COMPLETION of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and the opening of St Pancras and Ebbsfleet international stations put Eurostar on track for a record year.

Ticket sales in 2007 soared to £599million, up 15.5 per cent on the previous year.

A record 8.26million passengers - the first time the service has smashed through the eight million mark - used the high-speed services between London, Kent, Lille, Paris, Disneyland Resort Paris, and Brussels, a rise of 5.1 per cent.

Eurostar chiefs said faster journey times and passenger concerns about the environmental impact of air travel had driven growth on their "carbon neutral" service.

But the launch of newly-named High Speed 1 services from St Pancras International - restored at a cost of £800million - amid a blaze of publicity in November also boosted passenger numbers.

Ebbsfleet International opened a few days later. But the new timetables also heralded a drastic reduction in services stopping at Ashford International, a controversial move condemned by Kent and Ashford councils, and local passenger groups, but overlooked in Eurostar's latest results announcement.

Between November 14 and December 31, the number of passengers using the service jumped 11 per cent over the same period in 2006. Ticket sales soared by a fifth in the same period.

Business traffic went up by 12 per cent, contributing to ticket sales growth of 31 per cent in the past two years.

Eurostar has also tapped into a wider market by offering through tickets from 68 towns and cities across the UK.

Punctuality was also maintained at high levels, with 91.5 per cent of trains arriving on time or early in 2007. Eurostar claimed that, by contrast, punctuality rates for airlines competing on similar routes was just 69 per cent.

Eurostar's chief executive Richard Brown said: "The launch of Eurostar services on High Speed 1 has begun a new era in short-haul travel between the UK and mainland Europe.

"The impact has been immediate: Eurostar’s faster services, shorter travel times and carbon neutral journeys are winning over more travellers from the short-haul airlines.

"We expect to see this growth continue throughout 2008 as the impact of the new through fares from across the UK drives growth in the number of travellers using Eurostar from towns and cities north and south of London.

"The UK is now truly part of Europe's high-speed rail network and this country can be rightly proud of the huge achievement that the successful launch of High Speed 1 and St Pancras International represents."