'I formed the 45 Metre Underground Club': Eurostar stories of sex, celebrity and speed

From the route's first driver to the passenger on a train that hit a wild boar: unforgettable memories from the first quarter-century of the cross-channel service

On the morning of 14 November 1994, a train glided into the Gare du Nord in Paris. It had left London Waterloo three hours earlier with around 700 passengers, then meandered - frustratingly slowly in those days - through Kent. Near Folkestone it dived underground, into a tunnel bored through the chalk under the seabed, before emerging 20 minutes later near Calais, where it could at last accelerate to 186mph and finally arrive at the French capital three minutes ahead of schedule. Or rather late, perhaps, depending on how you look at it.

After all, it was nearly two centuries earlier, in 1802, that a French mining engineer named Albert Mathieu-Favier first proposed the idea of a tunnel under the Channel. It involved horse-drawn carriages and oil lamps and was quickly abandoned. Numerous other ideas and schemes followed; surveys were carried out and tunnels were even started. Digging began in 1881, but the project was ditched when British politicians and the press stirred up fears of an invasion.