Deciphering the "Virgin Trains to order 12 Alstom trains for Channel Tunnel" stories
OK, we have three pieces of "news" to go on - a story from The Times, a Richard Branson column in The Times, and this from Rail Magazine - that Virgin Trains is to order 12 high speed trains from Alstom.
The central point: Virgin Trains is one of three companies (Evolyn/Trenitalia and Gemini are the other two) that wants to rival Eurostar on long distance high speed routes through the Channel Tunnel. This autumn the UK's Office for Rail and Road will adjudicate which operator, if any, will be granted access to the Temple Mills depot in east London to maintain its trains for these services, and this Virgin news should be seen in that light - it is essentially "if we, Virgin Trains, are allocated the capacity at Temple Mills, this is what we plan to do".
That is also the most plausible explanation for the words "binding agreement" in the Rail Magazine piece, and "Virgin has “secured binding exclusivity” with Alstom for a dozen Avelia Stream trains" in The Times. If we get the capacity, we order.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg.
This news from Virgin throws up as many additional questions as it answers.
As far as I know, no other operator has even been considering Alstom Avelia Stream. Eurostar, the incumbent, is supposed to favour another Alstom product - the double deck Avelia Horizon rather than the single deck Stream. And my assumption is that Evolyn/Trenitalia would only consider Hitachi, and my best guess was that Gemini would consider Hitachi and/or Siemens, as both Hitachi and Siemens designs are proven and the order book for both companies comparatively short.
While Alstom's website is rather unclear on the point - it lumps very different ex-Bombardier and ex-Alstom Italy products under the Stream label - this train for Virgin would be essentially a souped up non-tilting Pendolino design. The closest equivalents are the ED250 running in Poland and ETR 675 for Italo in Italy, but those have a maximum speed of 250km/h. We know a 300km/h version of this train is in the works, because French high speed startup Kevin Speed intends to buy them, and to secure paths on French high speed lines, 300km/h is a must. But choosing Stream is a risk - these designs have not yet been approved to run in France (and French legacy signalling system TVM430 is going to be needed), and when the new 300km/h version is going to be available is not known.
The news from Virgin also poses a question for Eurostar - as despite it being rumoured for 15 months now, there is no news of a contract being signed by the incumbent operator for new trains. And if Virgin is to go with Alstom, why the single deck design rather than the double deck Avelia Horizon? And does that decision made by Virgin possibly give us reason to think Eurostar might have an issue with the double deck design as well - perhaps due to delivery delays, and being behind SNCF (115 trains), Proxima (12) and ONCF (18)?
And then there are the trains themselves. Stream is normally a 7 carriage, 187m long design (extending each carriage could get you close to 200m) - but anyway you need 2 coupled together to get a train the same capacity as a Eurostar e320 that's close to 400m. So a fleet of 12 Stream trains is equivalent to 6 Eurostars. You cannot really offer very much with a fleet that size, although you could conceivably maintain all of them at Temple Mills and not need maintenance in France or Belgium.
And then Virgin says in The Times that it intends to run to Paris, Bruxelles and Amsterdam, with the idea to expand further in future. And makes no mention of interim stops. Which is peculiar, as one of the biggest upsides of the Stream design is fast boarding (single deck) and swift acceleration (many powered axles) - so stops in Ebbsfleet or Ashford would be easier with this type of train than with a double deck design with few doors and few powered axles.
So that's what today's news deciphered. If more facts about all of this emerge I will update the blog post accordingly!
[Update 22.8.2025, 08:00]
Paragraph about length of Alstom Avelia Stream updated and clarified.