LeShuttle (formerly Eurotunnel Le Shuttle and also known as The Shuttle) is a railway shuttle service between Coquelles (near Calais) in Pas-de-Calais, France and Cheriton (near Folkestone) in Kent, United Kingdom. It conveys road vehicles (including cars, bicycles and motorcycles) and passengers (including some animals) by rail through the Channel Tunnel. Freight vehicles are carried in separate shuttle trains hauled by the same locomotives, that also contain a passenger carriage, known as the Club Car.
The service is owned and operated by Getlink, the owner of the Channel Tunnel.
Operation
Both terminals are provided with vehicle check-in booths and juxtaposed controls (where pre-boarding immigration and customs checks are carried out by the French Border Police, French Customs and the UK Border Force at the same location), a large convenience outlet, long loading platforms and a loop of track. On arrival at the terminal, having booked beforehand or not, vehicles can check in (in separate freight/passenger booths). If the vehicle is too early for its booked train, the passengers may visit the terminal building with cafés and duty-free shopping, driving onto the train once called to do so. En route to the train, passengers travel through the juxtaposed control area and are led into queues to drive onto the train. Once boarding is complete, safety announcements are played through the public address system and the train departs once the loading wagons are prepared for departure. After a train emerges from the tunnel, about 22 minutes later, it travels around the loop and stops at the terminal platform. It is then unloaded and reloaded with a new set of vehicles just over half an hour. Meanwhile for passengers, they drive their vehicles off of the train and onto the French A16 autoroute or the British M20 motorway with no further controls. The complete journey takes at least 1 hour and 30 minutes between the highways, with the platform-to-platform crossing being 35 minutes long.
The rail loop at Folkestone runs clockwise and is mostly in a cut-and-cover tunnel, whereas the loop at Coquelles goes anti-clockwise and out in the open. This evens the wear on the wheels of the shuttle locomotives and carriages, as each set (left or right) spends only half the time at the outer edge of the line traversing the curves.
Depending on traffic, each hour, there are between two and four passenger vehicle shuttle trains departures and between four and seven heavy goods vehicle shuttle departures.
Carriages
A LeShuttle train is about long and made from stainless steel. The carriages used for the shuttle have a larger loading gauge than either British or French railways. As a result, they cannot travel outside the tunnel and its two terminals onto the national railways.
Passenger vehicle shuttle trains
LeShuttle has nine car shuttle trains for passenger vehicles, each with a locomotive at each end and a series of fully enclosed vehicle carrying wagons (train cars) in between, each long. The train is made up of two sections coupled together. One section is single deck and the other is double deck. Each section has a total of 14 wagons, 12 which carry vehicles plus a loading/unloading wagon on either side. Between cars are fire resistant doors that open for loading vehicles and close for travel through the tunnel. Loading/unloading wagons also have plates that allow vehicles to travel between the train carriage and the platform. Double deck loader wagons also have a ramp that allows vehicles to access the upper level. Vehicles under in height are typically loaded onto the double deck portion of the shuttle. Higher or longer vehicles, such as motorhomes, coaches and vehicles pulling a trailer are loaded onto the single deck portion of the shuttle. Ordinary cars can also be placed in the unused portion of single deck wagons. Eurotunnel will occasionally run the double-deck carriages at "half full," closing the top deck to reduce staffing costs. When loading, vehicles drive between carriages, but the carriages are closed off individually when the train moves.
Once boarded, drivers and passengers can exit their vehicles to stretch their legs or use the toilets, but there are no onboard services. Toilets are provided in every third carriage in the double-deck section and in the loading carriages in the single-deck section. Passengers are advised not to walk between parked vehicles in areas that are not designated crossing areas, because the gradients in the tunnel ( of continuous slope at 1.1% on the English side) mean there is a dangerous possibility that vehicles could roll back and/or forward if the drivers forget to turn on the parking brake.