Eurostar Breakdown Verdict: "The Wrong Kind of Snow"

A report into the failure of six Eurostar trains before Christmas will be published on Friday.


The breakdowns left more 2,500 people stuck in the channel tunnel, some for as long as sixteen hours.

The company then cancelled its services for three days, leaving around a 100,000 people stranded.

The report is expected to say that Eurostar should improve the snow protection on its trains, and upgrade tunnel communications equipment.

Seventeen-hour journey

One of those trapped in the tunnel was Joanne Richards. She was travelling with her thirteen year old son, Jac, who suffers from cerebral palsy.

Their journey, which should have taken just three hours, took seventeen.

"For a period of time I was on my own with Jac, which was very worrying," she said.

"Other passengers were great - they helped a great deal - and there was a blitz spirit but by the end of the seventeen hours Jac looked awful - he looked really ill - and we feared for him. It was really the trip from hell," she added.

'Winterisation'

The problems stemmed from heavy snow in Northern France. Eurostar said at the time that the conditions were the worst for running trains that it had seen in 15 years of operations.

The company normally carries out a "winterisation" programme on all its trains to protect them from snow. But the snow before Christmas was finer than normal, according to Eurostar, and managed to get through the grills on the side of the power car.

When the train went into the tunnel where it was much warmer, the snow then melted, short-circuiting the trains' electrics.

The company suspended services for three days, while it carried out emergency modifications.

Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded in London, Paris and Brussels. Many made their own way using domestic rail and ferry services.Others decided not to travel at all.

The company said it would refund the tickets of those affected, pay for out-of-pocket expenses, such as hotel accommodation and offer compensation, depending on how severely the passenger had been affected.

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