Passengers on the train that left London on Sunday had a very difficult night, due to a “technical problem”.
“A lunar evening offered by Eurostar, which is struggling to manage the crisis.” The tweet from a passenger on this train that left London early Sunday evening, bound for Paris, sums up the ordeal quite well.
The train was stuck for more than six hours in the middle of nowhere and the passengers finally arrived at their destination 7.5 hours late, after many adventures.
As one traveler told Le Parisien, the train first got stuck for an hour and a half in the Channel Tunnel. It then started up again, “however, when we got out, we were informed that we would be travelling at 40 km/h to Lille,” she explained.
But clearly, the “technical problem” highlighted by the operator (a 55% subsidiary of SNCF) is serious since the train must stop again at Hondeghem, near Hazebrouck.
This time, the real trouble begins when the passengers are asked to disembark to wait for a rescue train from Lille.
The evacuation took a long time and passengers had to wait outside for a long time, in the middle of the night, in the rain. “We have been stuck on the London-Paris train for over 7 hours without any explanation and with poor coordination. Nearly 2 hours outside in the rain in the middle of the night…”, laments Marie Silin, former MP for Paris on X.
“The driver had to stop the train near Hondeghem, between Calais and Lille, following a technical problem, this is a standard safety procedure. A train was sent from Lille. The transfer required numerous technical manoeuvres, because it took place on the tracks,” Eurostar explained to BFM Business. The train, emptied of its passengers, then left at around 2:25 in the morning.
A passenger nevertheless specifies that “survival blankets were distributed. Families with children were welcomed in a nearby shelter.”
Once the passengers are on the rescue train, the ordeal is not over. “Except that this one is full so we all have to sit on the floor and pray that this time we will make it to Paris,” says one passenger.
Eurostar said the passengers ultimately “arrived 7.5 hours late” and “sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience caused.”
Numerous incidents
The company tells us that it has “offered 170 euros of good taxi” and will reimburse the ticket up to 150%.
Technical incidents on this line are not uncommon. Last November, a train was stuck at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel on the English side because an overhead cable fell on one of the carriages, which left the train without power. After more than seven hours of outage, passengers ended up without electricity, food and working toilets. The incident disrupted the entire network.
At the end of 2022, more than 2,000 passengers on several trains were stuck in the tunnel due to the cold snap. Traffic was interrupted for three days.
In August 2022400 passengers were stuck for several hours under the Channel due to a breakdown before being evacuated through the service tunnel. June 2018traffic was completely interrupted for several hours in both directions due to a power outage.
The Eurotunnel network is specific and sensitive, because it covers several countries and is subject to strong security imperatives, particularly with Great Britain which, let us remember, is no longer part of the European Union. Not to mention the terrorist risk which has further strengthened these measures. A specific framework which lengthens the time taken to resolve incidents.
Olivier Chicheportiche BFM Business journalist
