It’s a line that some readily call “cursed.” And this new incident will not necessarily prove them wrong. The SNCF Clermont-Paris line has once again played with the nerves of its passengers. The breakdown of a train in Briare, in Loiret, blocked traffic in both directions on the Clermont-Nevers-Paris line on Thursday, reports La Montagne. The incident led to huge delays, with the train arriving in Paris almost… 12 hours late. The journey finally ended by bus, very early this Friday morning.
“It was a disaster! », Tells Alexandra, one of the passengers, to the local newspaper. “We were arrested in Briare around 7 p.m. That's where we waited all night without information. The staff seemed overwhelmed by the situation. (…) The worst thing is not having any information to warn our families. Today, I will be able to rest but my sister waited for me all night and she has to leave for work this morning after a sleepless night,” she laments.
“We spent nine hours stuck on a train”
In the end, the train that left Clermont-Ferrand on Thursday afternoon arrived at Gare de Lyon this Friday at… 7:40 a.m. Exhausted, the passengers did not hide their anger. “We took a train around 4:30 p.m. in Clermont and we were supposed to arrive around 8 p.m. in Paris. At 5 a.m., we're all on a bus. We spent nine hours stuck on a train”, one of them tells TF1.
Others also described their nightmarish night on social media. “It’s 2 a.m., we’ve been stuck in the middle of nowhere on a broken down train for seven hours,” says a passenger on X.
“There are elderly people, children, disabled people on board and 7 hours is how long it took you to decide to call buses?? You are the shame of the country,” he gets angry.
Others highlighted a defect in the SNCF application, not mentioning the exact duration of the delay experienced. “I still hope that after more than 11 hours of delay we will have people at Gare de Lyon to give us proof of our delay + compensation… Because the app tells us that we arrived at 2:49 a.m. in Paris …”, points out Koby, another passenger, saying he is “still lost on the train” at 6:30 a.m.
Finally, some still mention deplorable service regarding the water and food provided in the trains. Émilie, a passenger on the Clermont-Paris line, indicates at 3:15 a.m. that she still has “nothing to eat” on X.
After this eventful night, travelers should benefit from compensation of 200% of the price of their ticket. Traffic had still not returned to normal Friday morning. This exceptional delay caused others on the same line: some Paris-Nevers trains ran in the morning with a delay of almost an hour.
