BTilke

DH had a "interesting" ride back to Brussels last night on Eurostar:
He was riding the 1913 train from London to Brussels. The scheduled arrival time was 2235. The actual arrival time was well after 2 am, a nearly four hour delay with no power in the train compartments, which meant no AC or any ventilation of fresh air. The bar car was shut tight, of course, so no opportunities for passengers to buy water. The train came to a halt less than 10 minutes from Brussels, then sat there for a couple of hours before a diesel engine came and pulled the train to the railyard (not the train station).

Train crew on the ground started opening doors for passengers to disembark and enter another train. There was no platform, only a dangerous drop to the ground. DH saw at least two people injured in the drop--getting luggage down wasn't a picnic either (he had only carryon luggage fortunately).

The Eurostar onboard staff were NOT helpful in the least. The train manager seemed to have opted to hide in the premium business car rather than go through the train to see what help passengers needed and issue instructions.

DH is a Carte Blanche cardholder and he sent the CB customer service department at Eurostar an email this morning about the experience...we're curious to see how they respond.

W9London

Ah, another power failure... My recollection is Eurostar gives 1/2 price off or free one-way off-peak for delays more than 1 hour.
The rub is, you have to reserve the compensatory trip either in person or over the phone. They won't let you redeem this over the web.
I'm not sure if they give additional compensation for longer delays, though.

walkinaround

eurostar is a mickey mouse company. i have to go to paris a lot on business and there are always problems (nothing so major as you describe, however). you would think they could get things right after so many years...and i don't mean that problems would never occur...just that the staff is well prepared and trained when they do.

hanl

I definitely think the Eurostar staff are poorly trained to cope with problems or emergencies.

Once my train from London to Paris stopped in the tunnel for over half an hour (not long after 9/11 so a lot of people were still very jumpy). The only information we got came in the form of near hysterical, panicky announcements from the train manager over the loudspeakers, along the lines of:

"There's a problem in the tunnel! We can't go on... [sound of panicky breathing]..."

Ten minutes later: "There's a serious problem [gulp], we're going to have to reverse all the way back to London ... [hyperventilation noises]... We cannot go forward to our destination."
The train still didn't move.

About twenty minutes later, the train was still sitting in the tunnel and all the passengers were wondering what on earth was going on. Eventually we were told there'd been a fire in the tunnel but they'd extinguished it and we carried on to Paris as planned.

By this point of course, all the passengers' nerves were completely frazzled as the train manager had freaked everybody out.

francophile03

Eurostar sounds like Amtrak.

LoveItaly

Hi Btilke, that sounds like an awful experience!

And you would be interested that the SF Chronical just had an article this morning about our westcoast Amtrak train, the CoastStarlight. The one that runs from Seattle to LA. It is on time only 2% of the time. It has been late 5 to 11 hours the last 27 days out of 34 days. It is now dubbed the CoastStarlate.

I am surprised about the Eurostar, I was under the impression that was a well run train, obviously not!

francophile03

I read that article too, LoveItaly. European trains may have their bad days but they are usually efficient and mostly there are so many lines. The one high speed Amtrak train (not the Starlate) there is had so many problems.

Brian_in_Charlotte

I believe that the Eurotunnel Group is currently under bankruptcy protection in France and that there have been numerous cuts in service and employees as the company struggles under its debt load. I'm not surprise with the service issues.

Brian_in_Charlotte

But then I guess Eurostar is a separate company from Eurotunnel . . .

LoveItaly

Hi francophile. In that I live in the southern end of the Sacramento Valley I had thought about taking the Coast Starlight down to Santa Barbara to see some family members rather than flying. I thought it would be so relaxing. Well lets say I thought about it until an elderly family member took it from Sacramento to Santa Barbara and the train was something like 15 hours late. A train trip that almost did the poor fellow in.

stokebailey

To leap to Amtrak's defense: their trains are obliged to wait for freight trains that take precedence. I understand that European passenger trains use dedicated tracks.

Carrybean

I had no idea there were rather frequent problems with Eurostar & your DH's was a doozy.

francophile03

That is true about Amtrak needing to yield to the freight trains. Well, they should have tried to have resolved the problem a long time ago as right now the ridership has declined significantly. Worse yet those who were interviewed for the article vowed that they won't be riding Amtrak again. And this is different but their one and only high speed train keeps getting into accidents.

LoveItaly, fifteen hours to travel between Sacramento and Santa Barbara??! The poor guy could have flown from California to Europe in less time.

LoveItaly

It is true francophile!! This dear gentleman was 90 (we lost him last year). His legs were very weak and the family thought the train would be a good way to get him to Santa Barbara. He was so excited as he thought he wouldn't travel anymore as he just couldn't take the airports/planes etc. any longer. A gentleman who had travelled all of his life.

The family members in the Santa Barbara area never got any sleep that night..they kept checking with Amtrak to see when we train would arrive as they really needed to be there of course when it did. A nightmare for everyone. And for hours on end there was no food etc. The poor fellow slept almost 24 hours after finally arriving.

Fortunatly the train ride home went better...although if I recall it was late too, but not to such an extreme.

And yes, the fact that Union Pacific freight trains have the right of way is a huge problem.

stokebailey

Amtrak, dependent upon Congress as it is, barely gets enough money each year to scrape by, let alone buy the land and then lay down a nationwide system of rails. US likes to put its transportation dollars into subsidizing auto traffic.

LoveItaly

Agree! And we are constantly told we should use public transportation. What public transportation? Certainly nothing to speak of where I live.

BTilke

Problems on Eurostar aren't all that frequent but they seem to be clueless about handling them when they do occur. Earlier this summer, there was another Eurostar debacle where it took some passengers 12 hours to get from London to Paris! Obviously, staff are grossly undertrained in customer relations when it comes to snafus en route.
Hanl, your description of the hyperventilating train manager made my husband laugh, although it's more evidence of how seriously poor their communication skills are. It doesn't seem like Eurostar has many staffers who can maintain calm and collected in a crisis. Which makes you wonder what they'd be like in a bona fide emergency.
DH hasn't heard back from Carte Blanche customer service, he's going to give them another day or two. FYI, many of the passengers (DH included) took photos of the train and the dangerous drop to the ground when they were stuck in the rail yard.

prr761

We were on a Eurostar from Milan to Paris in April. On the 7-hr. trip we had 2 opposite experiences. The AC in our car did not operate, and it was very warm (80 deg.) and very crowded and noisy.
However, a few cars away, a group of 3 very dirty, shoeless young people with 3 dogs commandered the pass- through between two cars. At one point, one of the dogs left a "gift" in the middle of the floor. The ES staff were very quick to demand the owners clean it up, apologizing profusely to the people seated nearby. At the next stop, somewhere in the French Alps, the police boarded and escorted them all off of the train, shoeless onto the snow-covered platform.
Our arrival in Paris was on time, as well!

BTilke

The Italian Eurostar runs all the way to Paris? I didn't know that.

francophile03

I marvel at Europe and other countries that make public transportation one of their priorities. Over here in the States you either fly or drive to get somewhere. One can't depend on the bus or the rails as there are few choices.

However, in Europe one can travel the whole continent inexpensively via train if one chooses.

I realize that Eurostar (and other train companies) has its share of problems and, yes, when there are strikes they wreak huge havoc en mass. But, to me, it's alot better than what we have in the US.