Paris-Bordeaux: thousands of passengers stranded in train after a failure – Le Parisien

May 27, 2016, 9:57 p.m. | Update: May 28, 2016, 0:56

a signaling fault south of Tours was disrupted Friday evening throughout the Paris-Bordeaux line, thousands of remaining passengers stranded for several hours without knowing when their train could leave. Occurred around 18 hours between Tours and Poitiers, a computer failure in the signaling system Monts command post, in Indre-et-Loire, halted all rail traffic between the stations of Paris-Montparnasse and Bordeaux.

For the day Saturday, “all scheduled trains will roll tomorrow, still with residual difficulties”, according to SNCF.

“Seven thousand people were affected. Some 3,500 to 4,000 are still in these trains in circulation, with approximately four hours late, “said the station shortly after midnight, saying that” less than a dozen trains “were still affected by the problems. “The fault is not repaired, the crossing point form a traffic bottleneck,” said a spokesman for the railway company.

The SNCF announced earlier have been deleted two TGV from Paris and one from Bordeaux and 13 others were delayed TGV. A journalist who was to leave for Tours at 7:13 p.m. has left the Montparnasse train station a little after 23:30, the skipper while announcing an arrival to Tours with four and a half hours late.

Passengers several trains to Tours were transferred to another train, where meal trays were distributed.

at midnight last TGV blocked in Poitiers station had left, announced France 3 Poitou-Charentes .

Refunds based on delay

Regarding the canceled trains, “we invited our customers to postpone travel or be refund. Those stranded were supported “, informed SNCF. This indicated that customers would be reimbursed 20% to 100% of the tour price according to the size of the delay.

Gare Montparnasse, queues lengthened as electronic signs giving the list of deleted oars. At least three people reported -one must take the TGV to Bordeaux in their 18H01- that SNCF had first reported that the train had stopped because of the presence of demonstrators in the tunnel of Massy, ​​pending evacuation. It was only after a delay of one hour, according to these people, that SNCF informed them that stopping the TGV was linked to a “referral problem.”

Very many passengers were waiting at the counters they are offered an accommodation for the night. “We were asked to leave the train, and possibly a hosting solution would be we proposed. But saw the tail, maybe the night is going to the station, and we do not know tomorrow what time we can leave, “testified Sylvie, a Bordelaise blocked in the Parisian train station.