High-speed route
Eurostar (Thalys)
Paris → Amsterdam · France · Belgium · Netherlands
Eurostar (Thalys) in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 524 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 25 min
- Average speed
- 153 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- Eurostar
- Train
- TGV PBKA
- Countries
- France, Belgium, Netherlands
- In service since
- 1996
- Runs
- every 1–2 h (≈11 direct daily each way)
- Riders per year
- ≈ 3M
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
The crimson Thalys, folded into Eurostar in 2023, chains French, Belgian and Dutch high-speed lines into one dash.
From Gare du Nord the train shares the racing line toward the north before curving into Brussels-Midi, then pauses at Antwerp Central, a gilded iron cathedral of a station often called Europe’s most beautiful. The HSL-Zuid carries it over Dutch polders, past Rotterdam’s towers and Schiphol’s runways, to finish beside the IJ at Amsterdam Centraal. Few tickets pack three capitals’ worth of Europe and two great ports into a single afternoon.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 5189988 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 99.5% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 8 m); the longest stretch away from it is 2.5 km
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Eurostar — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Picardy plains out of Paris
- Brussels-Midi pause
- Antwerp Central’s gilded trainshed
- Rotterdam skyline from the HSL-Zuid
- Amsterdam Centraal on the IJ
More high-speed routes
- Eurostar
Drops 75 m below the sea through the 50.5 km Channel Tunnel, 37.9 km of it under the seabed, the longest undersea stretch of any rail tunnel.
Wikipedia ↗ - TGV inOui
France’s original 1981 LGV forms the first leg; today the TGV holds 320 km/h nearly all the way to the Mediterranean.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Scheduled at 310 km/h, Europe’s fastest timetable, this line flipped one of the world’s busiest air routes to rail.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Spain’s first AVE, built for Expo ’92 in standard gauge, the line that reset Spanish railways.
Wikipedia ↗
More train routes in France · Belgium · Netherlands.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Amsterdam → Paris · Paris → Amsterdam.