I remember when almost all the rail/ship/rail connections were seamless, with integrated port/station facilities. We still have that on the route from Harwich to Hook of Holland (though the later is now a metro station link, not mainline), and (give or take a few hundred yards’ walk) a rail-boat link at Newhaven … hence the importance of not losing that route.

Dieppe used to have trains on the quayside meeting the boats (some of the rails are still there; it was a bit like Weymouth used to be, with tracks along a road); but I presume that stopped partly at least because the main ferry dock moved to the other side of the harbour where there was no scope to reroute the tracks to. That crossing enabled a useful overnight London-Paris connection, with the integrated port/station on each side, and (then) direct Dieppe-Paris trains meeting the boats.

And as you say, the port stations closed in Calais and Dover. I imagine the Dover one would be difficult to reinstate, but – as you also say – there could at least be a dedicated shuttle-bus link (indeed there was for a while, years back, on both sides).

The other missing link is the route I used to use quite a lot for overnight London-Brussels journeys, via Ostend. Ostend still has an integrated terminal for the port and railway (and indeed for the trams and buses too – all highly convenient). The one snag, of course, is that Ostend no longer has any passenger ferry connections! A fast ferry or catamaran from a rail-connected port in south-east England, linking to Ostend, would be an option I’d certainly use (as a cheaper alternative to Eurostar at short notice) for London-Brussels (and onwards) journeys.

If we really achieve the switch from flights to surface travel that is desperately needed, then the Channel Tunnel will be insufficient, and then expanded – and more convenient and speedier – surface connections will be necessary.

I well remember years ago getting off a boat at, eg, Hook of Holland, or Ostend, and finding trains waiting alongside the ferry terminal with through carriages to destinations on the other side of Europe. For longer journeys incorporating a ferry, places that do still have a port/station connection (such as Ostend) are the obvious ones to develop services round.

“WARSAW to the 3 BALTIC CAPITAL CITIES: Until a few years ago it was virtually impossible to make this journey, as there were no through services and no proper connections linking the 4 capital cities.”

This “there were no through services” depends on when you’re talking about.

For generations, during pre-Soviet times, and during Soviet times, and – for a short while – in post Soviet times, there were indeed routine rail services linking the 3 Baltic capitals, with some services extended on to Warsaw. Similarly, there were links from Russia and Belarus to the Baltic states, with some of those including through carriages to Warsaw. More than 30 years ago, in early post-Cold War times, after being at a conference [split between Helsinki and Tallinn in fact], I returned west direct from Tallinn using a through Tallinn-Warsaw service which called at Riga and Vilnius during the day, and continued overnight to Warsaw (it included sleeper carriages). [The fun and games at one of the borders during the night – both in terms of the gauge change technicalities, and the bureaucratic arguments I had about whether or not I retrospectively needed a Belarusian transit visa – are a story in themelves, but I won’t waste your time with that now. The main through route from Vilnius to Poland in those days went via a tiny corner of Belarus, and the gauge change took place at the last place in Belarus before the Polish border.)

What happened is that the 3 Baltic states joined the EU in the 1990s, and – for perhaps understandable political reasons – they downgraded their links to the east, to Russia etc. But additionally, the EU seems to have told them that running rail services with public financial support was the old-style communist way of doing things, and the nice capitalist EU would help fund new motorways and so on instead, to replace the north-south rail links too. And before long even the rail connections between the 3 Baltic capitals were abandoned, let alone the onward link to Poland.

So geographically sensible and obvious rail links, that had been in use for a century or more, irrespective of political changes and assorted borders coming and going during those years, were shut down.

And now, people in that part of Europe are making a fuss about setting up links they say have never existed before; but they certainly have!

I hope this is of interest.

Best wishes

Albert Beale

The ingress of water in the Thames tunnel would be more difficult to implement a recovery plan. As my namesake says there would be too many passsengers and trains to use Ebbsfleet as a terminal for all trains. However a way needs to be found to do something. Maybe turning 50% at Ebbsfleet and 50% at Ashford with the SouthEastern service from Ashford to London via Tonbridge and Maidstone strengthened

Both these incidents are strong arguments for the immediate re-opening of both Ebbsfleet and Ashford.

Ian Ring