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The relaunch of Eurostar's direct Ashford - Brussels train service in December has been welcomed by rail campaign group Railfuture.

The national independent voluntary body for rail users has been pushing for reinstatement of the service ever since it was drastically cut in November last year.

Railfuture board member Trevor Garrod said: "The new service will be especially useful for business travellers, and it's a small but significant step in the right direction. We hope that it will be sufficiently successful to be followed by one or two further stops in Ashford during 2009."

The new service gives opportunities to people in East Kent and East Sussex to visit Belgium and Germany, but consists of only one direct train per day in each direction.

"While this is great for British business travellers to the continent, it's not much good in the other direction. This is one of the reasons why we're still campaigning to improve services at Ashford" he added.

"Passengers can travel onward from Brussels to other European destinations, which makes it so useful, but many of the Ashford services have been transferred to Ebbsfleet, which doesn't have the rail connections that Ashford has."