Eurotunnel, which operates the Channel Tunnel and freight trains that carry trucks and other vehicles under the channel, said the tunnel itself wasn’t blocked.
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Passengers on one of the London-bound trains, which stopped less than a mile (1.6 km) from the tunnel, were told at one point to be very quiet and listen for the sound of people climbing on the roof.
Police patrols Eurostar said not more than 750 passengers – the maximum capacity of its 18-car trains – were stranded in the station.
At its peak the number of attempts to board lorries or trains was about 2,000 a night but that has since fallen.
“We understand there are people on the roof of the train, ‘” said the 48-year-old Gentry, who had been in Paris on business.
“We’ve been abandoned on a platform somewhere in the cold with NO INFORMATION”, wrote one of the passengers, Danny Bell, after passengers were allowed to disembark one of the trains at Calais station some hours later. At the time, the United Kingdom advised travelers to lock auto doors in slow-moving traffic leaving Calais because of large numbers of undocumented migrants who may seek to enter the United Kingdom.
French police arrived after 30 minutes and a helicopter was dispatched to scan the roof.
Clothilde, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman who lives in London and was on board the train, said they were stuck next to the tunnel for around four hours on Tuesday.
The NBC report concludes by saying the passengers were “eventually dropped off at the nearby Calais Frethun train station”, without dwelling on how long that took, or how much of the time was spent suffering in the dark.
The disruptions were due to “the presence of intruders on the tracks at the French entrance to the tunnel”, a Eurostar spokeswoman said. They also offered their “sincere apologies” to those affected by the disruptions.
A spokesman said the company had to balance rescuing the passengers with not creating another knock-on effect to its service.
At 5am today, they were told a train was coming from London that would arrive at 8am.
Furious passengers began to share images of themselves trapped in their carriages on social media.
Some 3,000 migrants camped out in the northern French port of Calais have been ramping up their attempts to outfox hopelessly outnumbered security officials and police to reach what they see as the “El Dorado” of Britain.
Jenni Mischel, 39, got up at 5.30am to travel into London from Letchworth for a holiday to Paris.
“We got on that train at 7.13pm last night”. Some even tried to climb on top of the train.
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He said: “It still remains a concern to us, not just Eurostar and Eurotunnel, because there is ample evidence that people are using ports in Belgium and Holland to try to get to Britain“.
