Running time for the 310-mile journey between London and Paris was two hours and 35 minutes. That figure is now obsolete, after the high-speed Eurostar passenger train switched services in mid-November.

Eurostar is the high-speed rail service directly linking the United Kingdom to France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel, also known as Chunnel. It opened in 1994 and set a new record on its inaugural journey via a new high-speed line in September.

The passenger train on the British side of the English Channel used its new main line to cut the total journey time to just over two hours (2 hrs. 3 min. 39 sec) — more than 30 minutes faster than the 2 hrs. 35 min. it took to travel between Paris and London’s Waterloo International at the time, reports The Associated Press (via International Herald Tribune). The train moved at speeds of more than 200 mph (320 kph) in France and the 186 mph (300 kph) maximum on the British section.

Then, a little over two weeks later, Eurostar broke another record as it officially shortened the travel time from Brussels to London (1 hr. 43 min.), as reported at World Travel Guide. This may not be as fast as the train that speeds from Paris in a northeasterly direction, but for many riders the shorter travel time allows more time for business meetings or to see the sights.

Before this record, in July 2003, a Eurostar train shattered the speed record for the fastest-ever train in the U.K., when a Eurostar train reached 208 mph (334.7 kph) during safety testing on the first section of the channel tunnel rail link, according to the rail service’s online timeline.

The high-speed train crosses the English Channel via the Chunnel. We might have thought this high-speed train would have been operating soon after the Chunnel opened in 1994; that is, until we realized the money required —