Eurostar Seven Hour Delay

[Thames99]

Passengers stuck on Eurostar train in Belgium for almost seven hours

One passenger said a loud bang could be heard, and a flash of light was seen above the carriage, but no update has been given about the cause of the breakdown.

www.brusselstimes.com

Around 340 passengers were stuck on a Eurostar train travelling from Amsterdam to London through Belgium for almost seven hours. Around 03:00 in the morning on Saturday, they were finally towed to Brussels Midi station.

According to this article, an Amsterdam - St Pancras suffered some sort of electrical mishap in Belgium resulting in sitting in a train on emergency power. The Red Cross attended to help the stranded passengers. After a while power was restored to part of the train and after seven hours it was towed into Brussels by a diesel engine judging by the photo in the paper.

What was noteable was that at 3am the passengers were provided with meals and drinks, booked themselves into hotels which Eurostar have agreed to refund along with tickets for onward travel today.

 

[mad_rich]

Seems much better managed than the incident in Kent before Christmas. Arranging Belgian border officials to 'de-emigrate' everybody on arrival at Brussels.

I'm a little surprised that a commercial company needs to rely on freebies from the Police and Red Cross though!

 

[RT4038]

Seems much better managed than the incident in Kent before Christmas. Arranging Belgian border officials to 'de-emigrate' everybody on arrival at Brussels.

I'm a little surprised that a commercial company needs to rely on freebies from the Police and Red Cross though!

I wouldn't make an assumption that it was a freebie! Don't suppose there are any commercial companies specialising in this kind of work situation, and E* wouldn't have the resources either.

 

[rvdborgt]

Seems much better managed than the incident in Kent before Christmas. Arranging Belgian border officials to 'de-emigrate' everybody on arrival at Brussels.

Less bad, I'd say. 7 hours is still way to long to be stuck before they can pull away the train that got stuck.

 

[DanielB]

Seems to happen quite often with Eurostar e320's lately. Last monday an e320 got stranded near Breda in the Netherlands for around 2 hours after an OHLE failure (though the overhead lines hadn't really broken, media describe it as a fuse being blown). Three other stranded trains were able to return to Rotterdam quite quickly, the Eurostar wasn't for some reason.