25. July 2025
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Direct Trains from Germany to London – Will It Ever Happen?

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

I try to increase my volume on pure blogging posts, in which I give my personal opinion on certain topics. One of them, which pops up in German media almost weekly currently are discussions about direct train connections between Germany and London. There are some options regarding ICE trains which could run directly into the British capital. Currently, the typical way to get to London by rail from the Greater Cologne area I live in is by a transfer in Brussels. I give you my – not that optimistic – thoughts about a better option.

 

Trains from Germany To London – How does it work currently?

The typical way to get from Germany to London (which means St Pancras Intl station) is via Brussels. The most popular option is likely to use the former Thalys, which is now part of the Eurostar company. You transfer in the Belgian capital. From there, there are direct Eurostar connections to London. There also used to be the opportunity to have a transfer from the German ICE train (from Frankfurt and Cologne) to the Eurostar there. However, you cannot get saver tickets any more. If you are coming from Northern Germany, you might also take a transfer in Amsterdam, which features three direct services into the British capital.

The downside of the transfer is that you should at least have a buffer of one hour for the transfer in Brussels. You have airport style luggage checks (all luggage, passport controls etc.) – technically, you already immigrate to the United Kingdom in Brussels. This is handy once you disembark there – but takes some time before the train ride. On the way from London to Germany or other destinations, these checks take place at St Pancras International. Thus, you need to be there rather early, but therefor can have significantly shorter transfer times in Belgium. This, of course, also means that you need to have reliable and somehow in time connections (especially if you go for separate tickets). To be fair, neither the German ICE connection nor the Eurostar from the Ruhrgebiet and Cologne to Brussels and Paris is are good in that regard.

 

Trains from Germany To London – What would that mean?

The discussions about a rail connection from Germany to London are lasting for over a decade. For the 2012 London Olympics, there were some initial plans for that. One key challenge was that German ICE trains were thought to be too short and thus unsafe for an evacuation under the Channel. The regulations in that regard have been eased and there have been checks that even a two section ICE would not be a safety risk. However, more than ten years ago, plans are very vague. The most likely scenarios would be a direct connection from Cologne or Frankfurt to the United Kingdom.

Recently, there have been ideas about a direct rail link between Berlin and London. As Great Britain is neither part of the European Union nor of the Schengen Area, this would be an absolutely ridiculous idea. I will elaborate on that in a subsection below. By the way, Germany is not the only country which is debating about a high speed rail connection to London. However, the discussions about having a train from Geneva or Basel in Switzerland to London feel to be a bit more sophisticated and structured. While I could not find any equivalent to that for German plannings, there is a very nice article (almost a paper) on the Swiss channel travelnews.ch (in German). Many of the challenges discussed there are valid equivalently for a potential German connection.

 

Berlin To London? Why I feel that this is (almost) the worst option

The idea of connecting Berlin with London directly absolutely surprised me. I feel that this option would more or less boost all disadvantages you would already have if you started in Cologne or Frankfurt (which I see as the most probable candidates). Here are some points, why I feel that this idea is purely ideological, but does not have any chance to stand realistically:

  • Berlin is indeed the largest city in Germany. Its commuting area, though, is small, especially compared to the Ruhrgebiet. An international train station in Cologne could easily serve ten to fifteen million people in a one hour train ride distance.
  • You need to be aware that once you departed on that train in Berlin, you would technically be on British soil already. The train could stop to add passengers, but you could not leave the train. Stations en route which allow you to embark (and to disembark on the way bag) need to meet certain requirements to host all the passenger checks necessary.
  • In general that means that you will have limited stops. However, you are either blocked by other trains or need to free time slots on which a Berlin to London train would have clear tracks. I feel that this is very hard to reach, especially including a certain level of robustness against delays of that train or of other operations.
  • The Swiss article names some interesting implications on that point. There are no special rules for driving times of train drivers, but they have to follow the general rules for European workers. This means that after six hours, a train driver (and all the train staff as well) need to have the opportunity to have a 30 to 45 minute break (depending on the length of the total shift). The total connection time between Berlin and London would likely be around seven to eight hours. This means that you have had to have a second crew onboard – or exchange them somewhere, with all the border control and custom implications this would have.
  • Some other implications named in the article are the likely higher volume of luggage, but also the capacity of the bathrooms, waste management and providing sufficient food and nutrition to potential passengers.
  • There are also political implications. British Border Force would have to be allowed to do their work on German soil. I feel that this is somehow solvable.

