Eurostar trapped by freezing weather 

Source: ONE NewsA Eurostar train leaves the Channel tunnel in France

About 2,500 passengers were trapped overnight in the undersea Channel Tunnel linking France and Britain on Saturday after four trains broke down due to freezing weather conditions.
 
And on Sunday, another Eurostar train became stuck in Kent.

The BBC reports that the train left Paris on Saturday evening and food has run out, according to those on board.

It says there is no heating and no lighting and passengers say staff are unable to tell them when they will arrive in London.

Earlier, angry Eurostar travellers arriving in London on Saturday morning said they had been left with no power, air conditioning, food or water.

Some complained their journeys from Brussels and Paris, which should take about 2 hours, had taken up to 15 hours.

Rail operator Eurostar says the breakdowns occurred when the high-speed trains moved from cold outside temperatures into the warmer tunnel.

It cancelled all its services on Saturday because of bad weather.
  
Temperatures at the French port of Calais, where the tunnel is located on the French side, were as low as -2 Celsius accompanied by snowfall.

In the French capital Paris, temperatures were down to -4C.

"We're very, very sorry that they've had such a disrupted journey overnight," Richard Brown, Eurostar's chief executive told BBC TV.

"We've been getting people home as quickly as we can but they have had very bad journeys."

Eurostar, operated by French rail operator SNCF, its Belgian counterpart SNCB and British government-owned LCR, says it will investigate what had happened and was offering compensation to passengers.
   
A rescue locomotive and a shuttle train were used to move passengers out of the 51 km tunnel, the longest undersea subway in the world which conveys about 40,000 people a day between Britain and continental Europe.

Passengers have accused Eurostar of doing little to help them.
   
"There was very, very poor communication from the staff," says Lee Godfree who was returning to Britain with his family from Disneyland Paris.

He says passengers were forced to get off a broken down train themselves and moved through the service tunnel in the dark, before getting onto a "filthy" car transport train.

"We've had children asleep on the floor, they've been sick, we had one loo (toilet), it's been a complete nightmare," he told BBC radio.

"We had people fainting on the train. It was just pandemonium."

Last year, the tunnel, which opened in 1994, was shut for two days after a large fire broke out on a freight train, while a blaze in 1996 fire halted freight traffic for seven months.

Heavy snowfalls across southeastern England on Friday had already brought chaos to road, rail and air passengers.

London's Gatwick and Luton Airports were closed for many hours while flights were cancelled at Heathrow and Stansted, the capital's two other major airports.

Budget airline EasyJet says it cancelled more flights on Saturday because of the bad weather, with forecasters at Britain's Met Office predicting further snow showers with temperatures falling as low as -10C.