Eurostar Power Outage Leaves Thousands Facing 'Hellish' Scenes

Thousands of passengers were stranded on both sides of the English Channel Monday, after sagging power lines caused severe delays to Eurostar train services.

Passengers described hellish scenes at Paris' Gare Du Nord with some stuck on trains or waiting in stations for over nine hours.

The problem meant Eurostar had to cancel four of its services Tuesday, including services from London to Paris and Brussels.

The trouble started when trains got stuck between Lille and Paris on Monday.

While some were able to limp to their destinations on slower rail lines, several remained stuck and had to be towed back to the station.

Passengers were reporting journey times of up to eight hours for what should be a two and a half hour trip.

We had no announcements about why the train was so delayed or why it kept stopping, Therese Kelly, who was stuck for eight hours, told the BBC News. The train didn't move for hours. The whole train journey was brutal, totally brutal.

Phil Piercey told the BBC it had taken him 11 hours to get from Paris to London, ruining his holiday.

There was absolute chaos at Gare du Nord and there was no information about possible delays, he said. Eurostar staff were extremely unhelpful.

After an hour waiting at the station we were told our original train back to the UK had been cancelled due to hazardous high speed rail conditions.

After the long delay and a mad scramble, he eventually managed to catch the next train.

Sadly this train also stopped, and had to be dragged back to Gare du Nord.

We had no internal lighting, heating or communication from the staff on board, he said. We were then told we had the choice of disembarking and returning to Paris or going on to St Pancras via Lille.

Eurostar said Tuesday services were returning to normal after the backlog of passengers from Monday had been cleared.