 

Berlin To London Could Mean Weird Ticket Pricing

Let’s assume we would had a train from Berlin to London. Due to the work time implications, it makes a technical break in Cologne to exchange the crew. The city is more or less in the middle of the trip. As the train is stopping anyway, people can also board the train there (but there was no unboarding). As a person boarding the train in Cologne is blocking the seat also for the journey from Berlin to Cologne (as nobody can leave the train there), the ticket price would have to be almost the same like the entire from Berlin. The price might be just slightly lower, allowing for effects like a lower necessity for staff, usage of electricity, facilities etc. You don’t have that situation in European rail travel so far, apart from Eurostar trains to London and in night / sleeper trains, where many stops are typically boarding or unboarding only. For the current Eurostar connections from Paris or Brussels  to London, the effect is not that important as the departure stations are comparably close to each other and the journey thereafter is rather long.

A Check Into Eurostar

I picked a random Eurostar train from Amsterdam to London, to see how they are doing it. The first train from the Dutch capital to the United Kingdom has five stops. I gave the times below in Central European Summer Time. In local time, the train arrives in London at 9:57.

ES 9115 on 15th August 2025 Time (CET)
Amsterdam Centraal dep 6:40
Rotterdam Centraal arr 7:23
Brussels Midi / South arr 8:38
Lille Europe arr 9:25
London St Pancras arr (time in CET!) 10:57

I looked up the prices for Standard Class (the lowest) and Premier (the poshest) tickets on that trip from each and every station at the time of writing this section (20th July 2025)

ES 9115, 15th August 2025 Standard Class, € Premier Class, €
Amsterdam Centraal 110 365
Rotterdam Centraal n/a 365
Brussels Midi / South 236 325
Lille Europe 236 325
London St Pancras — —

Very roughly, you made half of the trip in Brussels. The ticket from Rotterdam is not even sold in Standard Class. Other direct connections available that day range between 160 and 200 EUR. The price difference in Premium Class is minimal, regardless of the departure airport. You obviously cannot buy tickets within Continental Europe for that connection. The Amsterdam price might also be lower to be competitive against the alternative of flying between the cities (you might in fact be faster by plane, while the Eurostar is definitely faster than the plane – city to city – from Brussels). Of course, part of the story is also that the Eurotunnel as such is the “most expansive” part of the route.

Competitive Pricing?

I could imagine that this would be accepted for trains from Germany to London driven by Eurostar (which is still, somehow, a rare experience for many travelers), but not accepted if the trains are driven by Deutsche Bahn. For the same day, by the way, the connection from Cologne to London (6:30 hrs travel time), including the necessary transfer, was 216 to 298 EUR Standard Class / 424 EUR Premier.

Regarding the price, Eurostar is currently not competitive to flying. There is a morning service from Cologne/Bonn Airport (CGN) to London Heathrow (LHR) by Eurowings. On that day, you pay 139 EUR basic fare / 193 EUR Economy with luggage. BizClass / Business Class is 239.99 EUR.

 

Trains from Germany To London – What would you in fact need?

I feel that only Frankfurt and Cologne are suitable candidates currently for a direct connection to London. I would imagine that due to logistic reasons, this would be the only stop in Germany and even in Europe, a classic peer to peer connection.

In that case, that train station in Europe would need:

  • You need a fully separated platform. This also means that you cannot enter the platform by crossing the rails, getting into it somehow from outside etc. Typically, there is a discussion about just having a platform with one track (e.g. Cologne Main Station, Track 1). If you aim for higher frequencies and less dependencies, you might even need two.
  • There need to be independent walkways to these platforms
  • The train station needs passport check and luggage check facilities.
  • People spend comparably much time in these protected areas (“airside”, in aviation language) before they board the train. This means they need benches to sit, booths which sell food, toilets.
  • There needs to be some sort of lounge for premium passengers. They also need priority facilities to guarantee a smoother check-in process.
  • Ideally, you also have something like a duty free store.

Summed up, you need quite some space. If you don’t built a new station from scratch, you have to sacrifice one or two tracks at least for these connections, at least for a major part of the day.

