Thalys

Common card · No. 305121

Thalys (French: [talis]) was a brand name used for high-speed train services between Paris Gare du Nord and both Amsterdam Centraal and German cities in the Rhein-Ruhr, including Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Dortmund, both via Brussels-South. Thalys was created out of a political ambition formalised in October 1987 to establish a network of international high-speed railway services between the cities of Paris, Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam. The Thalys name was created in January 1995. The company procured a fleet of Alstom-built TGV trains to operate its services as they were viewed as the only existing rolling stock suitable to the task. On 4 June 1996, the first Thalys-branded train departed from Paris. Early services were more reliant on slower conventional lines as many of the intended new high-speed lines were still under construction. Service speeds improved with the opening of Belgium's HSL 1 line in December 1997 and the Dutch HSL-Zuid in December 2009, alongside...

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