The network is spreading

It's now common knowledge that later this month German state railway Deutsche Bahn will be bringing one of their InterCity Express trains through the Channel Tunnel and into London St Pancras -- a test in the first stages of what they hope will lead to the launch of a new route.

A direct London-Brussels-Cologne-Frankfurt train is still a looong way away, given the vast forests of regulations surrounding operations through the Channel Tunnel and the determination of the French government to protect Eurostar, in which the majority owner is the, er, French government.

Eurostar itself, meanwhile, is responding to the competitive threat by looking at extending its own route -- in this case by extending its London-Brussels services to Amsterdam. To do that, their Board has decided to go ahead with a special order for Siemens Velaro high speed trains.

This has been on the cards for a while, since Siemens became the preferred bidder earlier this year.

The Velaro is a development by Siemens of (savour the irony) DB's InterCity Express trains (the ICE3, in fact).

This train has already had some export success, and the garishly-liveried machine you can see in that picture now operates in Russia; they can also be found in Spain and China.

The Velaro holds the world speed record for an unmodified commercial trainset, at just shy of 400kph. It won't be operating at those speeds in the UK.

After more than a decade of fixed routes, and given the sloppy service Eurostar has recently given (never mind their appalling record in last winter's snows), I'm rather hoping this new order is the sign of a positive competitive response to DB's initiative.