A train from Calais in France to Folkestone in England broke down inside the Channel tunnel on Tuesday leaving the passengers stranded for hours. Hundreds of people were stuck in the tunnel for almost five hours and they had to walk for quite some distance to finally come out through a service tunnel.
The alternate tunnel runs alongside the main Eurotunnel and videos posted on social media showed the passengers carrying their luggage through the tunnel and some of them even walking with their dogs.
While the incident took place around 4 pm in the evening, the people on the side of Calais were asked to stay away till 6 am on Wednesday causing more congestion on the route. According to some media reports, it took the passengers around six hours to finally make their way out of the tunnel.
Michael Harrison, from Cranbrook, Kent, told Press Association about his experience.
“We got on the 3.50 pm crossing, approximately 10 minutes in the lights went out and the train stopped. We were told they needed to investigate an issue with the wheels. It took approximately one and a half hours for them to investigate and obviously not find anything,” he said.
“After further waiting, we left the train through the emergency link tunnel to the service tunnel. We then walked approximately 10 minutes to a train in front of the stricken train. That train then stopped as it couldn’t get traction, presumably as it was long and had no weight on it,” Harrison added.
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Eurotunnel Le Shuttle apologised for the inconvenience in their official statement.
“A train has broken down in the tunnel and we are in the process of transferring customers to a separate passenger shuttle via the service tunnel, to return to our Folkestone terminal. We apologise sincerely for this inconvenience,” it read.
