Derailed: The Eurostar “Chunnel” Train

In my December 15^th post, "Riding the Rails Through The Snow to Grandmother's House (In Chicago)", I said "we still don't have a national passenger train system that comes anywhere near that I found throughout Europe in September of 2009 when I rode the rails in comfort and style from Prague to Dresden, Dresden to Berlin, Berlin to Munich, Baden-Baden to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Brussels, and finally on the speedy Eurostar train under the English Channel from Brussels to London." Three days later, this comparison, and rail service between London and The Continent, would be derailed when five Eurostar trains stalled in the "Chunnel" under the English Channel, stranding a couple thousand passengers for hours.
My first trip on the Eurostar was in September of 2006. After spending a week in a stone farmhouse on the edge of Bayeux, Normandy, my wife and I had driven to Chartres to see its famous cathedral, stay overnight, and drop off our rental car before taking the train an hour north to Paris. Once at Paris' Gare Montparnasse, we hopped on the Metro subway, rode underground around the city and arrived at the Gare du Nord an hour or so before the scheduled departure of our Eurostar train to London. While we did have to show our passports and walk through a metal detector, checking in and clearing security was much faster and easier than it would have been had we opted to fly back to England.

Aboard the Eurostar, we sat in plush seats, sipped a glass of champagne, and were served a three-course lunch with wine during the less than three-hour Paris to London journey. We zipped through the French countryside west of Paris, stopped briefly at Calais (where the Eurostar line from Brussels meets the London-Paris tracks), and then dove below ground and "swam" the English Channel in about twenty-minutes or so. The ride was smooth and fast --- very fast (today it's even faster, and tomorrow it will probably be faster yet). Why fly when you can have much more fun on this Tale of Two Cities trip. Last fall, I had a similar experience travelling along the Brussels to London route.

If you saw the 1996 Tom Cruise "Mission Impossible" film, you'll recall the dramatic scene where Cruise (along with "Bad Guy", Vanessa Redgrave) onboard the Eurostar is chased by other "Bad Guys" in a helicopter. The villains who chose to fly rather than take the train bite the dust, and Cruise comes out of the other end of "The Chunnel" unscathed and eventually Saves The World.

In the latest news appearing in the U.S. press, Eurostar officials attribute Friday's Eurostar snafu to extreme winter weather conditions. My friend and "foreign correspondent", "Fred" (American-born, now living in France; I've changed his name to protect his anonymity), and I have been exchanging e-mail about the incident. He reports that his sources say that "melting ice causing water build-up somehow caused electrical systems to go to emergency default."

Today the New York Times reported that limited Eurostar service would resume tomorrow, but that full service would probably not be restored for another week. The paper said that French President "Sarkozy asked for a swift explanation of the problem and demanded measures to avoid the recurrence of such 'unacceptable incidents,' and that "he also called on Eurostar to immediately improve the way it provides information to passengers, the cause of much public criticism after five trains broke down in the tunnel on Friday, trapping thousands of people with no food or water and little idea of what was happening."

So, if I make another trip to Europe that requires me to travel between London and The Continent, would I fly or take the Eurostar? If my headed beyond eastern or southern France, I'd probably fly, as I did in 2006 when my first stop on a month-long trip was in London, and my next stop was Vienna, and as I did three months ago when I spent two nights in London before heading for Prague. Flying is much faster, and probably cheaper, along those routes. But fly between the western edge of Europe and London? As long as the Eurostar is running with only the very occasional weather-related disruption in service, I'll gladly sidestep the aggravation of trips through the air, and ride the rails, even if I have to dive underwater (and, figuratively speaking, holding my breath for twenty minutes) to do so.