An explosion and a big cloud of smoke. The special TGV which was to bring European parliamentarians back to Brussels this Thursday at the end of the plenary session held this week in Strasbourg, suffered damage and the passengers found themselves stranded in the Alsatian station.
“A release of smoke on the engine” led to the evacuation of a train and the platforms of the Strasbourg station, the SNCF press service told AFP, which “does not yet know” the origin.
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According to an AFP journalist on site, the majority of trains are late departing from Strasbourg. Access to the station hall is possible but agents are blocking access to the tunnel leading to the tracks. “At 2:45 p.m. I saw an explosion in the TGV locomotive with a big cloud of smoke coming out,” Emmanuel Foulon, a parliamentary attaché who is part of the “caravan” of elected officials making the shuttle between Brussels and Strasbourg one week per month.
“It went rather calmly”
“It went boom!” Three minutes later we received a message saying that the train had to be emptied and that we had to head towards the tunnel” of the station (the exit, the passage under the tracks), continued Emmanuel Foulon.
“The firefighters arrived. I think it’s more of a technical problem than anything else. It’s weird because there was the explosion but no one really seemed to react much. It was at the front of the train and it’s a very, very long train, it’s the one that connects the Strasbourg Parliament to Brussels. It went rather calmly, things are going well, everyone is good,” he added.
The station, where many passengers were waiting, was not evacuated. The SNCF was unable to immediately provide further details on the new departure time of the special TGV, which was due to leave Strasbourg at 2:57 p.m. In October 2023, a switching error had already sent the European parliamentarians’ TGV to Disneyland, causing a 45-minute delay on arrival in Strasbourg.
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