mention how the ridership has increased over the last decades. To almost 12 million passengers in 2025.
@Paul_Me_Once At this point I wouldn't even trust Labour not to contract it all back out somehow. Burnham's already looking to bow down to the fossil fuel lobby over North Sea drilling, what's to stop him screwing up the railways again because some group of venture capitalists whispered in his ear?
Regarding the 'hundreds' vs 25- I think they were talking about infrastructure, like construction companies, rather than train operators; since their previous point was about a cancelled bit of construction that broke the plan.
The idea that "the market" would ever do something other than extracting the maximum possible profits for the worst possible service has always been insane.
It's fairly obvious. Yet too many stil refuse to belive it.
@Bird_Dog00 They're so deep in the copimum that they just go on about how it's not actually a free market, and if bad things are happening its because the socialists aren't actually letting the market be free enough! It just needs more freedom and less regulation!!!! ital totally work!!!! Communism bad, famin!!!!!!!! lol
"The market" is the worst possible choice to provide services when it comes to large infrastructure projects. You're practically begging for a monopoly to be formed, at which point there is no more free market, the large corporations start buying out politicians, and it's all downhill from there. The choice isn't communism vs capitalism, it's socialism vs oligarchy. Socialism promotes a free market in the broader economy in the long term, because the maintenance of sensible rules to prevent monopolies is what keeps markets free.
8:15 to my understanding Major had it in his manifesto that they would privatise rail, but were not expecting to win an election. So the privatisation was a huge shambles as there was no real plan.
A huge mess of a privatisation project, privatising the rails themselves led to some of the worst rail accidents in British history, causing them to renationalise tracks and it should have also been the beginning of the end of the whole privatisation project.
@Paul_Me_Once
Except the privatisation is mandated in eu law. There was no going back on it, until Brexit returned the legal, political and democratic ability of the UK to reintegrate and renationalise our railway. GBR is the outcome, and a good start to that, when it finally happened. GBR needs to go through westminster to become law, because that will be the law that overwrites the retained eu law, which mandates the separation of train and track and the tendering of the train operatations to private companies.
See eec 440/1991 and eu 1370/2007 and the eu fourth railway package for the eu laws that smashed up state railways across the eu.
@amateurcameraman The EU privatisation mandate only happened after we privatised in the UK and the EU went "ooh! that looks good!" when they saw the boom in passengers before seeing the result of the mismanagement... then we were locked into it.
@eilidhmm
No. The first mandate from Brussels was 440/1991 in 1991, which predated the Tory railway act by 2 years. That Brussles mandate set up the structure we have today across the UK and eu, which separated train and track, and imposed an invented cost called 'track access charges' which was the means of creating a level playing field for the private train operators. It also mandated that 'open access operators' would be allowed to compete.
The eu didn't follow the UK, for the simple fact that this structure of the industry wasn't done first in the UK, but was actually done first by Sweden in the 1980's (before Sweden was even in the eu) and that was the model the anti democratic powers in Brussles imposed upon the member states (without consent, or even knowledge).
There are only 2 differences between the eu and UK on this whole issue.
1). The UK tory government explictly forbid BR from from bidding for the fractured pieces of train operating companies, whereas the eu law allowed the state to bid for the fractured pieces of train operations. The eu law specifically says that the tendering process must not be games to produce a predetermined outcome, meaning that they can't just award it to the state.
2) the tory government knew it was never going to win the next election, so rushed through the privatisation process, whereas most eu member states did so at the slowest rate possible, which meant adopting all the measures behind the scenes that the public don't see, then only doing the final bit, when it is too late to turn back, and the people have their railway network finally completely smashed.
The Belgians have just announced their process and timeline to meeting the eu deadline for doing so. Meanwhile the Dutch are facing action by the ecj, for illegally giving NS a 'direct award' in an attempt to delay it. Interestingly, the Dutch argument is that there is no mandate from their electorate to smash up NS, there is no mandate in parliament, and the process would be too complicated... none of which matters, as eu law is supreme, and the these eu laws destroying state railways have actually been made into 'single market' rules, from which there is no means to not comply, as non eu Norway is fully aware, given this applies to them too!
Had the eu not done this, it is understood that John Majors preferred method of rail privatisation, was to recreate something like 'the big 4', where a few areas of railways we given to private companies as a vertically integrated whole, rather than the vertically separated mess the eu imposed!
@amateurcameramanmost of our railway and bus franchises were run by European "State-Owned Enterprises" which are European publicly owned companies that held the franchise rights to our bus and train services.
Arriva was run by the state owned Deutsche Bahn.
State owned Netherlands Rail ran Abellio
State owned Trenitalia ran C2C
That's just three examples, there's more.
So if Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain etc all managed to run train lines under public ownership, we could have before Brexit too, successive governments just chose not to.
