Passenger describes being stranded on Eurostar train overnight – as disruption continues

Passengers have been stuck on a Eurostar train for hours overnight, after the train network was forced to cancel large parts of its London-Europe service on Tuesday.

Francis Collings said his Eurostar service from St Pancras to Paris “ground to a halt” somewhere outside Folkestone around 9.15pm, with power being turned off around 11pm.

“About four hours ago, maybe about 11pm at night, the power was turned off. So we have lighting, but it’s low lighting, but this seems to have affected the toilets, which don’t seem to want to flush,” he said.

Six hours after the train stopped, “we’re still here, not entirely sure what’s going to happen because there’s a fault somewhere, we believe, in the tunnel, but we’ve also been told it’s with the train and there was a fault with a carriage and there’s talk of locomotives pulling other trains that are further up the line out of the way”.

Train staff were “very attentive”, handing out water and chocolate to passengers, but don’t seem to “know entirely what’s going on themselves”, Mr Collings said.

‘Information vacuum’

Mr Collings, a freelance journalist who lives in Paris, said there had not been “a great deal of communication” from Eurostar, both at St Pancras and on the train.

“I mean, it was utter chaos at St Pancras. Yesterday, there were staff at St Pancras shouting out announcements to the crowd. And when there’s a crowd that’s about 20 people deep, it’s very hard to hear what’s going on,” Mr Collings said.

“It seemed all a little bit chaotic yesterday. And now we’re just getting stuff once an hour, once every hour and a half.

“Some of the messages are a bit convoluted. I don’t really understand where the fault is, where we’re going, when, or how. We could do with more information. There’s a bit of an information vacuum.”

Initially, Mr Collings said passengers felt they “were the lucky ones” whose train wasn’t cancelled. Scheduled for 7pm, the service finally left St Pancras at 8.45pm, before they “ground to a halt” about 30 minutes later.

Despite the long wait on the train, he said the mood among passengers was “pretty good”.

“It’s something which nobody really wants to go through. It could be a lot worse, I imagine. Not an ideal end to the year, but you know, that’s the way it is,” he said.

Passengers braced for more delays

Eurostar passengers are bracing for more delays and cancellations today.

Train services to and from continental Europe – on both Eurostar and Le Shuttle – were suspended for much of the day on Tuesday after a power supply failure due to a technical fault and a failed Le Shuttle blocking all routes.

The disruption upended New Year’s plans for thousands of passengers in London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam during ⁠one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.

In an update on its website this morning, Eurostar said: “Services have resumed today 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.”

Wednesday’s first train from St Pancras to Gare du Nord station in Paris, scheduled for 6.01am, was cancelled but all other services were showing as scheduled on the company’s website.

Read more:
Passengers’ rights after Channel Tunnel disruption
Families devastated over ruined New Year trips

The Channel Tunnel accommodates Eurostar services as well as LeShuttle vehicle-carrying trains between the UK and France.

Eurostar has been contacted for comment.