Travellers wait at St. Pancras Station in London as Eurostar train services to continental Europe remained suspended for a third day on Monday. Travellers wait at St. Pancras Station in London as Eurostar train services to continental Europe remained suspended for a third day on Monday. (Akira Suemori/Associated Press)

President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered the head of the French train authority to get Channel Tunnel passenger traffic moving again by Tuesday.

A Eurostar chief also said Monday he was confident two-thirds of the trains would be running by then.

Sarkozy called in the president of the French train authority and told him to present measures to ensure that such incidents "unacceptable for travellers, do not recur."

Eurostar, the only rail link between Britain and continental Europe, has suspended traffic between Paris and London pending tests to determine what caused five trains to get stuck inside the Channel Tunnel late Friday. More than 2,000 people were trapped for hours.

On Monday, Sarkozy called in SNCF president Guillaume Pepy and ordered him to get traffic moving by Tuesday. The SNCF owns a majority stake in Eurostar.

Passengers brace for more delays

Passengers who have been left waiting for up to three days at St. Pancras station in London are preparing to spend another night stranded following the cancellation of all Eurostar train services to and from Europe.

Thousands had already left the St. Pancras International Train Station, knowing that no trains would be departing for Europe until Tuesday morning at the earliest. Only those with no place to go were left waiting at the departure gate.

The few travellers left to pass the hours inside the cold station talked about the mayhem that had accompanied Eurostar’s cancellation of all train services since Friday evening.

"It was absolute chaos in the station," said Hanna Berthaud, a student trying to return to Paris for the Christmas holidays. "On Saturday, they would tell you anything not to answer your question. Eurostar is rubbish."

Berthaud, who has been waiting at the station since Saturday, described her reaction to the prolonged delays: "It’s not just a letdown," she said. "We’ve been through anger; we’ve been through crying — we just want to go home now."

Sitting with a fellow group of students on the cold station floor, Berthaud added that the group had lost all faith in the company: "They said it would be first come, first serve today — so we got here early. But again, they told us there were no trains running. We don’t believe anything they say anymore."

She added that if the trains aren't running by Tuesday, "there's going to be a riot."

Passengers who had continued a constant dialogue with Eurostar staff were confused over what had gone wrong with the trains and when travellers might be able to return home.

"They said there are going to be two trains running tomorrow, but there are 19,000 people waiting to travel," said Riad Ouled, who was waiting to return to Paris. "They said that they will have to prioritize for the pregnant, the sick and the elderly. So, I don’t know what that means for me."

Ouled found little consolation in French President Nicholas Sarkozy's demands that train services be restored by Tuesday morning.

"It's crazy for Sarkozy to demand that the trains be running again tomorrow. It's not his responsibility," he said. "Eurostar is not just a French company. He just wants to be superman."

- Max Bell

Nicolas Petrovic, Eurostar's head of operations, told reporters he was confident of a partial return to service Tuesday.

"I hope for two out of three trains by tomorrow morning," he said.

The shutdown hit holiday travel plans, affecting 40,000 people, Petrovic said. An earlier estimate had put the number of those inconvenienced at 55,000.

Snow sucked into locomotives

The operations manager on Monday blamed the problem on very dry snow that was sucked into the locomotives and then turned into condensation, which caused the trains' electrical circuits to fail. More snow was forecast Monday night and Tuesday in Calais, where the train ducks into the tunnel on the French side of the Channel.

French Transport Minister Dominique de Bussereau called the situation "unacceptable" and promised a thorough investigation into its causes.

"We cannot imagine that this mode of transport, which is fundamental between France and England, between England and Belgium and the rest of continental Europe doesn't work because it's snowing outside," Bussereau said on Europe-1 radio, speaking from Beijing where he is on an official visit.

The French president's office said Sarkozy ordered an urgent meeting of a French-British commission overseeing Channel Tunnel traffic.

He ordered Pepy, head of the SNCF train authority, to ensure trains are moving Tuesday.

Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo also lashed out at Eurostar, calling the situation "absolutely unbelievable" and saying he was meeting later Monday with the heads of Eurotunnel and the SNCF.

He added he was upset with the company's treatment of passengers throughout the incident.

"You can't treat people like that, without information," he told BFM television.

'Acute weather conditions'

Meanwhile Monday, Eurostar announced it had commissioned an independent review into the problems, naming one French and one British expert to lead the inquiry.

The company had said previously it had traced the problem to "acute weather conditions in northern France," which is experiencing its worst winter weather in years.

Eurostar commercial director Nick Mercer said three test trains sent through the Channel Tunnel on Sunday ran successfully, but that it became clear that snow was being sucked into the trains in a way that has never happened before.

"The engineers on board have recommended strongly that, in light of further snowfalls that are happening tonight, we make some modifications to trains (with) snow shields to stop snow being ingested into the power car," he told the BBC.

With a huge backlog of passengers building, Eurostar is blocking any sales until after Christmas.

For those seeking alternative routes between Paris, Brussels and London, the winter weather was dealing out more bad news.

Nearly half of all flights out of Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were cut Sunday through mid-afternoon, with more cancellations forecast for Monday. Belgium was also badly hit, with passengers in Brussels lining up for hours in an effort to rebook flights.