Vanishing Tunnel Trains

Eurostar passengers face further cancellations on Tuesday after a train broke down in the Channel Tunnel.

Eurostar is a high-speed railway service connecting London with Paris and Brussels. All its trains traverse the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France, owned and operated separately by Eurotunnel.

The London terminus is St Pancras International, with the other British calling points being Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International in Kent. Calling points in France are Calais-Fréthun and Lille-Europe, with trains to Paris terminating at Gare du Nord. Trains to Belgium terminate at Midi/Zuid station in Brussels. In addition, there are limited services from London to Disneyland Paris at Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy, and to seasonal destinations in southern France in summer and the Alps in winter.

The service is operated by eighteen-coach Class 373/1 trains which run at up to 300 kilometres per hour (186 mph) on a network of high-speed lines. The LGV Nord line in France opened before Eurostar services began in 1994, and newer lines enabling faster journeys were added later—HSL 1 in Belgium and High Speed 1 in southern England. 

The French and Belgian parts of the network are shared with Paris–Brussels Thalys services and also with TGV trains. In the United Kingdom the two-stage Channel Tunnel Rail Link project was completed on 14 November 2007 and renamed High Speed 1, when the London terminus of Eurostar transferred fromWaterloo International to St Pancras International.

Hundreds of passengers had to be evacuated from Monday's 06:20 BST Le Shuttle train from Folkestone, which stopped a quarter of the way to France.

Eurotunnel said a fault with the overhead power lines in the tunnel caused the problem.

Eurostar said four trains on Tuesday morning - two in each direction - have been cancelled

In a statement on Monday night, the firm said: "Eurotunnel engineers are working to resolve the issues and restore full power to the affected section of the tunnel.

"As a consequence of the ongoing loss of power, Eurotunnel has informed Eurostar that some further disruption should be expected to services tomorrow morning.

"In anticipation and in order to safeguard the majority of services for the remainder of the day, unfortunately it has become necessary to cancel four Eurostar trains."

The Le Shuttle train affected by the power supply fault had stopped about seven miles into the 30-mile journey. Passengers were evacuated into the middle service tunnel, which runs between the two main tunnels and is designed to allow people to escape from halted trains.

Another train was brought from France along the other main tunnel and parked alongside the stopped train to allow passengers to board it and be carried to France without their cars.

The affected train eventually reached France at 17:15 BST on Monday and passengers were reunited with their cars.