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Eurostar MELTDOWN CHAOS DOOM
August 4th, 2007 at 23:58
You might have seen that there were some delays on the Channel Tunnel yesterday because of technical problems. I can exclusively reveal that it was in fact due to signalling problems in the tunnel. How do I know this? Because I was sitting on a Eurostar train that was stopped in Calais for over an hour.
It was every bit as horrible as the press reports would have you think. We were literally trapped in comfortable seats drinking Coke and in my case, er, listening to an audio book of the Communist Manifesto (spoiler: the bourgeoisie did it).
The thing that bothered me most about the journey wasn’t the delay, although it was slightly irritating, was the strange doors between carriages on the Eurostar. Rather than pressing a button like you do on normal trains, they seemed to operate pneumatically. You had to pull a handle, which made a sort of air-releasing sound as it slid open- and if the door had been opened and closed a lot, you had to press a button on the ceiling that presumably “refuelled” the pneumatic doors with compressed air or whatever. Its disorientating because when you can’t operate a foot-operated sink or even do something as simple as open a door, you begin to question your sanity.
The worst part of the journey was in fact the part where we had to catch the regular Midland Mainline train back to our home town. When trying to board the train we were told that our tickets were only valid for off-peak travel (it was five minutes to four) so would have to get on a different train and change on the way back. We were tired, annoyed and carrying heavy bags, so we thought “fuck it”, and got on the train that actually went to where we live, prepared to pay for the upgraded tickets if prompted.
As luck would have it, our tickets weren’t checked once.
If I were a world-weary right winger, I’d perhaps comment about how French railways work and the British railways are in disarray, based on this one incident. I’m not prepared to extrapolate that much, but I will say that Midland Mainline are still like the Stasi.
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