FACTBOX-Eurostar's new British track

(Reuters) - Eurostar plans to set a Paris to London speed record on Tuesday with its first ever train on the UK's long-awaited high speed track, arriving in London's St Pancras International station rather than Waterloo.

Here are some facts about the new service:

-- Eurostar is the high-speed train service that will from mid-November link London St Pancras, Ebbsfleet, Ashford, Paris, Brussels, Lille, Calais, Disneyland Resort Paris, Avignon and the French Alps. The completion of Section Two of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link means that speeds of around 185 mph will now be achievable on the British side as well as on the French and Belgian stretches.

-- It will be on average 22 to 25 minutes quicker on the high-speed track, taking the fastest journey time from London to Paris down to 2 hours 15 minutes.

-- The UK high speed line is 68 miles long. Construction work unearthed a wealth of archaeological remains, including an Anglo-Saxon waterwheel and the skeleton of a straight-tusked Palaeoloxodon antiquus, a Stone Age elephant found in north Kent.

Preservation of archaeological relics exposed by the construction of the new line has also included the exhumation and reburial of the remains of two French Bishops who had sought refuge in London during the French revolution.

-- The original St Pancras station, designed by William Henry Barlow, took 6,000 men with 1,000 horses and 100 steam cranes four years to complete and opened in 1868.