The Eurostar shambles - what is the truth?

amcluesent

Eurostar: cold weather traps 2,000 in Channel Tunnel

"Around 2,000 passengers were trapped in the Channel Tunnel overnight as four Eurostar trains broke down amid freezing temperatures that have brought travel chaos to Britain."

TBH, this 'cold weather' story looks to be a nonsense.

We need to be told -

• Just who was driving the trains as Aslef unionised drivers were on a 48-hour strike?
• EDF workers have been on strike in France, so maintenance of their nuclear power stations is behind schedule. Are 30% actually unusable, and power to Eurostar was switched off?
• Was it co-incidence Eurostar were holding their Xmas party yesterday?
• Did it suite the managers in the TSSA union to not lift a finger as the fiasco developed, given their recent dispute on bonuses?

All in all, it's clear that union intransigence was the underlying cause of the incident.

poet123

I don't know who was responsible, but if it had happened to me I would have been hysterical.....I am claustrophobic, and the thought of being stuck underground like that, simply terrifies me. I could cope with going through the tunnel, but if it stopped and didnt restart that would be awful. Think I will give it a miss now, it had never occurred to me that this could happen, I would have thought they would have all been led to safety down the escape tunnels, rather than kept onboard overnight.

I_luv_cats

I got stuck a few years ago for 30mins or so (something to do with a fly wheel overheating)

We were offered a FREE single leg journey and had to queue up at customer services. They were very vague, even then about where to get the voucher etc.

robt_2

amcluesent wrote: »

Eurostar: cold weather traps 2,000 in Channel Tunnel

"Around 2,000 passengers were trapped in the Channel Tunnel overnight as four Eurostar trains broke down amid freezing temperatures that have brought travel chaos to Britain."

TBH, this 'cold weather' story looks to be a nonsense.

We need to be told -

Just who was driving the trains as Aslef unionised drivers were on a 48-hour strike?
Was it co-incidence Eurostar were holding their Xmas party yesterday?
Did it suite the managers in the TSSA union to not lift a finger as the fiasco developed, given their recent dispute on bonuses?

All in all, it's clear that union intransigence was the underlying cause of the incident.

a) Eurostar drivers are not all ASLEF. They are not all British either. Did you forget that it is an International tunnel?
b) Yes, I am sure it was deliberately planned to trap staff in a tunnel because it was an Xmas party
c) Exactly the same problem has happened before on a smaller scale.

Do you even know what the problem was? It doesn't sound like it.

I'm not defending it, the handling of it is totally indefensible, but you are grasping at straws.

computershack

The story is this...

It is a mechanical device with 10,000's of parts. One of those broke and it stopped working.
It is a railway network and you can't just go sending out recovery without ramifications throughout the whole UK wide rail network.

Money_Grabber13579

Before the rumours totally get out of hand, the actual story is this:

Outside of the tunnel, the train gathers up snow as it moves along. When it enters the tunnel, there is an extreme change in air temperature, anything from around -10 to +25. Due to the snow which has collected around the train, this all melts and causes a lot of condensation to form around the electrical parts of the train. And as we all know, electricity and water don't really mix, hence the premature failure of the motors.

To be honest, I don't think most of the blame can really be laid at anyone's door. There would have been plans in place to rescue 1 train, or possibly 2 if they became stuck. But I don't see how anyone could have foreseen 5 trains all failing at the same time. In addition to this, options were very limited as to how to rescue them. Eurotunnel operates on AC while the majority of locomotives in the rest of the country are DC. Obviously, a diesel locomotive couldn't rescue them either. There was also no point in sending in another Eurostar train, as the most likely thing to have happened was for it to have failed as well.

It was an unprecedented event and even though it would have been particularly unpleasant for those on board, I'm not sure what anybody who is criticising them would have done differently. It's impossible to have contingency plans in place for everything.

robt_2

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

To be honest, I don't think most of the blame can really be laid at anyone's door. There would have been plans in place to rescue 1 train, or possibly 2 if they became stuck. But I don't see how anyone could have foreseen 5 trains all failing at the same time. In addition to this, options were very limited as to how to rescue them. Eurotunnel operates on AC while the majority of locomotives in the rest of the country are DC. Obviously, a diesel locomotive couldn't rescue them either. There was also no point in sending in another Eurostar train, as the most likely thing to have happened was for it to have failed as well.

Not quite. 99% of electric locomotives in this country operate on 25kV, the same as what is in the tunnel. And diesel locomotives did rescue at least one of the stranded Eurostars - but you can't use a random diesel locomotive, they are very specialist and fitted with exhaust scrubbers, nor are they British. Picture of the convoy in London here: http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6681/image1fev.jpg You can see they have a very continental look!

Money_Grabber13579

robt wrote: »

Not quite. 99% of electric locomotives in this country operate on 25kV, the same as what is in the tunnel. And diesel locomotives did rescue at least one of the stranded Eurostars - but you can't use a random diesel locomotive, they are very specialist and fitted with exhaust scrubbers, nor are they British. Picture of the convoy in London here: http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6681/image1fev.jpg You can see they have a very continental look!

Looks more like a permanent way (track maintenance) machine!

And you it would appear you're right. Looked a couple of loco's up on Wiki and the 2 I looked at both ran on DC. But the more modern one's do run on AC. Normal diesel engines couldn't rescue the one's in the tunnel because of the fumes, but maybe you do get ones that capture emissions now. Wasn't aware of that.

poet123

Tbh with a structure such as the Channel Tunnel, it seems to me that every worst case scenario should have been envisaged and planned for as part of a H&S contingency document.

Once onboard you abdicate personal responsibility (you can do noting else, you have no way of personally getting to safety without their say so and help) and expect those in charge to have all bases covered. It is too easy to say they could not have forseen such and such, it is someones job to have done just that and put in placeprocedures for that event.

amcluesent

>every worst case scenario should have been envisaged and planned for<

Yep. It doesn't take much imagination for an attack scenario of a suicide bomber knocking out the substation which powers the tunnel, then a chemical/gas attack on all trains backed-up in the tunnel itself.

Then again, this could have been a 'scenario' which the security forces wanted to try-out and see what happens....'dark forces of which we know little' indeed.

badmumof1

Eurostar are dammed if they run the service and people get stuck and dammed if they dont run the service and people still get stuck.
As for the chief resigning ! poppyc0ck why should he resign