High-speed rail travel between Britain and continental Europe moved into a new era today as Eurostar trains began operating from a newly modernised St Pancras station.

The first Eurostar pulled out of the station at 11.01am bound for Paris. A few minutes later, amid the sound of popping champagne corks, the first Eurostar arriving from Brussels pulled in.

While transport strikes gripped France, Britain’s rail chiefs were celebrating for once, with the christening of St Pancras which has undergone a sweeping transformation from a crumbling Victorian terminus into a state-of-the-art modern station.

“Today marks a new dawn for short-haul travel in Europe,” said Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown.

“We will carry passengers with greater speed, ease and reliability than ever before.”

The new station opened to the public at 9am, a day after services stopped at Waterloo, the station on the south side of central London which has been the British end of the line since services began in 1994.

The Times’s Alan Hamilton was at the station and boarded the high speed train at 12.30pm today.

He said: “The first train pulled in at one minute past 11 as a large crowd on the platform looked on.

“An orchestra was playing Elgar and ladies were handing out free smoothies because the lounge was closed so there were no facilities for food and drink.”

The switch to St Pancras, on the north side, will make it easier for passengers from the English Midlands, northern England and Scotland to connect to the Continent.

The move is the culmination of a £5.8 billion 10-year project to speed up travel to Britain from France and Belgium.

The new 68 mile (109km) high speed single rail line between St Pancras and the tunnel under the English Channel waterway enables Eurostar trains to hit their full speed of 190mph (300kph).

It cuts journey times by at least 20 minutes and now links London with Paris in two hours, 15 minutes, and London with Brussels in one hour, 51 minutes.

While things ran smoothly in London, commuters faced delays and disruption on arriving in Paris, as France suffered transport chaos with the start of an open-ended strike by railway workers.

Though Eurostar insisted its services would be unaffected, the strike badly affected the French national rail network and commuter lines from late Tuesday and the capital’s transport system of the Metro underground, buses and trams from Wednesday.

Anthony Broughton, 69, from Derby in the English Midlands, was part of a 30-strong party from the Derby Railway Engineering Society getting on the first Brussels train.

“This was booked a long time ago to ensure we were here today,” he said.

“I think the new station is fantastic. It’s amazing. They have done a good job refurbishing and restructuring and the new parts blend well with the old ones."

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh unveiled the new-look St Pancras earlier this month.

It has been fitted with Wifi, touchscreen monitors and passenger information screens. It also hosts Europe’s biggest champagne bar - 90 metres (295ft) long - along with a plethora of upmarket boutiques.

The station, built in 1868, was a long-neglected Victorian Gothic revival masterpiece. But nearly 140 years of dirt has been scraped from the station’s brickwork during the £800 million restoration.

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