So I was expecting some people to come and enjoy the atmosphere of London in Christmas mode.But ofcourse:
Eurostar staff was going to go on a strike, luckily they postponed this 'till after Christmas.
You are probably aware of further developments:
- snow/ice-water condensed from the eurostar train onto the electronics when it entered the eurotunnel (where the temperature is at a constant 25 degrees)
- 5 trains broke down inside the tunnel
- hundreds of people where stuck inside the tunnel, some for 16 hours
- water ran out, all electricity was shut down, the train crew didn't do it's job, temperatures raised inside the cabins
- random people in the trains who happened to be police officers set up the evacuation
- the executive manager had a lot of explaining to do http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8422978.stm, but didn't do a very good job.
- no eurostar service has been available since Friday http://www.eurostar.com
Nobody is going to be able to make it to London. Talk about things going wrong on precise timing.
Fingers crossed on getting home for Christmas.
Update on where things went wrong:
- eurostar had absolutely no contact with the trains in the tunnel
- no or little communication with passengers during breakdown
- manager of eurostar tells of passenger witnesses as telling 'anecdotal stories'
- manager of eurostar up untill now still hasn't debriefed with the crew on what really happened in the trains, thus as a result almost knowing less than the passengers
- stranded passengers, still no service
Sure, it is easy to criticize eurostar by just summing up all things that went wrong. But than again, I'm in a bad mood, and this is my blog.
Those engineers, they can never do anything right can they :-P
ReplyDeleteThat's some really bad luck for you (and ofcourse for your friends too). I hope there's still someone present down at your appartment building so you can keep yourself busy. See you in a week or so! (hopefully)