By Paul Harris
Last updated at 11:20 AM on 21st December 2010
- Thousands still stuck at the station with no way to get to the Continent
- Eurostar chiefs say 'Stay away unless you have a booking'
- Red Cross hands out blankets to keep passengers warm
- No compensation, just ticket refunds or exchanges
Thousands of desperate Eurostar passengers were today still waiting in enormous queues at London's St Pancras station after being forced to spend the night in the freezing cold.
As Britain shivered in the grimmest conditions for decades, the mother of all queues formed outside St Pancras station yesterday, with 6,000 passengers waiting to board trains.
Eurostar bosses eventually told people to go home and return at 3am this morning, but hundreds had nowhere to go and spent the night shivering outside the station, under blankets handed out by the Red Cross.
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Groundhog day: Queues persist at King's Cross St Pancras again today where Eurostar bosses are operating a first come, first served policy for passengers
No compensation: Those caught up in the chaos will only be able to receive refunds for tickets or exchange them
Today rail bosses were struggling to cope with a huge demand for tickets and warned anyone without a booking not to travel to the station, while saying that booking times no longer applied and a first come, first to travel policy was being operated.
Today, 2,000 people queued as Eurostar insisted that up to 80 per cent of its services would run at a reduced speed imposed for safety reasons.
Leigh Calder, Eurostar spokesman, said: 'We are not issuing compensation because this situation is weather-related. This is a situation that is out of our control.
'Refunds or re-bookings will be issued to anyone who has decided not to travel this week.
'We are effectively operating a first come, first served system because the alternative would have been too chaotic.
'We do have long queues again at St Pancras and we are advising customers not to arrive too early but unfortunately they are, which is simply human nature.'
Misery at St Pancras: Dhamos Lefhrncoes and Gerome Devliejar of Lillie, France, arrived at the station at 12.30am and settled down for the night under blankets handed out by the Red Cross
As night fell and the snow returned, thousands of passengers were left queuing in the cold outside St Pancras Station
Mr Calder said between 25,000 and 30,000 people travelled yesterday and that Eurostar had fed anyone who remained in the queue after 6pm.
He said hot drinks would be available today but added that anyone without a ticket would not travel before Christmas.
Yesterday, as the queue took thousands past the British Library and back up towards Euston for more than half a mile, you couldn’t really blame anyone for wondering if things might have been handled a little better.
Especially when they had up to eight hours to stand and think about it before the first hint of actually catching a train to France or Belgium looked like becoming reality.
Luckily those helpful chaps from Eurostar were on hand to offer information and advice to the desperate, cheated, increasingly angry people stuck in this, the mother of all queues.
Frustration: Rail passengers queue in the cold for Eurostar trains outside St Pancras Station in London
Desperate: Passengers queue by the British Library, hundreds of yards away from the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International station
‘Everyone back off and get back,’ a yellow-jacketed official screamed at a near-hysterical group of ticket-holders.
FAMILIES CHARTER COACH TO GET OUT OF FROZEN BRITAIN
Four French families with young children spent £2,800 chartering a coach to take them back to Paris via a ferry after being confronted with the giant queues at St Pancras.
Dr Patrick Simon, 41, was left angered by a lack of information or help at the Eurostar terminal yesterday.
So his group of 18 - including nine young children - called a coach company to take them home after a weekend visit to London.
The father-of-three said: 'When we tried to catch our train yesterday we were told it was not possible and that reservations no longer counted.
'Whoever arrived there first was allowed on the trains and we could not queue for hours with young children.
'So we went back to the hotel and they helped us find a coach to take us to Dover and then to Paris.
'I had to come back because I must see my patients, there was no other way and it was very expensive.
'The situation in London was very bad.'
Dr Simon said he did not know if he would receive a refund or compensation from Eurostar.
Meanwhile cross-channel ferries were running at with space available this morning.
‘If you’re not in the queue already then go home. You will NOT be travelling today. There are only four or five more trains leaving and they will be filled to capacity. Come back tomorrow.’
This was how Britain tried to get to grips with the effects of a bad weather front that has been forecast for days.
In a masterstroke of disorganisation, the shambles that emerged when snow hit the cross-Channel rail network made the comparatively warm conditions of terminal lounges at Heathrow and Gatwick seem almost attractive.
A combination of factors condemned the assembled masses to going nowhere, or at least to a monstrously long wait.
First there was a virtual white-out in parts of Kent and northern France along the Eurostar route. One official said ice had affected overhead cables in the UK and snow covered the tracks in France.
Passengers who had been unable to travel over the weekend were told they could use their tickets yesterday, creating an instant backlog.
Hundreds more are believed to have given up on their enforced airport vigils and arrived to try their luck by rail.
Then, the Eurostar website invited passengers with bookings to arrive an hour before their scheduled departure – but failed to disclose that when they got there, places were actually being allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Hemmed in: A passenger reacts as he stands surrounded by luggage, near the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International in London
Round the bend: Massive lines formed outside and inside King's Cross St Pancras Station as severe winter conditions adversely affect travel conditions in the UK
Too many people: Police were forced to step in when the terminal filled to almost-dangerous levels
It meant that backlogged travellers from the weekend – or passengers who bought a last-minute ticket because of flight cancellations – were allowed to travel ahead of those who booked even months in advance, provided they were at the station first.
