heh beet1e, one of these days I'll tell the story of the time a friend from London came to visit me in Paris, and took the Eurotunnel. He left at noon London time, and was scheduled to arrive at 4 pm. There was a bit of snow, and they cancelled his train, put him on the next one out, thirty minutes later.
Completely full train crawls through the snow to the tunnel. They park outside the tunnel for 30 minutes, testing the electrics, then go underneath the Channel.
12 minutes under the Channel everything goes black. The train had a complete electrical failure. Recirc was out; the only thing that worked were the alarms when someone tried to crack a door from the stifling, stale environment.
anyway, it took them over three hours to haul the train out, then the pax had to wait on a platform in Calais for another three hours, with no information. Finally, they pressed into service a regional train with just enough capacity to carry everyone, then crawled across N. France to Paris.
I went down to meet the train when it got into GdN at 4:15 AM. The first wave of passengers sprinted across the empty station in all directions. The next marched with resignation down the Platform. The engineer was handing out ticket-sized cards. People picked them up, thinking they were comp tickets or something. I watched as wave after wave grabbed a brochure with interest, opened it, read the message "We're sorry for the inconvenience. Eurostar", and tossed, tore, cursed or screamed.
Really impressive.
