There will be a new Eurostar route soon running from London to Amsterdam, departing from the current terminus St. Pancras International.

The channel tunnel operators announced that the trains will run from the 4th of April this year, and they will run twice daily taking just under 4 hours, 3 hours 41 minutes to be exact.

At the beginning the Eurostar will only run one way directly this is from St. Pancras International to the Dutch capital. There will be no trains running directly the other way; instead passengers wishing to travel from Amsterdam to London will have to stop in Brussels to change due to the lack of passport controls in the Dutch capital. The stop at Brussels will only be temporary; they are waiting for the British and Dutch government to agree a way in which passport control can be policed in the Dutch capital. The Eurostar company is optimistic that they should have everything agreed by the end of 2019 or early 2020.

The costs of a one-way fare to Amsterdam will be £35 at least with there being two daily departures from St. Pancras International, one at 08:31 and the other at 17:31. Tickets will go on sale from February the 20th which is around two weeks before the first departure to the Netherlands which leaves on April the 4th.

The Eurostar owners claim that the new service will cut the time between Brussels and London by just under twenty minutes and now it’s expected to take one hour and 48 minutes.

The company released a statement earlier which read, "The launch of the London to Amsterdam service marks a historic milestone in the expansion of international high-speed rail travel, revolutionising the connection between these important destinations,"

The Eurostar is now competing with many airline companies for the custom as the most common route from London to Amsterdam is by air as roughly four and a half million people travel each year. When the Eurostar launched in 1994 there was around the same amount of people flying by plane to the French capital therefore competing in a similar size market as they were just under 15 years ago. The travel between the two cities since has grown massively as it's more than doubled. The Eurostar journey between the cities lets us use around 80% less carbon than the flight equivalent meaning it’s a more eco-friendly way to commute into Europe.

The current chief executive of Eurostar, Nicolas Petrovic, said, “With direct services from the UK to the Netherlands, France, and Belgium, we are transforming the links between the UK and three of Europe’s top trading nations…Our new route marks the culmination of the extensive investment in high speed rail on both sides of the Channel. With £1 billion investment in our new state-of the art trains and enhanced connectivity on the European network passengers can now enjoy fast, seamless rail connections between the UK and mainland Europe and a transformed travel experience.”

There has been much testing of the high speed rail opportunities in the Netherlands, and after testing and the completion of the construction of the Eurostar terminals in the Dutch capital, the service will run from April. It will take 3 hours and a minute to Rotterdam and then a further 40 minutes to the capital, Amsterdam.

The trains that will be used on the line will be new e320 trains, which are currently in use between London and Paris and have been used for the past three years on this route, and these are used as they are compatible with the current Dutch railways.