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When the first facebook statuses showed “SNOW!!” on Thursday, I was not yet aware what drastic consequences this would have for me. When I came out of my office around 10 pm, and was confronted with about 10cm of snow, I knew England would sink into Chaos for a couple of days. But for me, it was even worse than that.

On Friday, Eurostar trains got stuck in the tunnel, allegedly due to a condensation problem. First passenger reports made clear that they had experienced no less than hell and that the Eurotunnel is a “death trap” (well, by the way, in 15 years of Eurotunnel operation, I am not aware of a fatal accident happening in there). But they even had to walk 500m through the tunnel!

Some people therefore called for Mr Brown to step down. I couldn’t believe it. I am certainly not a fan of Gordon Brown, but what did he have to do with Eurostar? Has this hypocrisy got us so far that we now call for  the Prime Minister to step down because some company messes some trains up? Well, it turns out the Eurostar Chief Executive’s name is Richard Brown.

The bad news is, I did not have to walk through the tunnel, swim over the channel or fight wolves on the way. But together with Georg and Maruta, who I joined and who wanted to travel already on Saturday, I was impressed how creative Eurostar would get in order to not let us go home. They are really evil.

So yesterday (Monday) we were planning to go to Dover as early as possible in order to get the ferry, since Eurostar made clear the night before that there would not be any passenger trains through the tunnel. Our odyssey started at 5.45 (UTC) in Cambridge. In London, Eurostar personnel told passenger Eurostar tickets would be accepted on the train to Dover. Haha, maybe in theory, but they would just not let people with just Eurostar tickets in claiming the train was too full. Luckily, I already had a ticket to Dover (apparantly, letting people with “real” tickets in did not pose a security problem because the train was too full) and my friends just quickly bought one. Hundreds of Eurostar ticket holders did not and were left in London St. Pancras Station.

Needless to say, there were plenty of free seats in the train. One could nearly have the feeling Eurostar was trying everything to stop passengers from getting on the other side of the channel… this should not have been the last time we would think about this possibility.

The train for Dover (which uses the same tracks as the Eurostar trains) never made it there. It would go no further than Ashford, claiming “adverse weather conditions”, of which we could see nothing. It was not very cold, not snowing, not raining, not particularly windy. Suspicions rose. Maybe one of the Eurostar “test trains” was blocking the track? They had become serious about holding us back!

But we would not surrender! After only half an hour and about 10 calls, we found a taxi in Ashford and went to Dover. With us were Elina and Janis, Latvian siblings heading for Brussels who would stay with us for the next couple of hours. Without major problems, we could reach and board the 11h ferry for Calais, finally leaving the island.

Of course, in Calais, we expected the worst. Hadn’t Eurostar said they could not run trains due to “extremely adverse weather conditions” in northern France? Certainly, it must be very cold, maybe -20 or -30 degrees centigrade. Any less than that cannot hold back trains, can it? Come on, -5 to -10 are common in any winter, that can’t be it. So we were prepared to step into the French taiga, expecting nothing less than the coldest weather we had ever seen. Maybe we should rather expect -50 degrees?

But it was not that holding us back. Eurostar got creative. We thought they might just tell the ship to go back, but that would have been too blunt. Instead, when we wanted to unboard the ferry over the gangway, we were told the Calais chamber of commerce had forbidden its use: It was icy and therefore dangerous. Oh, and they forgot the salt do de-ice it. Yes, they forgot the salt!! We were just about prepared they would now tell us we had to go back to Dover because of this!

But after some time, they figured out how to get also foot passengers off the ferry: They drove some busses on the car decks and let us enter. Once again, we managed to escape Eurostar’s mighty claws and finally reached the soil of the French taiga.

But wait, it was not cold there at all! Maybe -1 or -3 degrees, but no colder than that for sure! There was some snow, but only a mere 5cm or so. Also, the French and Belgian part of our odyssey were boringly uneventful. Not even the trains were late! These railway organisations should certainly think more about how to entertain their passengers, after all, who wants to travel just to get from A to B? No one, you want travelling to be as difficult as possible. After all, it should be a challenge. At every station, you should have to figure out what means of transport could be used now to get a bit closer to your destination. SNCF and NMBS/SNCB should try to understand this, otherwise they will quickly be driven out of business by much more successful English and German companies.

What French and Belgian were unable to provide, the German Bahn was happy to replace. Obviously, the ICE from Brussels to Frankfurt we wanted to take was cancelled. We were lucky to hear it in time when there was still a Thalys to Cologne in the station, which was just one hour late at the time. But this train would, in fact, take us to Cologne without further incidents! We could barely believe we were so close to home now.

Being in the territory of the Bahn, everything could not just go well now. Or maybe it was also Eurostar still doing everything to interfere with our journey. After they were so creative with that salt thing, I would not be suprised at all! So the ICE from Cologne to Frankfurt was obviously cancelled. That would have been too easy now, come on! Instead, we had to go to the Cologne Messe-Deutz station, where a train would go for Frankfurt Airport! Unexpectedly, we all made our way home that evening, kind of unexpected after all they had done to stop us.

I conclude, in my opinion, Mr Brown stepping down for this is not enough. This calls at least for Obama to step down.

So is the Eurostar unreliable, dangerous, a death trap?

Many stranded passengers were outraged that they could not make it home and had to wait for so long. Services were only restored today. Even worse for those being trapped in the tunnel for more than half a day. I can clearly understand they are upset.

So what is my opinion on this? While the circumstances do not, in my opinion, seem so extreme as to be an “excuse” for trains breaking down, technical malfunctions can of course happen. Also, Eurostar did get all the people out, nothing serious happened, and people should just understand that an accident is an accident and not complain about climatisation not working (oh well…) or not having enough water on board (come on, you won’t die after a couple of hours with no water). This can happen. And judge whether the Eurotunnel is a death trap by considering it transports tens of thousands of people each day without any fatal accident since 1994.

What has been apparently very bad was Eurostar communications. Well I was for example not really happy that they only told me at 8pm on Sunday that my train on Monday would not go! That is a very short notice and for example too late to book regular ferry tickets. But much worse than that, people in the tunnel did, for a long time, not know what was going on. That is really bad and I would hate to be in that situation. This seems in part also to be due to bad communication between Eurotunnel (running the tunnel) and Eurostar (running the passenger trains). I found this blog post helpful in analysing this. Generally, Eurostar Client seems to be an intersting source for this event.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.