A good example of that is TFL which was a State-Owned Enterprise when we were an EU member.
2:52 always love an unexpected Concorde cameo
I used the Eurostar often. It's the only convenient travel from Paris, Cologne, Brussels to London. It's amazing. I'll never fly those routes again or even taking those outdated slow ferries.
I adore the chunnel! Still my preferred way to get to Europe when possible!
i recently used the channel tunnel (le shuttle) for the first time, very surreal being deep under the channel in whats basically a cargo train with extra steps
Only took it once ever. A last minute switch as my flight from Southampton was cancelled due to snow. Last minute booking meant only business class was available but got me access to the lounge. Train was delayed as it was somehow held up by a TGV.
2:00 That's funny, because the LAST thing an invader would want to do is ingress into a strait and narrow tunnel. Especially one so long. How many sappers died over the centuries digging tunnels under city walls only to be buried alive?
Napoleon genuinely considered it. He was on a bit of a roll, and the Royal Navy was the unquestioned power on the sea, while the British Army wasn’t ever a world beating force. So if he could walk to Britain, I’d be a massive strategic swing.
10:32 Random East Portland footage spotted
History shows that projects "the will serve beyond London" almost always end up just serving London
15:48 I believe the correct term here should really be "mainland Europe" rather than "the EU". The EU is a political union of countries, not a geographical region. And of course, at that time the UK was still in the EU to begin with.
i think the correct term is not mainland europe but Schengen. you go through immigration to enter the schengen area.
Finding space for a Eurostar terminal is indeed hard. The service to Amsterdam for example speeds through Antwerp while all other high speed services stop there, simply because it is so difficult to create a terminal in the deep underground section of the station. From december, Eurostar will stop there on outbound services but towards Londen it simply lacks the infrastructure. I'm actively lobbying to change that, since we currently have a rare opportunity to find space for a terminal in a section of the station that had an amusement park inside (I'm not kidding) that now went bankrupt for the second time. Instead of trying to revive this failing concept a third time by yet another entrepreneur, this space could be used to create a Eurostar terminal instead.
Can’t believe this is dropping 13 days before my first ride through the chunnel
Every summer I try to book LeShutte to cross the tunnel by car and it's always at least triple the price of the ferry so I guess that pays a role too
It depends when you book it. I use it 2-3 times a year for full return journeys. Whenever I checked ferry, the price is only marginally better but take longer. If I was to pop just to France, it might not matter. But the extra duration is a no-go for my trips.
If you do book just a couple of days or weeks in advance, then yes, the prices will skyrocket
@RealDarkBlade I sometimes look months in advance but if you're travelling in august the prices are always insane. Like 500€ compared to 180 or less for the ferry
"that pays a role too"... if that was intentional, that is a phenomenal pun!
I live in the English Midlands. I can't consider Eurostar as a route to Europe because of the cost, time and effort involved. Much easier to go to my local airport and utilise the effective public transport from European airports to get into the city.
I have used the Euro tunnel a few times, but the ferry is usually cheaper and feels like you're going abroad.
The earth and rock that was dug out to create a tunnel has now been used to create a small nature reserve on the coast I used to work for. It also acts as a memorial to those that died constructing the tunnel as well as the place for the ventilation shafts and the exit to the emergency tunnels
I can't believe something like this only took 6 years to complete.
It would probably take 6 decades and $1 Trillion to build this today.
Well HS2 is taking a minimum 14 years. and £100 billion. The tunnel was bargain.
@ryanmcdonnell99 - 2026-09-04
Great video, one thing you didn't cover is that the tunnel is now used to host a 1,000 MW high-voltage cable that supplies both countries with power on demand, when fully operational it makes about £1M a day... its becoming more important than the trains itself.
@MrTStat - 2026-09-04
it is good that they put the tunnel to some use, but also even without the tunnel this could have been achieved with undersea cables
but granted this will be a lot easier to maintain
@ryancarroll3957 - 2026-09-04
Yes this allows Ireland to turn our nose up at nuclear power while having our own interconnector linking us to England and France and benefit from nuclear power anyway! Just like we say were neutral while having the RAF cover our airspace lol
@jblsucks321 - 2026-09-04
never say this again never say this again never say this again never say this again never say this again never say this again never say this again
@J_G_G_R - 2026-09-04
You can put these cables directly on the sea floor, no tunnels needed.
@ryanmcdonnell99 - 2026-09-04
@J_G_G_R sorry bro but they wouldnt have put it in tunnel if laying it on the seabed was easier.. and because ElecLink(power cable) is housed entirely inside the channel tunnel, it doesn't face the costly marine risks... such as ship anchor damage or underwater shifting... that require expensive offshore maritime repairs like BritNed (underwater dutch power cable) does. The corpo's will always do the thing that makes them the most money and using the tunnel is better...