Eurostar chaos: Rail passengers hoping to travel between Paris, Brussels and London St Pancras face a second night stranded

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Thousands of rail passengers hoping to travel between London St Pancras, Paris and Brussels face a second night stranded in the wrong country.

Just as Eurotunnel and Eurostar trains were starting up again after yesterday’s fire in the Channel Tunnel, the link was closed again for two hours on Sunday morning because of an unrelated power issue.

Drivers and passengers who turned up for Eurotunnel vehicle shuttles at Folkestone were told by the company “There is a waiting time of approximately 3 hours on the terminal”. The delay in Calais was put at four hours.

Meanwhile, the closure thwarted Eurostar’s plans to run a near-normal service after 12,000 passengers were stranded on Saturday by the closure.

Six trains from London, three from Paris and two from Brussels were cancelled. Since they are likely to have been fully booked, it is estimated that more than 8,000 passengers are affected.

Eurostar said: “We strongly advise passengers not to come to our stations unless they have a booking for a train that is scheduled to run this afternoon.

“Passengers booked on these services are advised to postpone their travel and rebook for an alternative date by calling our contact centre on 03432 186 186.”

Travellers on trains that are operating face delays of up to two hours because only one of the two running tunnels is open. A single tunnel is much less efficient than two tunnels, and in order to extract maximum capacity from the operation a sequence of trains must be assembled on either side of the Channel before running in a kind of convoy. Once they have passed, the line is reversed.