Eurostar: bridge across throat at Brussels

[Gerald Fiennes]

I seem to recall some years ago the Belgians built, at great expense, the viaduct across the throat at Brussels Midi to allow the ES and Thalys trains faster access to the station. The trains used otherwise to have go over the throat and often quite amusing routes round the side of Forest depot or, occasionally, even through it. The bridge allowed something like 3-4 minutes to be knocked off the journey time.

But a couple of times in the past year I have been on an arriving ES into Brussels that stopped after going over the 1st 1/3rd of the viaduct: the most recent time (last week) for about 10 mins, delaying the arrival to c.1513. The only reason this was particularly memorable was that was sufficient delay to ensure missing the ICE connection to Frankfurt and having to wait two hours for the next one: so much for the 'fast' element of high speed rail travel. (The Thalys train an hour later was full, of course.) Unfortunately, of course, this was not a sufficient delay to trigger any kind of compensation from ES.

However, my question is, why does this happen? There seemed to be no train coming out of that side of the station to conflict with the arriving train, it was just a random stop with no explanation. Is this something to do with 'can't locate the key' to open the security gates at the country ends of Platforms 1 & 2, where most of the ES arrive and depart from.....? Thoughts?

 

[XAM2175]

The only reason this was particularly memorable was that was sufficient delay to ensure missing the ICE connection to Frankfurt and having to wait two hours for the next one: so much for the 'fast' element of high speed rail travel. (The Thalys train an hour later was full, of course.) Unfortunately, of course, this was not a sufficient delay to trigger any kind of compensation from ES.

Without wanting to detract from your overall point, would this not have qualified you for compensation (effectively Delay Repay) under Article 17 of the Regulation on Rail Passengers' Rights and Obligations ("PRO" or EC 1371/2007) - or were tickets arranged in such a way that they didn't create a qualifying journey? Feel free to split this out into a different thread if you'd prefer.

 

[TFN]

Arrivals into Brussels continuing on to Amsterdam must use Platforms 3 or 4 I believe. If both are occupied then it might explain the delay? Although I don’t know whether your train was terminating at Brussels or not so I’m speculating

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Arrivals into Brussels continuing on to Amsterdam must use Platforms 3 or 4 I believe. If both are occupied then it might explain the delay? Although I don’t know whether your train was terminating at Brussels or not so I’m speculating

Yes, it was arriving into Platform 2.
On the PRO, yes, potentially the journey is covered but prior experience suggests that the reality of what the railways offer often here falls short of the Regulation. I got my 'Hop on the NextTrain' stamp, though.