Train companies said services between Britain and continental Europe were resuming on Wednesday, but warned of further disruption after technical failures suspended travel the day before and left some passengers stuck on trains all night.
The chaos in train services carrying passengers and vehicles between London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam - one of Europe’s busiest international rail corridors - hit at the height of the new year travel season.
Eurostar, which runs passenger rail services, said on Wednesday morning that services had resumed following “a power issue in the Channel Tunnel yesterday and some further issues with rail infrastructure overnight”.
“We plan to run all of our services today; however, due to knock-on impacts, there may still be some delays and possible last-minute cancellations,” it said.
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A power failure on Tuesday forced suspension of travel through the 50km tunnel. A technical problem on the UK network in the evening compounded the misery for travellers just as some trains were starting to run again, leaving some trapped in trains overnight.
One train, Eurostar 9152, arrived in the northern French city of Lille from London at 0630 GMT – 11 hours later than its expected arrival time. The journey typically takes 80 minutes.
One passenger, Herve, spoke to news channel BFM TV from the train: “We’re annoyed because we’re tired and we don’t have any hot drinks. It’s an extremely unpleasant situation.”
Another passenger, Ghislain Planque, disembarking from the service in Lille, said: “People were resigned to the situation. There was nothing we could do. We were given water. We weren’t completely abandoned.”
Nearly 20 million people travelled on Eurostar last year.
A second rail service, known as Le Shuttle, that carries passenger vehicles and trucks through the tunnel under the Channel, was working to minimise the knock-on impact after also suspending its operations for much of Tuesday.
“The tunnel has recovered its full capacity,” said Getlink, which operates the tunnel infrastructure and the Le Shuttle service. – Reuters
