Eurotunnel hit by delays of 8 hours or more after ‘ unplanned repairs’
The Gare du Nord train station in Paris on Sunday began using security gates and baggage scanners for passengers taking the Thalys high- speed rail system serving Belgium and the Netherlands, a decision prompted by the November 13 Paris attacks
Thousands of people travelling between and Britain and France faced severe delays on Sunday due to a fault affecting the Eurotunnel train service, a company spokesman said. Delays of upto eight hours affected 11,000 vehicles, and customers with tickets for Sunday evening were advised to postpone their travel plans until early Monday.
“Eurotunnel apologises for the inconvenience these essential but unplanned repairs have caused,” the spokesman said. Eurostar services, which unlike the Eurotunnel service does not carry vehicles, were also disrupted, the company said.
The fault was fixed late on Sunday but timetables were still disrupted, and extra trains were added to the service to clear the passenger backlog, Eurotunnel said on its official Twitter account.
Traffic was resuming normally on Monday on passenger and freight trains beneath the English Channel after a broken rail delayed travel for thousands of people.
The disruption frustrated many holiday travellers, and comes after a troubled year. Tunnel traffic has repeatedly been disrupted by migrants trying to sneak through it from the French port city of Calais to Britain.
Passenger train operator Eurostar said the broken rail forced all traffic to share a single track, causing lengthy delays. It said on Monday that repairs had been completed. Eurotunnel said its car and truck shuttles through the tunnel
were “operating to schedule” on Monday morning.
Separately, Eurotunnel security workers were planning a protest in Calais later on Monday over working conditions.
Meanwhile, the Gare du Nord train station in Paris on Sunday began using security gates and baggage scanners for passengers taking the Thalys highspeed rail system serving Belgium and the Netherlands, SNCF chief Guillaume Pepy said. The Thalys station in the northern city of Lille has also started using them, Mr Pepy told French television.
The decision to install airportstyle security gates was prompted by the November 13 Paris attacks that claimed 130 lives.
There was also a failed attack in August on a Thalys train linking Amsterdam and Paris.
“We think that since France is a pioneer on the Thalys, other countries will think about it themselves and probably take the same decision,” Mr Pepy said.
Asked about ecology minister Segolene Royal’s proposal to install security gates for all French train services, Mr Pepy said: “At the present time, the decision has not yet been made. Give us time to experiment. The metal detectors are not a panacea... I don’t believe in a miracle solution. Today we have three security nets: human presence, new technology, and everyone’s vigilance,” he said.