Eurostar has announced that it is hoping to run trains again on Tuesday after a three day shutdown – but warned that it will only offer a “limited service”.
Richard Brown, chief executive of the high-speed rail company, said that he was “very, very sorry” about thee technical problems that have disrupted the Christmas holiday plans of tens of thousands of passengers.
He said the weather in northern France that caused the suspension was “unprecedented” in the company’s 15-year history.
Mr Brown admitted that Eurostar would have “a lot of work to do” to reassure customers that the company was worth travelling with.
Speaking at Eurostar’s London terminal at St Pancras station, Mr Brown said that test trains had run today to see whether modifications made by engineers were working. He added that the first priority when services resumed would be people who had been due to get away last weekend.
The modifications involve preventing snow getting into the electrics of the 186mph trains that run between London and Paris and Brussels. His comments came after Eurostar announced it had commissioned an independent review into the problems which left thousands of passengers stranded.
Hundreds of stranded Eurostar passengers endured more misery this morning as they queued for replacement trains from King’s Cross St Pancras to Dover, only for those services to be delayed and cancelled by snow.
Earlier, transport minister Sadiq Khan said he was “angry” that passengers had still not been told what was going on, and that he and his French counterpart had demanded to know what had gone wrong. While Eurostar engineers fought to get their services running again, the continuing cold weather and the knock-on effect of the Eurostar shutdown wrought havoc with travel to and from the UK.
Channel Tunnel train shuttle company Eurotunnel had to suspend access to its Folkestone terminal at Folkestone in Kent after being inundated with passengers. Even those with day-trip bookings were turned away.
There were also delays and cancellations to flights leaving UK airports, with incoming flights from snow-hit North America up to six hours late.
Road conditions were still hazardous in many areas, while buses had to replace trains on some routes.
