PARIS (AFP) -- The first high-speed train service between Paris and eastern French cities began scheduled services on Sunday, slashing travel times and opening up Germany to France's TGV network.

The new Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) line links the capital with the cities of Strasbourg, Nancy, Metz and Reims -- one of the last regions to be hooked up to the national high-speed network.

The line was inaugurated on Saturday with a TGV trip from Paris to Strasbourg -- which now takes just two hours and 20 minutes from the previous four hours -- and began commercial service on Sunday.

It was on this line that the TGV broke its own world speed record in April, hurtling into the history books at 574.8 kilometres (357.2 miles) per hour.

Passenger services on the latest-generation tracks between Paris and the German border will run at 320 kilometres (199 miles) per hour.

Traveling times to Luxembourg and Switzerland will also be slashed.

German high-speed Inter-City Express (ICE) trains will also run on the new TGV-Est line.

The line cost four billion euros (5.3 billion dollars) to build, mobilized some 10,000 workers over five years, and used up 78,000 tons of steel -- enough to build eight Eiffel towers.

Along the TGV-Est's path 17 rail stations have been spruced up and three built from scratch, while gleaming new business parks have sprung up in anticipation of the extra investment and tourism it is hoped the fast train will bring.

The French rail operator SNCF has already sold more than 600,000 tickets for travel on the new Paris-Strasbourg line and hopes it will carry more than 11 million passengers annually by 2010.

The very first scheduled service on Sunday on the new line was an ICE train, operated by Germany's Deutsche Bahn, that left Paris at 6:43 am (0443 GMT) headed for the German financial capital Frankfurt.

The first scheduled TGV left Strasbourg half an hour later destined for Paris.

The new line will bring the southern German city of Munich within just over six hours of Paris. Frankfurt is a ride of three hours and fifty minutes.

The pride of French engineering, the TGV -- which turned 25 last year -- is one of the world's fastest rail services, along with Japan's Shinkansen bullet train and Germany's ICE.

Outside France, TGVs provide high-speed links to London and Brussels, and low-speed connections over the French border into Switzerland and Italy.