 

And then, there is Reliability

Let’s assume, Cologne would be the city to go (same applies to Frankfurt). If you had a direct Cologne to London connection, you need feeder trains, which are reliable so that you don’t miss your connection if you in fact don’t start your trip in that city. If the Cologne choice wasn’t one of their two major ones, Cologne Main Station and Cologne Trade Fair / Deutz station, this might even mean that you have to change the schedule and make rather long-distance trains stop there.

You should also avoid major detours on these feeder connections. This is, by the way, the key reason why I would favor Cologne over Frankfurt. The Ruhrgebiet is Germany’s largest densely populated area. If people had to transfer in Frankfurt, this would mean a longer journey to the starting point, passing Cologne. On the international route, they would ride the train for one hour, just for the sake of passing Cologne again. For major parts of Germany, the transfer in Cologne would still mean a stopover, train change and all the check-in hassle, but it would still be in the same direction of traveling. Northbound or Southbound towards Cologne, then heading straight West towards the British.

 

Trains from Germany To London – Why hasn’t it happened yet?

Most of the technical burdens are gone. The only two promising locations for a connection to Great Britain are Cologne and Frankfurt. My home town has a clear geographic advantage. However, both cities have in common that the capacity of their main stations and the surrounding infrastructure is already quite limited. Finding an appropriate location for that will be challenging. Then you need to start the necessary construction work. I guess it would take years to built all the facilities I listed above.

For Cologne Main Station, platform 1 (which is a single platform) has been discussed. It already does feature the Deutsche Bahn Lounge (which is currently renovated). On the down side, it is just a single platform (is that sufficient) and it would reduce the capacity on regional traffic. Thus, for both cities, people also discuss alternative locations. For Frankfurt, it is majorly Frankfurt Süd / Frankfurt Soutthern stations. For Cologne, the rather major station Köln Mülheim is discussed as well as Cologne/Bonn Airport station.

I could also imagine to upgrade Cologne’s Trade Fair station, which is the only one listed which currently already features national high speed rail connections. For the others, you had to discuss how to get people to these stations efficiently. I personally don’t believe in the Cologne airport solution, as I feel that it might not be good to bring people to an airport to reduce aviation traffic.

 

Is that sensible at all?

Finally, there is the question whether people would indeed use that connection sufficiently. Would the volume of investments and traffic impacts really justify the effort? We saw that the Eurostar, even from Amsterdam, is typically not cheaper than a flight. There are no more flight from the Rheinland region (namely Cologne/Bonn CGN and Dusseldorf DUS) to London City Airport (LCY). This is a chance for the train. Even including the security checks for the train, the connection might beat a flight to Heathrow (LHR) and the transfer into the city in regards of time.

The situation for the potential Swiss rail connection is a bit of different as the distance from Switzerland to the Eurotunnel and London is large. Nonetheless, they assume that two trains in each direction per day would solely sell some 40 per cent of the seats and call that a Klimasubvention (“Climate Subsidy”). They rather suggest to improve the connections to Lille, so that Swiss passengers could transfer there more easily. One needs to discuss whether this would be a sensible investment or if other measures like improving the general rail infrastructure in Germany would make more sense.

 

Finding an Operator
That is the point which worries me the least. There are two potential operators, Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn. If the infrastructure was there, I would guess that both would love to go for that connection. For the Germans, the conditions might be more difficult. They need to build the necessary infrastructure in London (maintenance, cleaning etc.). Eurostar has that already. The rolling stock is in general available or just needs doable adjustments.

 

Trains from Germany To London – My Thoughts

I love to ride a train. And I would love to have a nonstop train service from Cologne to London. Being able to work on the whole, some four hour sounds great. However, the more I think about the topic, it is not realistic to me. The effort is simply too large. The current connection via Brussels works, but it is very bothering. On top of that, the Belgian capital, especially the train station, is well known for pick-pocketing. Thus, I am generally shy to transfer there.

Dreaming a bit, a change in one of the underlying conditions could change things quite a bit. If the United Kingdom would revert the Brexit and join the Schengen area, you might solely have to care about luggage checks. This is still challenging, but might make things easier. Similar to flights nowadays, you might have checked luggage to speed operations up. Unfortunately, this will not happen in a foreseeable future.

 

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Here is everything about trains, trams and other rail vehicles:

 

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