End of the line for Waterloo's Eurostars

Eurostar Waterloo International station - which cost £130million and opened only 10 years ago - is to close.

The fleet of Eurostar trains, which connect London with Paris and Brussels, will operate solely from the new terminal at St Pancras when the London end of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link opens in 2007.

Eurostar chiefs had been weighing up keeping open two London terminals, but decided Waterloo was too expensive to keep as a standby.

Besides the construction cost, the glass and steel Waterloo International - with its five extended platforms - has cost tens of millions in maintenance. The closure will prove a major boost for more than 200,000 beleaguered South West Trains commuters who suffer regular delays as services wait to use the busy Waterloo terminal.

When the International section opened SWT was forced to surrender two of its platforms.

SWT chiefs now hope they will be able to claim all five platforms. For the first 10 months of the year more than six million passengers used Eurostar - a 16.2 per cent rise on the same period last year.

Even so, the figure is only about half the number it was forecast would use the service.

It is hoped that by operating soley from St Pancras - where there are direct connections with GNER, Midland Main Line, Thameslink and WAGN besides six Tube lines - it will attract an extra 500,000 passengers a year.

But the move will anger Eurostar passengers in the South who will now have to travel across London by Tube to get to St Pancras.