Snow Affects Railway 300x225 Winter Travel Chaos on the EurostarWith the recent grip of winter hitting the UK many transport and travel networks have been severely affected since the snow first started falling last week. But this weekend the weather managed to have an impact on the Eurostar trains, causing 5 of them to break down in the channel tunnel and leaving passengers stranded for many hours.

5 trains, all travelling northbound from France, experienced a technical breakdown due to snow affecting the power car on each of the trains causing them to come to a stop within the tunnel. Almost 2,000 passengers were left in the carriages without food, heat, light, water or even information about the situation that they were stuck in. The problem occurred because the snow was particularly fine and almost dust-like which whipped up in the wind and got into the ventilation panels of the car, causing the power to fail on the trains, bringing them to a halt inside the tunnel.

Passengers were eventually rescued from the situation on a car transport train that arrived via the service tunnel, but this was only after some had experienced a wait of almost 16 hours to get to their destination. As people started to arrive at St Pancras (just a short distance away from our Kings Cross branch) they relayed their ordeal to numerous journalists at the station with many criticising the organisation and lack of information.

The Eurostar service is now only just started again, running a currently very limited service, trying to clear the backlog of nearly 50,000 passenger that have accrued during the wait for trains to resume their service. All passengers who have been affected have been offered a full refund and for passengers who were stuck in the tunnel there have been further offers of compensation. At the moment only passengers with tickets from Friday and Saturday are being treated as priority passengers.

If you would like to know more about refunds and compensation then please visit Eurostar’s main website at www.eurostar.com

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