(FORTUNE Magazine) – I used to live in New York, and when I had to go to Washington I took Amtrak's Metroliner whenever I could. So what if it took longer than the airborne shuttle; in its pokey way the Metroliner was comfortable and pleasant. I actually looked forward to a trip, because it meant I could do some reading (or sleeping). And on those thundery East Coast summer afternoons that leave planes grounded and travelers stranded, the Metroliner did in fact move faster than the competition.

So when I relocated to London I assumed I'd become addicted to the Eurostar, the Channel Tunnel train service launched almost six years ago. It takes about three hours, just like the Metroliner, but instead of ending up in scruffy Washington you arrive in Paris (or Brussels, or Lille). What's more, it's run by Europeans, who presumably know their way around the train business better than those hapless Amtraksters.

I'm now a Eurostar veteran. And, yeah, it's better than the plane. Few things in life aren't. But unless you're going first class, Eurostar is neither comfortable nor pleasant--and even first class has its issues.

Eurostar's most perverse sin is that it wants to be an airline. You have to check in 20 minutes ahead of time, you wait not in the main train station but in a segregated area decorated to look like an airport, and when you finally board you discover the seating is almost as cramped as in airline steerage.

This isn't so bad if the train's half-empty, which is often the case. Except that the reservations system has difficulty apportioning people evenly. An hour into one miserable trip back from Brussels, as I sat in a packed car next to a 200-pounder and across from a 6-foot-5-incher, someone announced that there were gobs of empty seats several cars away. Which was great for the people who didn't have significant luggage to haul, but not for me (or my seatmates).

I finally tried first class one warm day this summer. The seat was comfy, the legroom endless. This was just what I'd been looking for. Except that ten minutes into the trip, I and everybody else in my car realized that we were sweating. The air conditioner was broken, a staffer said. We were welcome to trek to a nearby car where the AC was working and none of the seats were occupied. Why they didn't tell us this before we boarded is one of those special Eurostar mysteries. This time I did make the move, and had a very pleasant ride, and a (mediocre) meal brought to my seat. But there was still one serious problem: Eurostar's toilets don't work right. No need to go into detail, but on every trip I've taken the toilets have become stopped up and largely unusable by the final third of the journey.

So that's the Eurostar experience: For a roundtrip first-class ticket of about $500, you get a comfy ride, food, and toilets that don't work. For a coach ticket of about $400 (you can get tickets for less, but they generally carry too many restrictions to be of use to business travelers), you get an okay-to-miserable ride, no food, and toilets that don't work. Those prices are about the same as what the airlines charge, and in the Eurostar you travel to and from a convenient, centrally located train station and you're much more likely than an air traveler to arrive on time. Not surprisingly, Eurostar has stolen most of the London-to-Paris traffic away from the airlines. But the seven million passengers a year it carries fall well short of the 12 million to 13 million once projected.

To fix this, Eurostar plans to start refurbishing its trains next year. Also, a new track is being built through the Kentish countryside that will allow Eurostar trains to go as fast in England as they do now in France (where they can hit 180 miles per hour). When that's done, in 2003, the London-to-Paris travel time will be cut to two hours and 35 minutes. Which will be great, assuming the toilets work.