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THE WRONG sort of snow. It ranks with “leaves on the line” in the annals of the “best of” British rail management lame excuses. And, apparently, it is true of what happened to the high-speed Eurostar trains between France, Belgium and Britain over the weekend. Some 125,000 people were left stranded and 2,000 trapped in considerable discomfort for up to 16 hours under the channel without food, water or light.

There is a hoary old myth that the Eskimos’ Inuit language has 60 names for snow – it largely arises from a misunderstanding of the nature of “polysynthetic” languages, as the Inuit language can form very long words by adding multiple descriptive affixes. Nevertheless, Inuit has a name for what appears to have caused the Eurostar trains to come to a halt: nutagak, a powdery snow, described by the company as lighter and “fluffier” than usual. To prevent crystals saturating the electrics, the trains have breathable membranes over ventilation grilles which were penetrated by the nutagak. It then melted when the trains entered the warm tunnels, short-circuiting the electrics.