About 600 passengers were trapped for hours on Tuesday evening in the Thalys in Paris, while the French capital experienced a sweltering day and the air conditioning on the train failed again and again. Several passengers smashed windows of the train in search of fresh air. After about three hours, the travelers were evacuated at Gare du Nord station around 11 p.m. Some were able to spend the night there in a sleeper train, others found shelter in Paris themselves or traveled to their destination on their own, for example with a Flixbus.
At the beginning of the evening, shortly after departure, the train came to a halt at Saint-Denis station. The travelers were told that there was not enough pressure in the train’s battery to continue driving due to the heat, says Femke Hameetman who was on board. The Thalys today mentions “material problems” that are under further investigation.
The passengers were urged by the chief conductor to unplug chargers and keep interior doors closed to increase pressure, Hameetman said. When that didn’t work, the conductors tried to clear the track next to the train, so that people could get off. They failed to do so, so the doors had to remain closed for safety reasons.
Also read: Extreme temperatures in Europe: from code orange to heat apocalypse
Water bottle through smashed windows
Hameetman tried to keep his head cool in the train with a water spray, while male fellow travelers around her bare their torso and other travelers panicked or became unwell. Also, “six to eight” water bottles, which were thrown into the train from the platform, went around in the compartment. Once back at Gar du Nord, “there was really nothing,” says Hameetman, who criticized the company’s communications and spent the night with colleagues she had visited earlier in the day.
A Thalys spokesperson said the company is making “apologies” to all passengers of the jammed train and saying they will make 250 percent of the purchase price of their tickets available in e-vouchers. On Wednesday morning, most stranded passengers left for their destination on a new train. Hameetman arrived in Amsterdam early in the afternoon on Wednesday.
Images of Femke Hameetman from the stranded train:
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