Delays on Eurostar services continued on Monday after a weekend of travel misery for rail passengers crossing the Channel that left thousands stranded.
On Saturday, a smouldering fire on a lorry en route to France, which caused cabins to fill with smoke, led to the cancellation of 26 trains, while on Sunday, power supply issues left some passengers stuck on trains for two-and-a-half hours.
Eurostar said on Monday morning that a full service would run but warned that trains could be delayed for 30-60 minutes. A blaze on the track in St Denis, near Gare du Nord on Monday threatened to add to problems, but a Eurostar spokesman said it had been dealt with and had only caused short delays – amounting to about 10 minutes – to trains entering and leaving Paris for a limited time. There were no cancellations, he added.
At St Pancras station, Eurostar’s London terminus, queues of about 50 people waited to board trains to Paris and Brussels on Sunday morning, stewarded by several dozen yellow-jacketed Eurostar staff, security and police officers.
However, passengers reported “appalling” problems as the first services left terminals shortly after 8am. Jonathan Cheetham said his father and brother experienced delays of at least 90 minutes on a London-bound train after being stranded in Paris on Saturday evening.
He said the 8.13am train from the French capital to London reached Calais before experiencing “network problems”. “They were told [to expect] a 30-minute wait due to network problems but had been waiting for an hour and 30 minutes. This was after the chaos of being told by station staff yesterday they’d only be able to rebook at the station in Paris. Once at the hotel they discovered they could phone a UK number to rebook,” Cheetham said.
“I tried this for them. At 8.40pm it had a 30-minute queue time and shut at 9am. They decided to go at 5.30am to Paris station but could [not] find how to rebook as Dad said it was very disorganised until around 7.30am. It’s clear Eurostar had no adequate contingency plans for a closure on how they’d deal with passengers. It’s been appalling.”
The alarm was raised when smoke detectors picked up the lorry fire at 11.25am on Saturday. Eurostar said 26 trains were cancelled on Saturday afternoon, affecting at least 12,000 passengers.
