 Poster: A snowHead
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After confidently declaring services would run as normal despite threatened industrial action by a UK rail union, Eurostar has fallen foul of the weather after all. All Eurostar services were cancelled today (Saturday) and tomorrow's service is likely to be patchy at best. Eurostar are recommending that passengers who are able, should exchange tickets for travel tomorrow for a later date...
Eurostar has announced that it will be offering travellers who suffered major delays* on their train services last night £150 compensation per passenger in addition to a refund on their tickets and a free return ticket.
Any passengers scheduled to travel today can exchange their tickets for travel on a later date or have their tickets refunded and be compensated for reasonable out-of-pocket expenses.
Eurostar have now confirmed that they will not be running a passenger service tomorrow but will instead "be conducting a programme of ‘test-trains’ to better understand the problems that have been occurring."
http://www.eurostar.com/UK/uk/leisure/customer_care/questions_answers.jsp
* Train services providing £150 compensation are: 9053, 9055, 9057, 9059, 9063, 9163, 9157, 9051
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Yep - tell me about it.
I'd heard something about possible problems last night, so checked on the website - not problems reported  . So turned up at 9am this morning for my 10:25 departure, to see lots of people milling about recorded messages saying all services suspended until further notice   .....and nothing else, other than a lot of security people (I guess to quell the riots). About an hour later there were customer service reps visible, and at 11am they said that nothing would be running today. They're saying something may be happening tomorrow, but obviously can't guarantee anything.
I've also just spent the last hour trying to find a contact number for tgv-europe to talk about my onward connection to Lausanne. Can't see a sodding thing, except some automated comment form which will may elicit a return email within two working days!
So I'm back in Guildford now, £30 lighter and a day of my life I won't get back. Contemplating an early start tomorrow to join the queues of people trying to get on then. They say it will be first come first served, so could be quite a scrum.
Allegedly, the problem was that the trapeze picked up a load of ice from the overhead wires in France, then in the tunnel it melted, or picked up a load of condensation, that then fell into the electrics and shorted them. How come a) there is a design fault like this or b) it's never happened before in the last 15 years (they're saying it's never happened before). I'm sure these are not unique weather conditions.
And to cap it all, my laptop appears to have given up the ghost, so I've had to dash into work to access the internet from there!
I'm not having a good time with extreme weather this year - I was delayed 24 hours in the 1st Feb snowstorm, but at least that was getting home from the airport: PITA, but didn't interfere with any skiing time.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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With that news I'm now glad I came up with a plan C - plan B being just to sit it out. My brother lives near Bournemouth Airport, and so I booked a flight from there to GVA for 12:30 today. Phew!. Should be leaving for the airport about now. Hope anyone else affected manages to come up with something suitable.
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