The Queen has opened the new Channel Tunnel rail terminal at London's St Pancras, following a refurbishment costing £800 million.

Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen also opened the finally-completed £5.8 billion Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

Work began on transforming St Pancras in 2001 to enable it to accommodate domestic rail services and Eurostar trains to and from France and Belgium.

The Queen was greeted by the Lord Lieutenant for Greater London, Lord Imbert. She was introduced to dignitaries including the Prime Minister, London mayor Ken Livingstone, Conservative leader David Cameron, mayor of Camden Dawn Somper, and Sir David Cooksey, chairman of London and Continental Railways.

The show featured a performance by stage and screen actor Timothy West, appearing in Victorian costume as William Henry Barlow, the original architect of St Pancras station, and music by the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.

The ceremony also involved three trains arriving at the station. The Queen met their drivers as well as those who have transformed the station into a 21st century terminal.

The 68-mile link runs from the late-Victorian building of St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel opening at Folkestone in Kent.

The Eurostar switches from Waterloo station to St Pancras next week and will be able to offer quicker journey times on its services between London and Paris and Brussels.

London-Paris journey times will now be reduced by 20 minutes to around two hours 15 minutes, while the London-Brussels trips will come down to less than two hours.

In a short speech to assembled guests, the Queen said the new rail terminal, and the rail link, High Speed 1, would make a "real difference" to people's lives and bring us closer to Europe.

She said: "The remarkable re-birth of this great and gleaming station means that people across the whole of Britain, not just the South East, are suddenly quite a bit closer to Europe.

"From now on, Sheffield is closer to Paris, Nottingham closer to Brussels. And as we look forward to the London Olympics in 2012, it is good to know that a journey from here to the new High Speed 1 station at Stratford will take spectators a mere seven minutes.

"All these things will bring real differences to people's lives.

"My warmest congratulations go to everyone involved in this project, which is a wonderful illustration of what can be achieved through working in partnership, and it says a good deal about how we can take a 21st century approach whilst at the same time having due consideration of our heritage.

"Looking around me, I am filled with hope that people of all backgrounds and ages, some of whom are not yet born, and most of whom we will never meet, will greatly benefit from the quality and the attention to detail which is at the heart of this significant undertaking, and will come to regard St Pancras not just as a station but as a destination.

"It gives me great pleasure to officially launch High Speed 1, Britain's first high speed railway and to re-open this magnificent station, St Pancras International."

© Independent Television News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.