London-Paris rail link nears end

The link will cut the journey time between London and Paris to 135 minutes

LONDON, England -- Tunnelling has begun on the final stage of a high-speed rail link that will cut journeys between London and Paris to 135 minutes.

A huge machine, nicknamed Annie, is to begin cutting a tunnel beneath London on Friday to complete the final section of the British part of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

The 120-metre-long machine -- one of two that will eventually be used -- will tunnel nearly five miles from Stratford in east London to railway land near St Pancras Station, passing under 2,000 homes and other buildings.

Its operators say it will operate non-stop for 400 days, covering about 1.5 metres every 20 minutes, and is expected to shift almost 800,000 tonnes of chalk, sand and clay.

Once complete, Britain will have a 68-mile high-speed link from central London to the Kent coast, where it will join the Channel Tunnel which joins the UK with continental Europe.

The first passengers will be able to travel from St Pancras at the beginning of 2007 when the journey to Paris will take about 2 hours 15 minutes, while journeys to Brussels will take just two hours.

Trains will reach speeds of 186mph and the link -- the first major railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian age -- will halve the journey from central London to the tunnel to 35 minutes.

The entire Channel Tunnel Rail Link from Folkestone in Kent to St Pancras has been built in two phases costing £5.2 billion in total.

The first phase, which is 90 percent finished, is the 46 miles from the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone to Fawkham Junction in north Kent.

The final phase extends the line 24 miles to St Pancras via new international stations at Stratford in east London and Ebbsfleet in north Kent.