Is the Eurostar a TGV?
Unfortunately there is no definite answer to that. It does incorporate many TGV features such as shared bogies. However although a large amount of French technology was used in its construction, and equally large amount of British technology was used as well. For example, the traction motors were assembled in the UK and use British asynchronous traction drivers instead of synchronous traction motors as used in France (don’t ask me what the hell that means!). Apparently this was done to better cope with the 3rd rail power supply. Also various signalling controls of the train are British, necessarily to cope with the British signalling system. In fact the Eurostar is capable of operating under 7 different signalling systems. Also the Eurostar had to be built to British specifications which are more strict than in France, which meant the TGV design couldn’t be used it had to be completely started from scratch. I think overall the Eurostar is not a TGV, it does however contain many element
