Eurostar e300

These e300 trains are the original Eurostar trains and 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.

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These e300 trains are used for:

• Most departures on the London ↔ Bruxelles route
• A few departures on the London ↔ Paris route
  They are not used on the London ↔ Amsterdam / The Netherlands route/

These trains travel at up to 300 km/h / 185mph on the high speed lines, which comprise most of all of the routes they take.

On these e300 trains, the Premier Class and Plus Class seats are located in coaches 7 - 12, while Standard class is located in coaches 1 - 5 and 13 - 18.
The bar/bistro car is coach 6

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

Yes - seat reservations are included with any ticket booking.

Specific seats can't be selected during the booking process, but this facility is now available after a booking has been completed.
The advice is to use the ‘Manage Your Booking’ facility, which can be easily found on the Eurostar website
You don't need to have booked the ticket with Eurostar
You will need to enter a Booking Reference number - but other booking agents such as Trainline, Rail Europe, SNCF Connect, B-Europe and NS International, will also include this number on the communication sent to you.

Log in to check the position of the seat you have been allocated on the seating plan.
You can then select alternative, available seats at no extra charge.

Yes, but by the time of your booking, the rail pass reservations may not be available on specific departures.
See the info below, or take a look at the detailed guide.

There is a bar/bistro car, the Eurostar café, which can be used by all passengers during the journey.
Though travellers in Plus Class and Premier Class will receive a complimentary at-seat meal service.

Yes - and accessing the portal is free.

Yes - And there are sockets for both E.U and UK style plugs.

Eurostar does not offer this facility.

Each piece of luggage can be up to 85cm long at its widest point

• In Standard and Plus you can bring two pieces of luggage + one piece of hand luggage - such as handbags, briefcases and laptop bags
• In Premier, you can bring three pieces of luggage + one piece of hand luggage
• And in all travel classes, children can bring one piece of luggage + one piece of hand luggage.

Though what's comparatively unusual is that each larger item of luggage must be labelled.

Yes and they are located in Standard Premier Class and Business Premier Class on these trains.

Boarding and Disembarking Assistance is also available, though it should ideally be booked 24hrs in Advance.

Only on trains travelling between London and Brussels - and space must be booked in advance by emailing travelservices@eurostar.com -

If you’re travelling between London and Paris, your bike must be disassembled and placed in a box - and space must still be booked in advance.

Pre-boarding, the bike, non- disassembled or boxed, must be dropped off at the luggage area.
At the end of the journey, the bike will be handed back to you on the platform.

Only guide dogs / Assistance dogs can be taken on board.

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.

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

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.

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 become unavailable 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 six months 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.