Word: london
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Singing "White Christmas" is fine if you're Bing Crosby or you're safely ensconced in front of a fire in a mountain hideaway somewhere. But hum a few bars of the song at the Eurostar terminals in Paris and London these days and you may get dirty looks. As difficult as it is to believe, snow is what apparently caused the breakdown of the Eurostar train network over the weekend that left service indefinitely suspended - and an ever-growing number of people stranded, their holiday plans in disarray...
...trouble began Friday evening when five locomotives abruptly stopped on the tracks in the Channel Tunnel between London and Paris, trapping more than 2,000 passengers with no food, water or news about what was going on for up to 16 hours. Those people eventually made it out of the tunnel -but nobody else has boarded a Eurostar train between the cities, or to Brussels, since then. Service is due to restart on Tuesday, provided officials can ensure that the trains won't break down in the tunnel again. (See pictures of snow crippling London...
...estimated 55,000 passengers have been left high and dry in Paris and London since the trains stopped running Friday night, with still more marooned in Brussels. That's a lot of people to move during the holiday travel season when seats on trains, planes, buses and ferries are already difficult to come by. The problem will only get worse if service remains suspended this week, stranding even more of Eurostar's 24,000 daily users. The company says it will reimburse customers for their unused tickets and other "reasonable expenses" incurred, but it won't be able to transport...
...Newspapers in Britain and France are filled with photos of infuriated customers being turned away at the Eurostar counters in London and Paris, some of whom were forced to spend at least one night camped out on the floor. In many cases, travelers have been angrier at the lack of information being provided by Eurostar than at the damage the situation has done to their holiday plans. And these are the lucky ones. Many of the more than 2,000 people who were trapped for hours in the dark Channel Tunnel on Friday night complained that virtually nothing had been...
...Airways threatened to leave up to 1 million passengers stranded during the entire holiday season - until a judge blocked the industrial action. "Had this been a terrible crash or something, it might be different. But once tempers cool, people will use whatever service is most convenient - and for Paris-London, that's Eurostar," Gill says. (Read: "Brits Get Some Holiday Cheer: No British Air Strike...