Great Western Coffee Shop

Used Eurostar for the first time ever this weekend (no idea how it's taken me this long to get around to it) and it was a superb way to get to Paris and back. OK the interiors are looking a bit tired and dated but all are due for a refurbishment by the end of next year so I can forgive that.

What I can't forgive is the disgusting external state of the trains; both sets we travelled on were filthy, windows included, with Temple Mills-based 3005 on the return journey so encrusted in dirt that the yellow band along the bottom of the bodyside was literally black. I did not see a single clean train, every single one ranged from slightly tatty to downright disgraceful externally. A quick rub of a finger along the bodyside at St Pancras also revealed that although there was a hefty layer of surface dirt, this was on top of muck that no-one had bothered to clean off for so long it had become literally ingrained in the paintwork.

Is this a longstanding issue? Does anyone know why Eurostar apparently make no attempt to keep their trains in any sort of tidy external condition?

Too much of the wrong kind of snow in Northern France making it not worth cleaning the sets until it goes? Too cold to use the washer?

We went by coach shuttle to Amsterdam and the shuttle trains are getting very tatty as well not sure when they are due for refurbishment. There was still a little anow on fields.