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Travel On Train Eurostar e300
A Eurostar e300 train

Eurostar e300

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At a Glance

Travel Pass Supplement

Rail Pass Reservation Fees
Reservations

Compulsory
Time of Day

Day
Catering

Food services available

Bar (sandwiches, snacks, salads)
Accessibility

Accessing the train

Wheelchair Spaces
Bikes Allowed
Train Specification

Attributes of the train

High Speed (total journey)
Has a Conductor
Country

Which country these trains operate in.

France
Great Britain
Belgium
Travel Passes
Eurail
InterRail

On Board

Business Premier and Standard Premier

Perks
WiFi

A complimentary WiFi portal is available throughout this train.

Power Socket

The power sockets on this train are compatible with standard E.U. two point plugs.

Trolley Service:

A catering trolley with hot and cold drinks and snacks should be taken through the train at some point during its journey.

Food and drink:
Dinner is served in Standard Premier class Dinner is served in Standard Premier class

Standard Premier class passengers will be served a complimentary light meal at their seat by the catering staff, the menu choice will depend on the time of day.
Business Premier class passengers will be served a three course meal.

Standard

Perks
WiFi

A complimentary WiFi portal is available throughout this train.

Power Socket

The power sockets on this train are compatible with standard E.U. two point plugs.

A Eurostar e300 train arrives in Lyon A Eurostar e300 train arrives in Lyon

Eurostar e300 travel guide:

These e300 trains are the original Eurostar trains.

A now completed refurbishment program has completely updated the interiors, with new seats and information screens, plus the addition of WiFi access and power sockets by all seats.

On e300 trains, the Business Premier/Standard Premier seats are located in coaches 7 - 12, while standard class is located in coaches 1 - 5 and 4 - 18.

On the newer e320 trains, the Business Premier/Standard Premier seats are located in coaches 1 - 3 and 14-16, while standard class is located in coaches 4 - 7 and 10-13.

Routes:

These e300 trains are used for some departures on this route:

London - Ebbsfleet - (Ashford) - (Calais) - Lille - Bruxelles

These e300 trains are also used for a few departures on this route:

London - Ebbsfleet (Ashford) - Paris

You will be travelling by e300 trains on these two routes.

(1) London - Ashford - Lyon - Avignon - Marseille

(2) London - Ashford - Moutiers - Aime la Plagne - Bourg St Maurice

The Travel experience:

At St Pancras stattion Eurostar conductors will be on the platform to help you find the coach in which your seat(s) will be located.

These e300 trains have one door per coach - the coach numbers are on an electronic panel beside the door.

Managing Luggage:

If you have large items of luggage, then the best option is stow it in the racks by the doors, and then find your seat.
You won’t need to rush to find your seat, all seats are reserved, so nobody else will be sitting in it.

If you find your seat first without stowing your luggage, you may discover that there is no space around your seat in which to store particularly large items of luggage.

As space on the luggage racks by the doors is inevitably limited, if you have large items of luggage aim to be amongst the first passengers to board.

Info about luggage allowances and items such as taking pushchairs is here

On board:

The arrangement of the seats has no relationship at all to the spacing of the windows - particularly in Standard class.

So the advice is to make use the ‘manage your seat’ facility when making a booking on the Eurostar website.

Check the position of the seat you have been allocated on the seating plan and if it doesn’t line up with a window then change it – particularly if you will be travelling by daylight.

The view from the windows on a Eurostar is rarely scintillating, but if you can’t see out of a window, the standard class journey can feel a tad claustrophobic.

Using rail passes:

Some welcome news, rail pass users can now pay reservation fees to travel on Eurostar trains, in a similar manner to other international European high speed trains.
Previously tickets were offered at a special rail pass user rate, which could be more expensive than the cheapest fares.

The new rail pass reservation fees are similar to the cheapest single journey ticket prices, but as those cheapest tickets can sell out quickly, it's likely that the rail pass reservation fees will save money.

