“Eurostar strikes local rail deal”. Good news at last…or is it?

The local press have had a busy Eurostar day today. First came the BBC, then the Kent Messenger joined in. The reason: Eurostar have announced their passengers will get “free travel on local railway services in Kent when Ebbsfleet opens”.

From 19th November, so the story goes, thanks to a deal between Eurostar and local franchise holder Southeastern, Eurostar passengers will only have to show their passport and Eurostar booking confirmation to be able to travel for free on local trains in Kent. And this goes for journeys to or from Ashford and Ebbsfleet stations.

Now, anyone who has travelled to Belgium will know that this sort of deal is good news. After all, with your current Eurostar ticket, Belgian state railways allow you to travel onward to any station in Belgium. The mind starts racing as to what to do with your Eurostar ticket: leave medieval Canterbury at breakfast and enjoy lunch in the shadow of Leuven’s breathtaking gothic town hall; or how about going from Dover to Oostende - one ferry port to another - without even getting on a boat or stepping into a car.

Ah, with Eurostar, it seems we can dream at last. Or can we? As ever, the devil is in the detail.

First, as we have said many times, Eurostar’s proposed timetable changes mean there will be no more direct trains from Brussels to Ashford. Instead, you will have to travel some 50 kilometres further north to Ebbsfleet. What we haven’t said, however, is if you like making connecting rail journeys, you’ll find yourself in for a lot of fun with Ebbsfleet.

You see, whereas with a quick platform change at Ashford, you can get trains across east and West Kent, you can travel south to Dover or along the Sussex coast to Hastings and Brighton, Ebbsfleet can’t offer these connections. There will be no connecting domestic trains until 2009. Before then, you have to walk, or take the new Fasttrack bus service - also offered free to Eurostar passengers - to a nearby local railway station.

Perhaps you’ll choose the nearest station, Northfleet, a station with an “interesting and varied history”according to the Kentrail.co.uk website. Along with some tasteful photos, Kentrail helpfully explains why all the windows are covered up: it’s because of the building’s “limited opening hours and frequent vandalism.”

So you’ve passed your first test, getting to the nearby railway station. But can you get to the same places that you could from Ashford? To find out, we need the help of a travel planning website. Step forth the government’s flagship site, the mighty www.transportdirect.info

First, we tried to enter Ebbsfleet into the website. Unfortunately, as the website told us, “No options found for “Ebbsfleet “ as ‘Station/airport’. So we just had to settle on Northfleet after all.

Undaunted by this little setback, we then picked a time of day for our journey. For argument’s sake, we chose 10am.

Now for our destinations. First up, that journey to Canterbury.

Transportdirect comes back with a train at 10:25am, taking one hour 34 minutes to get there and involving two changes of train. Oh dear, not a good start, especially as the 10:07 train from Ashford gets you to Canterbury in 17 minutes. In fact, you could wait at Ashford and catch any one of the next four trains and still get to Canterbury earlier.

Okay, let’s try another journey. How about West Malling, home of the huge King’s Hill business park? You can leave Ashford at 10:05am and be there in 37 minutes. How does Ebbsfleet (er, Northfleet) compare?

Well, you can get a train towards London at 10:14am, almost at the same time as from Ashford. So far so good. Once in London, a quick dash at London Bridge means you can get a direct train to, er, “Ashford” that goes via West Malling. The time difference? A mere one hour and 6 minutes more via London.

Tonbridge then? 23 minutes direct from Ashford, 1 hour 31 with a change in London from Northfleet.

Brighton? Well, Eurostar’s free connecting journey offer won’t be valid on this route because, as far as we know, they are not looking to negotiate an agreement with Southern, the train operator that runs the service from Ashford to Brighton. However, even this journey along the south coast was quicker than getting a train from Northfleet.

We could go on but I think you’re starting to get the picture. It’s frustrating in a way because we, as regular Ashford passengers, would like to see Eurostar do well. Today’s story should have been a step in the right direction with international and local trains linking up to provide a seamless, environmentally friendly journey. It could have been the start of a major “drive” (ahem) to get passengers travelling to the Eurostar by train. However, because Eurostar do not intend to stop trains at Ashford and Ebbsfleet, it seems unlikely that many people will make use of this offer.

As we are beginning to expect, nothing is ever quite what it seems in the wonderful world of Eurostar press releases.