HUNDREDS of Britons were facing a second day trapped in France last night after Eurostar powerlines near Calais were short-circuited by saltwater spray blown onshore by storms.

Many thousands of passengers, including families on half-term holiday, had to spend Monday night on trains in Paris or on station forecourts after the rail network was closed down. One Euro-star train with 650 British passengers was trapped outside Disneyland Paris for almost 17 hours.

With all Eurostar trains cancelled for more than 24 hours, about 7,000 passengers were stranded in France on Monday night, and only some were given hotel rooms. The rest slept in empty carriages or cardboard boxes at stations.

Although the Shuttle carrying cars and lorries was reopened last night, officials at the SNCF state railway network said that the Eurostar would resume service at midday today at the earliest. They said that with 21 Eurostars a day, and 762 passengers on each train, it would take days to clear the backlog.

Although most of the 7,000 passengers trapped on Monday were taken to ferries or airports and travelled back to Britain yesterday, many more arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris, only to be told to go away again.

“We are advising people to put off their journeys or find their own way home,” an SNCF official at the station said. As a result, thousands of Britons were stranded in France again last night.

The 650 British passengers trapped on the Disneyland Eurostar flew out of Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, yesterday. They said they had been given little information and had had to spend a highly uncomfortable night on the crowded train.

Vicky Castle, from Canterbury, said: “At first we thought we would be able to leave at about 11pm, but in the end they told us that the tunnel was blocked and that we would have to stay here.

“It was a horrible night, a lot of children were crying, everyone was cold and hungry and no one could tell us when we would be going home.”

The SNCF said it had provided food and drink for all those who had been trapped, but passengers said they had been given no more than a snack. Nick Nusson, from Oxford, said: “We had to sleep on the ground like dogs, with only a salad to eat all evening.”

Almost 2,000 passengers, mostly British, were caught at the Gare du Nord, where three Eurostars were stranded. Some were put up in hotels by the SNCF, but many spent the night on trains.

Helen Doyle, from Hemel Hempstead, said she had tried to sleep on a seat in a Eurostar carriage at the station. “But it was incredibly uncomfortable. There were too many lights in the train, too many lights outside in the station and too much noise. I guess we got two or three hours’ sleep at most. But some people were even worse off than I was. They tried to sleep in the station on cardboard boxes that they had flattened, like tramps.”

She, too, complained of a lack of information from the SNCF. “They haven’t been telling us anything and they’ve been treating us like second-class citizens. We have all paid good money for these tickets, but we’ve been treated badly in return.”

About 1,200 passengers were trapped on Monday night in trains between Lille and Calais. The SNCF said all but 100 of them were either put up in hotels or taken by bus or diesel trains to the ferry port in Calais.

At least 1,000 were stranded in Brussels for the night, before being taken to Ostend for a ferry back to Britain.

For a state network that prides itself on having one of the world’s most efficient railway systems, it was a humiliation for the SNCF. Guillaume Pepy, the customer relations manager, blamed freak weather. He said strong winds during Sunday’s storm had deposited large amounts of sea salt on high-voltage insulators on overhead power cables along 100km (62 miles) of line between Calais and Lille. As the salt became damp during the night, the insulators turned into conductors, wreaking havoc with the electrical system.

A train designed to clean the overhead lines was sent to the area on Monday, but twice failed to get the system working. In the end SNCF employees, helped by firemen, were sent out to clean off the salt by hand. “It is the first time in 12 years (since the Eurostar line began) that we have had such a quantity of salt on the overhead lines,” M Pepy said.

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