Evening Standard

More than 1,000 Eurostar passengers were left stranded without water and in total darkness for up to nine hours Friday when two high-speed trains ground to a halt in a northern France.

Hundreds of Britons were among those caught up in the drama, which comes during the 20th anniversary year of the cross-Channel service.

An overhead power cable snapped, leaving one train from Brussels to London carrying 600 passengers motionless close to the city of Lille.

It ended up standing idle from 8pm on Thursday until close to 5am on Friday morning, while another train from London to Paris with almost 700 passengers was stranded for six hours.

By early yesterday morning Eurostar said replacement diesel trains were being sent to take the passengers back to Lille, as furious passengers told of their frustration.

Londoner Seonaid Redden, an advertisement operations executive for Guardian news & media, said their treatment was appalling.

She had been travelling on the 18.04 service to Brussels when the train broke down.

Writing on Twitter, she said passengers had been told “lies” about their train’s status by Eurostar.

She said: “I was trapped on your train for 9hrs. No information and in pitch black. You waited 8hrs to bring water to customers.

“We had to walk in darkness to get water. We think you held us past 4am not to put us in a hotel. No staff at Lille!!

“Your twitter feed told lies about our Train status. Compensation doesn’t come close when lies have been told of 8hrs.”

Gymnastics instructor Vicky Gibbons, from Croydon, was travelling to Paris for her 30th birthday when the incident occurred.

Her husband, Andy, announced hours earlier: “Packing bags as I’m taking my wife to Paris tonight for her birthday. There will be champagne, lots of champagne.”

But after becoming trapped for hours, Gibbons said: “Well @Eurostar  thank you for a wonderful 30th birthday trapped on a train, not moving and with zero information! #happybirthday.”

Another passenger, Chris Littlecott, posted: “Left Brussels 19:52. Now waiting to enter Channel Tunnel 01:52. I only made it on to train at last minute. Wish I had missed it.”

Olya Dyachuk referred to a long haul flight to the West Indies, writing that it took “almost nine hours to get to London. Ridiculous. I could have been on Antigua by now!”

The BBC’s Robert van Geffen complained of a “complete black out”, while angry passenger Fabian Darrigues tweeted: “Stopped in the middle of nowhere. No power. No explanation. Train manager asking for a doctor urgently. Get me out of here!”

Eurostar said the problem was caused by a broken overhead power cable, and that replacement diesel trains were being sent to ferry the passengers back to Lille.

He said it was not the case that train doors could not be opened, but said they were unable to let people off the trains for safety reasons until a replacement train had arrived to collect them.

The problem caused other Eurostar services to be disrupted as a result, with three cancellations this morning “following power infrastructure problems in France last night”.

Passengers on the cancelled services will be able to request full refunds or changes from their points of sale, a spokesman said.

There have been a number of breakdowns on the cross-Channel service over the year, with the run up to Christmas 2009 being particularly disastrous.

In late September of that year overhead power line dropped on to a train arriving at St Pancras station in London, activating a circuit breaker and delaying 11 other trains.

Two days later power was lost on a section of line outside Lille, delaying passengers on two evening Eurostars.

Then, during heavy snow in December 2009, four trains broke down inside the Channel Tunnel after leaving France, affecting some 2,000 passengers.

 

 

 

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