We can confirm that services have been cancelled on Sunday 20th December. The Eurostar website is currently experiencing very high volumes of traffic, so updates are taking longer than usual to be appear on the site.

We’ve posted some answers to questions we’ve received today here

We will post updates as and when we have them, and we are very sorry for the disruption this has caused.

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I have been waiting for my girlfriend to come home since last night. I could not contact her and no information appeared on the website until the news broke that people were stranded. Why Why did it take so long — do you not realise people were worried back home???

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Let me just say that I have in the past been a very happy customer of Eurostar, it’s normally a fantastic service and a brilliant alternative to short-haul flights on those routes – especially as I find train travel a lot more relaxed than flying.

And while the breakdowns are pretty embarrassing, hey, stuff happens. But Eurostar’s communications policy was inexcusably bad. I spent quite a few hours, in the freezing cold, at St Pancras waiting for scraps of information, which were few and far between, sometimes contradictory and often wrong.

Oh and the £150 comp for people who spent 15 hours stuck on the train is a joke, not to mention the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any compensation or any help for people now unable to travel.

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After reading the madness I would rather fly 30000ft up in the sky than take a train through a tunnel

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@Laura….Ya,we never hear of passengers stranded for hours on a plane feet from a terminal

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I’m not sure how I would react to being trapped in a tunnel for hours. I do know it wouldn’t be nice.
Airlines are also notorious these days for not giving people good information when there is a delay. Not that long ago I was flying out of Bangkok on “Thai Air, and the first notification that the plane would be delayed was 2 HOURS AFTER we should have departed!

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Darren

First it is not Eurostar, yes it is there trains.. but Eurotunnel operate the tunnel itself including safety.

I was one of the test passengers for Eurotunnel before it opened. All plans where towards a single train emergency.. other trains would continue out and tunnel closed. Another train would be sent down tunnel 2 and bring people out. The back up plan was to use the maintenance tunnel but this would take a couple hours for 1 train.

No one saw this problem. Lets remember the tunnel has been going for a long time now (20 years) and this is the first time this has happened. Emergency crews where with the trains quickly, but instead of dealing with one they where trying to deal with 4. The emergency transport meant the maintenance tunnel would be pretty full. They tried to fix the trains on the spot and when they could not they resorted to the back up plan.

Why limited information, I am guessing this is due to the emergency crews being split into 4 trains..and the fact the powers was off (so no announcements) to the trains and for safety reasons. On a train journey of less than 2 hours you do not keep 12 hours of food.

I am willing to bet like all problems of this type (that have not been seen or forecast) that Eurotunel will have plan in place by next month (and a tempory plan in place now) in case it ever happens again.

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The tunnel opened in 1994, after being started in 1988. I worked on it, in it and above it. It’s a masterpiece of civil engineering. Something that Britain still does well. There’s NO problem with the tunnel itself, and usually there’s no problem with the track or the trains. What is the problem are the atmospheric conditions that caused this to happen. Unforseen, and probably unforseeable. A freak coincidence.

Apart from getting his dates wrong, I think Nick’s post offers a great explanation of ‘what went wrong’, and I agree that plans are probably already taking shape to implement a more structured emergency response if something like this happened again.

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@Nick THANK YOU for providing useful information. Maybe you have some ideas about some of these points:
- once the first Eurostar stopped, how could they let at least 3 or maybe 4 other trains also enter the tunnel and get stuck?
- why would power go off? Even if it’s very cold, electric power is still there no?. Unless the cold weather in the rest of France has drawn away too much power from generators altogether to be unable to power the trains.
- we’ve heard that other trains have come to pull out the broken ones. So there had to be electric power at some stage.
- During the tests you participated to, was there any communication plan both for the passengers and staff inside the trains and for the external world?

@Darren Yes the weather is extremely cold. I crossed all of France today and only saw white landscapes. Even in northern Italy water froze in the pipes at my parents’ house for the first time in 40 years they lived in this house.

