The first victims of climate change?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph....across-the-south.html

/// It is thought trains – all headed to London from Paris – failed as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer air inside the tunnel.///

Oh! so that's it is it, we are only going to be able to travel via 'Eurostar' if the temperatures in the tunnel balance with those outside?

[brionon]

What a Cock up. The Words 'Fosters up' and 'Brewery' come to mind. Will anyone get the Sack ?

[Sandy-Wroe]

How could driving out of the cold into a warmish tunnel stop a train? Were there leaves on the line?

[Seadragon]

laughing - No, I think it means that Eurostar trains need more modifications to cope with the different weather temperatures. After all these years there are still problems with air craft and extreme weather conditions such as snow, ice etc - Air Craft Investigation on discovery channels I think or some of those around there are quite good at showing how a slight mechanical fault or design has such an impact on the craft.

[rov1200]

Back to the drawing board:

http://www.transrail....nloads/Eurotrains.pdf

[anotheoldgit]

Blimey rov do you expect us to plough through 35 pages of that?

What is your point?

[vulcan]

On page 11 of the link it states.
"The capacity of each trainset should be essentially less than the required peak performances of the service".
Does this suggest Hornby didn't design the system properly ?.

[Ankou]

extremely cold weather caused massive condensation around the train's batteries as they entered the warmer tunnel, leading to a short circuit and loss of power.

why should anyone face the sack ?

[mushroom25]

///why should anyone face the sack?///
to have one train fail in that manner, you might excuse as a one-off. to have two fail in that manner might have set the alarm bells ringing. yet eurostar permitted another three trains to enter the tunnel, making five in all, before they decided that perhaps they'd got a problem.
the resultant eurostar jam blocked the tunnel, and probably cost operator eurotunnel thouands, if not millions.
that's why somebody's head should roll.

[Ankou]

the design engineers then ?

[mushroom25]

no, the line controllers who clearly weren't concentrating on the developing situation.

[Ankou]

so, not the train managers who didn't carry out the proper evacuation procedure then ?

[mushroom25]

the train managers would have been guided by instructions from their controllers. if they are told that "a rescue train is coming", then the safest thing to do with the passengers is keep them on the train. the fact that no rescue train then turns up is hardly the train manager's fault.

[Ankou]

the train manager could have turned the heating down to stop people dehydrating and passing out.

[mushroom25]

umm, no he couldn't, there was no power. the heat came from the ambient temperature in the tunnel, which was 22-25 deg.C,

[Ankou]

lol, night night

[jno]

they laid on a special train to try to get passengers to their destinations, but it's got stuck too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8422978.stm

I can't see what else Eurostar is supposed to do. They tried cancelling trains but that just means passengers refusing to leave the platform until they're taken where they want to go.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8422305.stm

They seem to think trains somehow operate outside the laws of physics, and will just take them on demand wherever they want to go, no matter what the weather.

[New Judge]

The Eurostar trains may well be unable to operate outside the laws of Physics. However, very cold weather in northern France (and indeed the UK) is not unusual at this time of year. It has occurred on and off for as long as I can remember (which is a long time) and has nothing to do with climate change, whether natural or man-made. Similarly not unusual is the problem of large temperature changes occurring as trains enter (comparatively) warm tunnels.

The Italians and in particular the Swiss have been operating trans-Alpine train services for a few more years than Eurostar has been operating under the Channel. I think the temperatures outside the Alpine tunnels are probably lower and the snow levels higher than those this weekend around Folkestone and Calais. Despite this I do not recall any wholesale train failures occurring in Alpine areas because of these reasons.

One or two things spring to mind:

When designing their trains Eurostar may have adopted the approach that local authorities and railway companies in England do when planning for cold weather. (i.e. it does not happen often enough for us to spend any significant money on it, so we’ll just let the poor sods get on with it for a few days – as they did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that).

Or, they may have taken more seriously than I did the advice given to people in southern England a few years ago. This suggested they should redesign their gardens with arid conditions in mind by planting various breeds of cactus, and move towards plants such as grapes and bougainvillea which are more suited to the sub-tropical climate which we are, without doubt, about to enjoy.

[jno]

yes, cold weather has happened before, New Judge. The thing is, the Eurostar trains seem to have operated in it before too, without encountering this sort of trouble. Consequently, the company would not have thought it worth making special preparation for. (After all, the weather has been nippy, but it was much worse a year ago.) They don't know what the problem was. They're investigating. If you wish to forward to them your insight - 'it gets cold in winter' - go ahead; they may slap their foreheads with their hands and shriek 'Of COURSE!! Why didn't we think of that?' Or they may not.

[New Judge]

Apparently the snow that fell was too "fluffy".

"The wrong kind of snow" was an excuse trotted out by the managers of railways in southern England about 20-odd years ago.

We live and learn - or not, as the case may be.