There are several thousand people who surely saw their Christmas Eve being turned a little upside down by the SNCF, this Tuesday, December 24. “A personal accident in the south of Seine-et-Marne” caused significant train delays in the evening.
Spend Christmas Eve on a train rather than with family. This is the scenario that many passengers would have preferred to avoid on Tuesday evening, November 24. Around ten TGVs remained stuck on the tracks for a long time during part of the evening.
The cause was a personal accident that occurred around 8 p.m. in the south of Seine-et-Marne, disrupting traffic on the South-East high-speed line.
Up to 6 hours late
Users had to be patient. “We're tired, we have a 10-year-old who is exasperated, who was hoping to see his cousins for New Year's Eve… It's ruined,” says a user of the Lyon-Paris train, speaking to BFM Lyon.
“There is no water, it is unacceptable. I was made to pay for my meal,” denounces a traveler.
Users also report discomfort among certain travelers.
In total, around ten trains were affected and diverted to reach their destination. Around 1 a.m., the last passengers were able to arrive, not without some tension, at Lyon station. “We were stuck for six hours. We were allowed a small bottle of water,” says one user.
“I come from Marseille and we were about three hours late. It ruined everything because I had to go eat with my in-laws. Well, they ate without me,” confides, disappointed, another traveler.
SNCF refunds certain tickets
Despite the disappointment, some try to keep smiling. “We missed New Year’s Eve a bit, but at least we will remember this one,” assures one user. “We will make up for it tomorrow. We have to put things into perspective, there are worse things,” says another passenger.
The SNCF called on Parisian taxis to pick up passengers at the exit. The company plans to compensate 100% of the passengers on the train who suffered the accident, and those who were more than three hours late.
Jade Theerlynck, Bastien Dufour with Alicia Foricher