Booking the reservations

The quota of seats available to Eurail and InterRail users on each Eurostar departure is is limited and it's not unknown for it to sell out on some departures months ahead, particularly for travel in June to August and around holiday dates at other times of year.
The most popular departures will inevitably sell out faster - and it's these trains which inevitably have the best connections in Bruxelles, Lille and Paris for travel to and from more distant destinations.
Reservations on Eurostar trains can now be booked up to 330 days ahead of the travel date.

Particularly in summer, it can be a good idea to maximise the flexibility of making a successful booking, by arranging an itinerary so that Paris or a city in Belgium are the first or last stopover points on the travel day.
This is because it's seemingly rare for every Eurostar to have its rail pass allocation sold out on a travel date, but it's more common for only evening departures to have availability.
Or if reservations are still available for London ↔ Lille journeys when London ↔ Paris isn't available, an option is to book the reservation to or from Lille and then take trains between Lille and Paris.

If you will need to travel by a specific Eurostar departure, you'll want to check that rail pass reservations are available for the train you need to take prior to buying a pass
The availability can be looked up on RailEurope and B-Europe without the need to already have a pass number that's generated by a Eurail / InterRail purchase - though you will need a pass number to go ahead and book.

Also avoid thinking, 'great I can see the reservations, so I'll book the pass now and go back to RailEurope or B-Europe tomorrow' - because at busy times the reservations can be sold out by the time you go back online.

Worth knowing is that before you have a pass, the function of the Eurail and InterRail 'timetable' tool is to show which departures require a reservation.
The timetable tool / online reservation service will only show the actual availability per departure, once you have purchased a pass, received a pass number and can then log-in
Therefore before you have a pass, so can't log-in, the InterRail/Eurail websites will tend to show seats as available on every departure, so don't assume that is the situation.
The key thing is to avoid buying a pass and assuming Eurostar reservations will be available, and then discovering that they aren't on the train you need to take.

UK residents using InterRail passes

UK residents should also note that Eurostar reservations will only be valid when making one outward journey and return journey from and to the UK.
So if you were to follow an itinerary which involves heading back to the UK and then, for example, heading off later for a few days to travel around The Netherlands, you wouldn't be able to use the pass on the Eurostars on the second trip to the Netherlands.

Also the journeys within the UK need to be on the days that you will heading off to continental Europe or returning - so it's not possible to stay overnight in London before or after taking a Eurostar.
The reason being is that a maximum of two travel days is permitted in the resident country of a pass user, and the journey on the Eurostar is counted as a day of use.

Travelling with bicycles:

Eurostar has had to temporarily (hopefully) suspend the transportation of non-folding bicycles. The info below is for the procedure which was in place before the suspension and which will hopefully resume shortly.

If you place a folding bike in its bag it can be taken on board as hand-luggage - if it is bagged.

Non-folding bikes can be taken on board if you book in advance OR if you use the registered luggage service at the station on the day of travel.

A flat rate of £30 per journey is charged for storing non-folding bikes on board a Eurostar train, but this fee can't be paid on the website when booking your journey tickets.
So it's best to call Eurostar's telephone booking service on 03448225822 from within the UK, or 044344822582 from outside the UK as soon as possible, bookings generally open around 180 days of the travel date - and then book the travel ticket and bike reservations over the phone as a single booking.

As explained on Seat 61, you can save money by disassembling a bike and placing it in a bag or box - and if you do that you can also increase the possibility of the bike(s) being accepted on to your first choice of Eurostar departure, spaces are more limited for assembled bikes.

Also worth knowing if you will be taking a non-folding bike, no matter how you prepare it for transport, is that only the trains between London and Lille, Paris and Bruxelles will accept a limited number of bikes on ANY departure.
Bikes cannot be transported on the last train of the day to Amsterdam and can't be conveyed at all to/from Ashford, Rotterdam, Ebbsfleet, or any of the destinations less regularly served such as Avignon, Lyon, Marne La Vallée, Marseille and the ski resorts served by Eurostar.

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