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“When I first heard the story, the cynical part of me thought that it was to do with the strike threats earlier in the week”

More questions unanswered than answered. It is all suspicious to me. The weather has not been any colder than previous years. Why no problems on other Eurostar other than ones to the UK?

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We have tunnels used by trains every day in cold climate conditions all over Europe and in other parts of the world that have similar temperature differences as happened Friday in the Chunnel.
I simply fail to understand how that can be given as a reason for this failure of FIVE trains…
Apparently the car shuttles operate normally albeit a bit hesitant because of the traffic conditions on both sides of the Chunnel.

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“We have tunnels used by trains every day in cold climate conditions all over Europe and in other parts of the world that have similar temperature differences as happened Friday in the Chunnel.”

Yes Guido, but despite this being “an absolutely unprecedented event” (CEO Richard Brown) Eurostar train have ‘previous’ ( http://bit.ly/8femlJ ) so, not all that usual at all.

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@ Darren. Your right, but it just normally means trains go slower, why is it causing problems to such an extent this time we will have to wait and see.

Emergency crews are full equipped including oxygen and more, as you saw for media reports everyone got out safely.

@ Daniele

I am guessing with most of these answers.

Why so many trains.. Because the tunnel is so long there is 2 trains in each tunnel at the same time and if timing right one about to enter. So first breaks down near one end, one in middle and one entering at other end…3 trains all stuck in 1 tunnel. Take second tunnel and repeat.

Why no power. 2 reasons water and electricty do not mix and 2nd because engineers where working on the trains, so no power for safety. If you ever have an electrician come to work on your house you will note they turn the power of at the mains for the same reason. The trains have emergency lighting, hence the funny colours you see in the pictures.

The other comment thinking about this I will make, as they had not happened had not been expected and effect both British and French trains this was not something any one country did wrong.

The other reason for the lack of information is as a pure guess no one knew… The engineers’ looked at the engines and found out what was wrong, then had to work out if they could fix it, check in with each other, (few hours or more taken up doing this). Then a plan had to made up to get people out safely. When that’s was done people where told and it was put in action.

I was not there and can not comment on what happened in this case, I would assume that they turned the power on to send trains in.

In the test I went to there was 1 emergency crew member per carriage plus trackside crew (but as said before this was on assumption that there was only 1 train in trouble not 5). They basically informed you what was going on. There is a way of empting a couple carriages and send people back on maintenance vehicles, but this was the last resort method I was talking about and would take a couple hours plus for 1 train.

Both in that and this case emergency crews had communication; the problem is if they do not have the information they can not pass it on. Plus thinking about it was there enough emergency crews to have more than a couple per train.

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@Nick thanks for this useful stuff, it makes sense.

I can add that the trains they sent in to rescue were apparenly special equipped Diesel locomotives (hence no power needed).

I’m curious to know if from your experience there is a Eurostar vs Eurotunnel cultural divide that could hamper effective communication and operations as I am speculating.

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It’s interesting if you remember back to earlier this year when Eurostar services were the only links that WERE working. Many airports have cancelled their services and there isn’t such a panic. I know for a fact that Eurostar have already started making modifications on the shields and that services are due to resume as soon as today or tomorrow.

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Julius,i agree…I have travelled lots of times with Eurostar and never encountered any problems.The latest fisco left me fuming and bitterly dissapointed as booked my Eurostar back in september,not to mention my connecting tickets with Thalys and Bahn.De!
Although in thier recent email to me Eurostar says they will reimburse my ticket(which was for travel on the 22.12) will they also compensate me for my Thalys €45 and my Bahn.De €93 which i think they should as my original contract was with Eurostar to get me to A- B! they failed to honour this contract so i want refund for the whole lot !Im out of pocket ,my trip had to cancelled as I couldnt afford to buy new set of tickets and my plans for family Christmas are ruined!

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