As ever its not knowing thats the problem. Tell me i've got to wait 12 hours, I can cope. Just leve me wondering and by hour 11, I'll be ready to murder someone...

I wonder how much you can carry? My guess is that the Chunnel is secured to more-or-less a commercial aircraft standard. If that's the case, even water would need to be purchased/filled on the secure side. No multitools either (agh!).

Anybody have direct info about this?

[P.S., I'm just tacking onto the tail end of the thread. Mods, can we create a universal codeword/acronym for this?]

prohibited items

http://www.eurostar.com/UK/be/leisure/travel_information/before_you_go/prohibited_items.jsp

This is a strong argument for a keychain-sized multitool (I'm partial to the Leatherman Squirt P4). It's not as good as a full-size multi, but it's way better than nothing.

Doug, thought about that when I posted. Browsed through the link provided by Xterior and found this wonderfully vague statement under prohibited items:

"Any other item made, adapted or intended for use as an offensive weapon."

Open to very broad interpretation, no doubt intentional. Maybe that keychain multitool would end up getting confiscated. So would my ever-present SAK I'm sure. Wonder what the policy is on liquids in containers and such? Nothing on the list but I would guess it is frowned upon, especially if you can buy water, food, etc while on the train.

Was also glad to see, for the stranded passengers sake, that there were indeed bathroom facilities on board.

I bought a swiss-tech 8in1 micro tool for traveling when my squirt P4 would not be allowed. Problem is, its very heavy for just some micro pliers, philips and flat head screw driver, so I don't really carry it. Hard to see how a squirt P4 could be used as a weapon, but thats for another discussion.

"Hard to see how a squirt P4 could be used as a weapon..."

Make a sling of your handkerchief and whack someone in the nose with it?

Sue

They managed to eventually tow the trains out with diesel engines. I imagine they could do that still to continue service.

Diesel engines...

I would imagine that all the diesel exhaust confined to the tunnel was the reason that they use electric engines.

Of course, all the carbon monoxide from the engine fumes might make the passengers quieter than the last batch...

Sue

And speed, the trains do 186mph it's difficult to make a diesel that powerfull.

After the melting snow that caused the fault the screw up was the usual management SNAFU.
The tunnel, the track on the English side, track on the French side, the trains, and the signalling are all owned and operated by separate companies.

So the first train got stuck nobody told the French operator to stop sending the other 5 trains in - the signalling system can handle 50 trains in the tunnel at once.

Then the first train operator leased a diesel from another company to tow the first train, but instead of just pulling it out of the tunnel into the station they towed it to London (it's final destination) - unfortunately that took 4hours before it could get back for the next train ....

Back when the railways were an inefficent nationalized dinosaur it would have been easy - but now that everybody working there is in competition with everyone else it's chaos as soon as anything out of the ordinary happens.