Eurostar seem to be doing their best to make life as difficult as possible for passengers to/from the Netherlands. My wife is just back from a trip to Brussels and reported quite a number of fellow passengers on the way home who had in fact been to Amsterdam or Rotterdam, but had been forced to travel beyond Brussels at their own expense and making their own arrangements (there were plenty of trains available on alternative routes).
Perhaps it's understandable that Eurostar trains could not take an alternative route when there must have been considerable disruption and congestion in central NL after the fire, but there were plenty of alternative routes available to passengers. In the UK if an incident like this blocked the trains of one TOC there would be automatic ticket acceptance on other routes by other TOCs so it is very surprising that a large multi-national company like Eurostar can't be bothered to put similar backup arrangements in place in all the countries in which they operate.
Last night the was another stupid problem. The 20:57 from Brussels was waiting at the platform but had to depart 30 mins late because the doors to the platform from the waiting area were shut and nobody could open them. They called in a technician who also failed to open the doors and eventually routed everyone back down to the main station passageways and back up via the usual exit route - the route being lined by security staff to stop anyone escaping into the wild (or perhaps vice-versa). This is obviously something they could have done well before the scheduled departure time, but nobody thought of that.
Looking at Eurostar's own web pages, for the last 3 days there have been at least 3 trains from Brussels to London cancelled, and almost every one of the others was late into London, typically by half an hour. Of course, again unlike UK train operators, they don't pay compensation at all unless the arrival time is late by a whole hour or more, so few of these passengers will get any compensation. I think it is high time that another company was allowed to operate trains through the channel tunnel as it's clear that Eurostar know they have an effective monopoly and are exploiting it ruthlessly. They simply don't care about providing a satisfactory service.
We had been thinking about taking a short trip to France later in the year but now it will probably be by air or road as Eurostar simply cannot be trusted to provide a usable service.
