Bosses forced to slash trains to UK

EUROTUNNEL has slashed the number of freight trains travelling overnight from Calais to Britain to boost security and halt the flow of stowaway migrants.

Bosses said they were ‘concentrating’ overnight departures on just two platforms, which would be worked ‘more intensively’.

Normally, Eurotunnel operates its lorry freight trains from six platforms after midnight.

But this has presented an easy target for the thousands of migrants breaking into the tunnel compound to hide in trains and lorries.

The reduction in platforms would concentrate freight departures into one less accessible central area and ensure ‘every train goes clean of migrants,’ it said.

It is the open freight trains, rather than the harder-to-enter sealed car transporters, that migrants have targeted to get them through the Channel Tunnel to Britain.

In a statement, Eurotunnel said: ‘Measures have been taken for truck traffic: Night services will be provided on protected shuttles and from the platforms in the centre of the terminal.’

Bosses said they would run fewer trains than normal – but more than during recent disruption. Normally, Eurotunnel operates five trains an hour from six platforms overnight.

It did not say how many trains it would operate, but a spokesman added: ‘We can concentrate security on just two platforms. It will put more distance between the freight trains and the migrants and make getting to them far more difficult.’

Eurotunnel said it was one of a number of measures to create ‘a significant strengthening of security’ at the Coquelles rail terminal.

During the day, it operates from 11 platforms, with up to five freight and five car trains leaving hourly.

The spokesman said the number of migrants had fallen from 2,000 to 358 on Wednesday night. He predicted the new strategy would reduce this even further, adding: ‘Security is being stepped up a notch. The Governments have taken notice of what we have been saying for the past two weeks.’

Today, a summit of council, Government and Eurotunnel chiefs will unveil plans for an alternative to Operation Stack, which has turned the M20 in Kent into a lorry park as vehicles queue up when the tunnel is closed by security breaches.

‘Concentrate on security’