I have heard excuses...

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[The Ferry Man]

Has anyone else heard the reason given for the Eurostar Problems over the weekend...

Brace yourself:

The snow was too fluffy

 

[--tractorman--]

Its actually 'The snow was too fluffy'   

Yeah, atleast we can blame the french 

[Stuart2007]

The Met Office (and the French equivelant) and casting doubts that. Not that it matters anyway; terrible excuse.

But surely 100 times worse than the repeated breakdowns is the appaling handling of the situation by Eurosewer.

If a ferry operator acted the same "Spambot and gentlemen. this is the shop assistant on deck 6. I'm sorry but the ship is sinking and the captain has gone AWOL. Please stay where you are for the next 16 hours..."

If that happened, the european onion would be up in arms. but not when it's their beloved toy trains.

[Kapn Jonah]

European onion? 

[Ralphy]

  i like what the bbc said "if you have a ticket booked for monday, don't worry you will be able to make your journy, on wednsday"

thats what one person said

[Stuart2007]

Is that the longest delay ever for a train? 48 hours!

[saltydog]

Here in Holland the train schedules have been a mess lately..
The German railways, who have had the same weather, but not this kind of trouble, have kindly offered our railway company advice on how to improve the system if we ask for it..

[--tractorman--]

People should swim more often, might get them around a bit faster, in some cases maybe dramatically slower but it must be easier doing that than waiting a while for the trains to work again 

Sometimes I get annoyed with Britain's highway people.. If there is a crash, they let the motorway or what ever pile up for hours and hours. Why dont they just take the central barrier out and get everyone to turn around and divert them off some other way, simples. but no, they just keep them sitting there for like 8 hours..

[Stuart2007]

Here in Holland the train schedules have been a mess lately..
The German railways, who have had the same weather, but not this kind of trouble, have kindly offered our railway company advice on how to improve the system if we ask for it..

Isn't any country capable of sorting out its own problems these day? Is national pride such an evil concept these days? We are quite lucky here that since we don't do anything or make anything these days that we have a legitimate reason to just blame whoever it was we conned into doing whatever it is we're incapable of doing in the first place.

But the Netherlands? That surprises me..

[saltydog]

Somehow, this seems to be the problem: heating of switches..
Other European countries have functioning electric switch heating (foto), but here it's gas heating, and there we still have guys with gas torches melting the snow/ice away from them..

[McGherkin]

i thought the problems were with snow on the underside melting in the warmer tunnel, and water subsequently getting into the motors? Surely France must be having the same problems, as Eurostars are actually repainted and slightly rebodied TGVs?

Built between 1992 and 1996, Eurostar's fleet consists of 38 electric multiple unit trains, designated Class 373 in the United Kingdom and TGV373000 in France

[Stuart2007]

McG,

The Eurotrams are as you say fundamentally TGVs, but they are heavily engineered compared to the older TGVs (I don't know how they compare to the modern TGVs- remember the TGVs have been evolving for some years now).

The thing is that the TGVs don't go through the tunnel, which is where the snow was melting, The snow didn't seem to cause a problem, but the melted snow (water!) did.

Although there are possibilities that they aren't being truthful, if you believe the Met Office...

[McGherkin]

that's it, scrap the Eurostar, lets go Maglev!

[Stuart2007]

well blackpool is getting rid of its trams...

[The Ferry Man]

well blackpool is getting rid of its trams...

 

that is a shame

and more environment friendly then buses...

 

[Stuart2007]

They are getting NEW trams... German made. Apparently we thick Brits can't make our own now so we import them.  

I can just imagine people going to Blackpool to see these new trams...