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Science & Technology
Eurostar trainservice (Chunnel) suspended indefinitely
2009-12-21
LONDON — The only passenger rail link between Britain and the rest of Europe has been shut down indefinitely, Eurostar said Sunday, promising more travel misery for thousands of stranded passengers just before Christmas.

Services have been suspended since late Friday, when a series of glitches stranded five trains inside the Channel Tunnel and trapped more than 2,000 passengers for hours in stuffy and claustrophobic conditions. More than 55,000 passengers overall have been affected. Eurostar commercial director Nick Mercer said three test trains sent through the Channel Tunnel on Sunday ran successfully, but that it became clear that the especially bad weather meant that snow was being sucked into the trains in a way "that has never happened before."
this sounds screwy- I don't see how ventilation systems can 'suck snow into a train' unless they are designed to do this
"The engineers on board have recommended strongly that, in light of further snowfalls that are happening tonight, we make some modifications to the trains on snow shields to stop snow being ingested into the power car," he told the BBC.
Ok — indefinitely means until the weather clears. Not at all the same as no more trains forever.
Posted by:lord garth

#11  I'm of the opinion that the key reason the Challengers and the cab forwards ( lovely little things) worked in tunnels and the Eurostar doesn't is really simple: The steam locomotives didn't have Lucas ( Prince of Darkness) aboard.
Posted by: USN, Ret.   2009-12-21 21:51  

#10  Boy if the EU/UN/EIEIO could just take over the booze and smokes sales they would make a fortune. Not to worry won't be long now.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge    2009-12-21 17:07  

#9  I got 4 litres of Smirnoff vodka for 20 quid flying to Switzerland.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2009-12-21 16:12  

#8  It sucks when global warming affects the train service. Where are the Brits going to get cheap booze and smokes?
Posted by: Cyber Sarge    2009-12-21 15:41  

#7  Here is another alternative locomotive design. The Southern Pacific 4-8-8-2 cab forward was designed for heavy snows, tunnels, and snow sheds. The only problem for the Chunnel would be ventilation, which will take a bit of doing. However train bums need to stay off the monkey deck behind the exhaust. Mud and steam cooked the uneducated.

SP cab forward
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2009-12-21 11:29  

#6  That Challenger is lovely, Besoker, but I think ventilation issues would preclude its use in the Chunnel.
Posted by: Mike   2009-12-21 11:27  

#5  Very strange. The A3985 never experienced this type of difficulty.
Posted by: Besoeker   2009-12-21 08:18  

#4  Not the first time. In the mid-50s, there was a snowstorm with finer-than-normal snowflakes that got sucked through the cooling intakes on the Pennsylvania Railroad's GG-1 electric locomotives in a way that hadn't been anticipated and shorted out some of the systems. They had to redesign the louvers to get the engines back in service.
Posted by: Mike   2009-12-21 06:40  

#3  So, how being "post-industrial" works out for you chaps?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2009-12-21 02:56  

#2  Alternative theory:
in the face of global warming operation in snow/ice conditions was not factored into the engineering spec. comments about snow being sucked into train could mean that snow was accumulation amongst the electrical components, then melting and causing shutdown.

just ban AlGore from the continent, and forgo any additional climate change conferences and all should be ok
Posted by: abu do you love   2009-12-21 01:03  

#1  in depth from SeriousTopics - a City of London based chat (No comments by me here):

RE: The Eurostar debacle.

Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown said the trains failed as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer air inside the tunnel.


This is a quote that appears in much of the UK Press, and yet reader response is generally hysterical and scapegoating. Other than the pathetic staff response, Eurostar probably aren't to blame, at least not directly. It appears to be an engineering problem.
The Class 373 (UK designation)

When built, all train sets were tri-voltage being able to operate on 25 kV, 50 Hz AC (LGVs, Eurotunnel, High Speed 1, UK overhead electrified lines) and 3 kV DC (Belgian classic lines) using pantographs and 750 V DC (UK third rail network) using third-rail pickup shoes. The shoes were retracted when operating from overhead power, and prototypes were used for testing.[25] After the opening of High Speed 1, overhead electricity is available throughout the core network between London and Paris / Brussels and the third rail shoes became redundant and were removed. The railway links to the new London-based depot facilities at Temple Mills and to the East Coast Main Line and West-Coast Main Line are 25 kV overhead. Five of the SNCF-owned sets are quadri-voltage, being able to operate from 1500 V DC (French lignes classiques) in the south of France; these sets are used for London–Avignon and ski services.

British-designed asynchronous traction motors are used. There are four powered axles in each power car and one additional bogie in the adjacent passenger carriage. This layout was also used on the original SNCF TGV Sud-Est (PSE) sets. The six powered bogies therefore contain a total of twelve powered axles to haul the rake of eighteen carriages. Drawing up to 12 MW of power, the train has the lowest power-to-weight ratio of any train in the TGV family—a SNCF TGV Réseau set has eight powered axles, but is only required to haul eight passenger carriages.

The train design is able to cope with five different standards of overhead catenary: domestic catenary in each of Belgium, France and the United Kingdom; fixed-height catenary for the LGV lines and the taller catenary used within the Channel Tunnel. The Eurotunnel catenary is much higher as the tunnel is designed to accommodate the double-deck car-carrying trains and roll-on roll-off heavy goods vehicle trains. The train driver is required to lower and then raise the pantograph during the change from each catenary system.[...]


British Rail Class 373

My immediate suspected cause? Temperature inversion tripping temperature sensors. Solid State is infamous for a condition called "thermal runaway". Devices or mechanisms with this much power inversion (AC>DC>AC, different voltages, different reconstitutions, in some cases unfiltered DC>AC>DC>AC) is rife with temperature sensors. The multitude of devices would be very favourably cool due to atmospheric conditions, and then, into a warm tunnel? What the sensors are registering into a ;ogic circuit, is the device suddenly overheating. It is instructed to shut-down.

There should be manual over-rides...but...???

It is very preliminary to jump to any conclusions, but obviously the design was not tested for these conditions...and it was madness to keep sending units into the tunnel when two had already failed with exactly the same symptoms.

I'd start looking at the locos, most likely in the power inverters. It might even be as simple a fix as the software, but most likely, it is a hardware device sensitivty and threshold setting. (That may be addressable in the software).

Just a hunch....

I suspect there will be an engineering fix within the week. Or at least a 'patch'. What must be eliminated (and UK third rail has already) is the multiplicity of standards of current supply. What is glaring in this case is that the TGVs have not displayed this problem, and yet the 373s have. The difference? Multiple current supply types

Edit: There might also be a complicating factor of current source. As the 373 transits various isolated supply sections, there might be spikes in the line that exacerbate the sensors incorrectly detecting faults. If that is the case, it will take a lot longer to get a perma-fix. A patch might be possible in short order, but massive re-engineering might also be required.

The US North-East corridor ran into similar problems with the DC lines approaching Boston. I'll Google before writing any more on that. The locos were Montreal built based on TGVs! (This was a horror-story of it's own, requring a sports-car to be built like a truck, due to US federal safety standards being applied to what was a springter by nature. By the time they were finished meeting safety specs, the locos weighed twice their design spec! That caused brake problems, which caused...which caused....which caused being sued...and so-on.

Let's step back until we get some engineering answers.
Posted by: 3dc   2009-12-21 00:27  

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