Cross channel train operator resumes services after 3-day suspension

(22 Dec 2009) SHOTLIST
++NIGHT SHOTS++
1. Train at platform in Gare du Nord
2. Various of passengers waiting
3. Pan of passengers queueing with luggage
4. Official speaking with passengers
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Richard Wood, Australian passenger:
"It depends how many people were in front of you really and whether they got priority and whether they've been here since the first day when Eurostar stopped, if you've got tickets ongoing you're in priority listing so it's very difficult to know when you're going to go."
6. SOUNDBITE (French) No name given, passenger:
"No, I don't think I'll get one today. I've lost hope, I was still hopeful a few minutes ago but now it's over. I was meant to leave today and already the people who were meant to leave on Monday probably won't make it today. So that's where I stand."
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Will Godwin, English passenger:
"They said that the people who should have travelled on Saturday and Sunday should travel today and everyone else can join the queue and wait but it's a good thing we are English, cause we like queuing."
8. Various of people waiting in line
9. Close-up of train times on electronic information board
10. Train at platform
11. Various of Eurostar pulling away from Gare du Nord in Paris
STORYLINE
Eurostar resumed its high-speed rail service linking Britain, France and Belgium on Tuesday after a three-day suspension that stranded tens of thousands of travellers during the holiday season and left French President Nicolas Sarkozy indignant.
The first train pulled out of the Gare du Nord station in Paris shortly after 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) carrying 750 passengers, most of whom had been stranded for days.
Hundreds of others waited in a line that stretched across the vast Paris station, as Eurostar staff circulated with trays of pastries and coffee in paper cups.
Terminal manager Nelly Clair-Meunier said people who were supposed to travel over the weekend were being given priority on Tuesday's trains, which were expected to leave hourly throughout most of the day.
Officials at the Eurostar train company said they had identified the problem that caused trains to break down in the Channel Tunnel - unusually dry, powdery snow that got into the engines.
As many as 40-thousand people have been affected by the suspension.
Eurostar offered its "deepest apologies" and promised compensation.
President Sarkozy on Monday summoned the head of France's SNCF rail operator into the Elysee Palace for a one-on-one meeting and ordered him to get the Eurostar moving again, saying the situation was "unacceptable for travellers."
Problems started Friday after five trains failed inside the Channel Tunnel, trapping more than 2,000 passengers for hours in stuffy and claustrophobic conditions.
Exhausted, sometimes teary-eyed passengers appeared in British and French TV broadcasts complaining that they had been left underground for more than 15 hours, without food or water or any clear idea of what was going on.
Eurostar's CEO Richard Brown, who has faced stiff criticism over the company's handling of the crisis, pledged that "we will be doing our very best to get everyone home by Christmas."
The company's operations chief, Nicolas Petrovic, said dry snow had got past the train's snow-screens and into the engines on Friday.
Then the snow turned into condensation inside the Channel Tunnel, where temperatures were higher than those outside.
That condensation caused the trains' electrical circuits to fail, he said.
Eurostar has commissioned an independent review into the problems.

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