By Louise Rasmussen, Yann Tessier and Vitalii Yalahuzian
PARIS, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Train services through the Channel Tunnel linking Britain and continental Europe were suspended on Tuesday following a power supply failure, disrupting peak winter holiday travel.
A spokesperson for Eurostar, which operates high-speed trains linking London to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Disneyland Paris, said services were halted indefinitely. Travellers at Paris’ Gare du Nord station were told operations would be interrupted until the end of the day.
Getlink, which operates the tunnel infrastructure and the Le Shuttle service carrying cars and trucks, said repairs to the power supply were underway and that traffic was expected to resume gradually from 1400 GMT.
“Due to a problem with the overhead power supply in the Channel Tunnel and a subsequent failed Le Shuttle train, we strongly advise all our passengers to postpone their journey to a different date,” Eurostar said in a statement.
The disruption affects one of Europe’s busiest international rail corridors at the height of the New Year travel season.
Several hundred Le Shuttle passengers were stuck in their vehicles after passing through passport checks and security at the terminal in Folkestone.
Officials said that for the time being they could neither go forward – there were no trains – nor backwards, because they had already crossed into the French control zone.
Alison Raby said she had booked a day trip to a theme park in Belgium, but the four-hour delay made the excursion pointless.
“We’re stuck, basically,” she told Reuters.
Fellow passenger Phil Groves, who works for Britain’s National Health Service and was en route to Paris for New Year’s Eve, said he and his family had been stuck at Folkestone for six hours and were held in a “mammoth queue”.
“We’ve received no information other than the services are suspended,” he said.
Britain’s Port of Dover said it was operating a ‘turn up and go’ system for passengers affected by the tunnel disruption and that ferry operators currently had capacity to take extra travellers.
Le Shuttle carried 2.2 million passenger vehicles and 1.2 million trucks through the tunnel in 2024. Eurostar carried 19.5 million customers in the same year, its most successful to date.
Stranded passengers crowded the concourse at London’s St Pancras station. One was led away by police, shouting “I just want to know if I’ll see my family” after an exchange with a Eurostar worker.
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen in Paris, Yann Tessier in Folkestone and VitaliiYalahuzian in London; writing by Richard Lough, editing by Kevin Liffey, Kirsten Donovan)
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