LONDON — Rail traffic through the Channel Tunnel connecting England and France has been halted today (Tuesday, Dec. 30) because of a problem with the tunnel’s catenary power system, creating chaos for holiday travelers.
A brief notice on the Eurostar website says the tunnel is currently closed, which “means we have no choice but to suspend all services today until further notice. Please do not come to the station.” The company is advising passengers to rebook their travel for another day.
Also affected is the LeShuttle auto-transport service between Folkestone, England, and Calais, France, which operates 24 hours a day with two to four trains hourly. The LeShuttle website is currently reporting delays of up to 6 hours for those who had booked service. A LeShuttle train is reportedly stuck in the tunnel.
The BBC reports that Getlink, operator of the tunnel infrastructure, has said that will gradually resume at 2 p.m. London time (9 a.m. ET). Earlier, Eurostar had said all travel today was cancelled. It reports long lines of cars backed up at the LeShuttle terminals, with those in line facing delays of at least three hours when service does resume. News photos also show huge crowds at London St. Pancras station, the London terminal for Eurostar service.
Eurostar operates 14 to 15 daily round trips between London and Paris, with additional service to Amsterdam and Brussels. The company declined to answer an inquiry from the Reuters news service on the number of passengers affected by today’s outage.
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