Updated 14.05

Eurostar services from London have been badly disrupted again today after two trespassers on the high speed line in France lost their lives. The delays have been made worse by cable thieves near Lille, who apparently struck early yesterday.

Eurostar is hoping that the cable repairs will be completed later today, but warned that trains and crews have been left out of place, meaning that disruption is likely to continue for a while. Five trains have been cancelled so far today.

The fatalities on LGV Nord occurred in two separate incidents. According to French reports, one was between Lille and Paris, and the other was between Lille and Arras.

It is also being reported that the theft of 800m of copper cable from various locations between Lille and Douai in the small hours of Tuesday has affected Eurostar as well as French TGVs and other domestic services.

Passengers have been complaining bitterly on social media, saying that they were left stranded at midnight at Paris Nord with nowhere to sleep after three trains to London were cancelled. Another earlier service to London was delayed by at least four hours.

The worst delays in the history of Eurostar occurred a few days before Christmas 2009, when several trains failed inside the Channel Tunnel during the night of 18-19 December after fine snow in France had penetrated their motors.

More than 2000 people were stranded on four trains for up to six hours. Heating and lighting were lost on some of the trains when emergency power supplies failed, and two lorry shuttle trains had to be used to rescue passengers from stalled Eurostars.

The incident was followed by a major review of how Eurostar had dealt with the problems, and this report made 21 recommendations. 

Readers’ comments

Thank you for the information you have found and published about the Eurostar delays on 24 June and today, 25 June. The information coming from Eurostar (what little information there is) is conflicting and muddled. The app which they directed us to yesterday says trains are cancelled and that we can only get a refund through the service we used to book the journey; the Eurostar website keeps bouncing the travel update screen so that it shows only London to Paris, not the reverse. My revised booking, which I made on the app, is not showing on the website when I log in. There is no information about hotels, any refunds possible, any vouchers for hotels, etc. Given that it is Fashion Week in Paris I and several others have found ourselves in Versailles after a 1.5 hours-long journey last night from Gare du Nord – when we were released at around 20.00 hours and on our own to figure out what to do. The reason we are in Versailles is due to the cost of hotels in Paris – what few there started at 270 GBP per night, then quickly escalated to prices outside the bounds of affordability. I am (was) due back to London today, for a very important work gathering tonight but which I am now unable to make. I run my own business and do not have an assistant or anyone else to help me sort this out. It’s distressing, and rather disturbing. Eurostar and any other carrier should have a duty of care to their passengers, whom they have absolutely abandoned. I am now looking at alternative routes back to London – not sure what else to do or when Eurostar will be running again.

Kelly Falconer, Twickenham

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