The rule was applied universally across all classes of ticket. That was why would-be travellers queueing in temperatures of -4C found themselves stranded in the street with little prospect of fulfilling their Christmas getaway plans – and precious little chance of finding out what was going on.
Furious passengers clashed with Eurostar staff after being told the massive queue for checking in had been suspended. Anyone trying to join it after midday was told they were probably wasting their time. 
Frozen out: Would-be passenger Daryl Jackson vents his fury on police officers after being told he would not be able to travel yesterday
And any escapees from the airports who turned up in the hope of buying a ticket were out of luck. None was being sold yesterday – and even some of those who had tickets would eventually be destined to spend another night in the capital.
Never have so many queued for so few trains in such appalling conditions. In roads outside the station they stamped their feet against the cold on slush-covered pavements and huddled together for warmth.
Emergency staff were drafted in to offer hot drinks to people in the queue, while others helped Eurostar staff check for young children in difficulty or for the elderly in danger of hypothermia.
Elsewhere, customers were outraged at what they described as the ‘aggressive’ and ‘cowardly’ attitude of station staff.
Angry exchanges broke out as desperate families and unscrupulous chancers tried to break into the queue.
Others confronted Eurostar officials and demanded explanations. Meanwhile the Great Queue of St Pancras continued to grow.
A mystified Chantal Vandeberg, 41, a nurse from Geleen in Holland, said: ‘It’s snowing like this where we’re from and the trains are running normally. There’s no panic. I’ve been told that this kind of weather is unusual for Britain but it’s just a bit of snow.’
Ice-rink drivers' outrage over grit rationing
By Colin Fernandez, Tom Kelly and Luke Salkeld
Ice wreaked chaos on the roads yesterday as it was admitted that the grit supply is rapidly dwindling.
‘Rationing’ of grit by councils in many areas outraged motorists who have seen roads turned into ice rinks.
Now councils are already being forced to resort to plundering an emergency grit stockpile created after the fiasco last year when supplies came close to exhaustion.
M5 chaos: Two lanes operating, but some stretches were reduced to only one
With the big freeze continuing, however, any grit which is put down might be wasted because it becomes useless at below -10c.
In parts of the country only the most vital routes – known as ‘the resilience network’ – linking hospitals, bus garages and railway stations are being gritted to conserve salt stocks.
The strategic stockpile – administered by the Highways Agency, which has a fleet of 500 gritting lorries – was set up to provide an imported alternative grit supply as Britain’s two salt mines, in Cheshire and Cleveland are both unable to deliver as much grit as councils are demanding.
Transport Minister Philip Hammond told the House of Commons that 30,000 tons from the national stockpile was on its way to hard-hit regions from today and a further 250,000 tons is being imported to replenish stocks.
A spokesman for the Highways Agency said: ‘Everything that can be done is being done in extremely difficult weather conditions to keep the road network open. Continuous salt treatment and snow ploughing is in progress.’
The assurances will provide little comfort to motorists who saw motorways and A-routes paralysed yesterday. Motorists on the M5 in Somerset and Devon endured atrocious conditions as some stretches of the motorway were reduced to just one slippery lane in each direction.
Parts of the A30 and A38 were closed completely in road chaos which practically cut off the South West peninsula from the rest of the country.
In Exeter, desperate drivers were forced to turn round and drive the wrong way down a dual carriageway to escape the blizzard.
HEATING CRISIS DEEPENS
Schools, hospitals and village halls which rely on gas oil for fuel could be left without heating, industry experts warn.
If temperatures stay very low for several days and it reaches -12C inside storage tanks, then the fuel will begin to turn to wax and clog up filters.
Users are advised to wrap blankets or loft insulation around their tanks.
Some 800,000 homes use heating oil but most should not be affected by the cold weather because they use kerosene which has a freezing point of -20C (-4F).
There were also severe delays due to heavy snow on the M4 in South Wales and west of London, the M5 near Bristol and in Gloucestershire, on the M40 in Warwickshire, and on the M58 in Merseyside.
In Gloucestershire a county council spokesman said the extreme low temperatures had rendered gritting useless. ‘When temperatures plummet below -7, grit become less effective. Below -10, grit has no effect at all. The council already has fleets out around the county, but with temperatures likely to fall to below -7 again, ice is likely to remain on the roads.’
Accidents also led to large tailbacks on the M6 in Lancashire, the M1 in Leicestershire, the M40 in Oxfordshire and more snow was expected in the South.
Meanwhile Dorset County Council said that ‘the wrong kind of snow’ had rendered gritting useless on some of its road network. Alan Muncaster, the county’s engineer said: ‘The problem was the snow was quite wet and I know there are often jokes about the wrong kind of snow but with that amount of water it washes the treatment away.
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