Eurostar trains resume, snow slows Europe travel

By Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters) - Cross-Channel Eurostar trains resumed running between London and continental Europe on Tuesday, starting to move thousands of passengers left stranded by train breakdowns just before Christmas.

However, severe winter weather caused chaos at airports across Europe with flights delayed or canceled in Italy and Germany. Snow and ice caused problems on railways and roads. Forecasters predicted more snow and ice in the next 24 hours.

Eurostar trains had been halted since the weekend when 2,500 people were trapped for up to 16 hours in the undersea Channel Tunnel with no power, air conditioning, food or water -- bringing a storm of anger down on the company.

A limited service resumed on Tuesday when a Eurostar train left London's St Pancras International station at 7:41 a.m. (0741 GMT) heading for Paris. An earlier train had set off in the other direction from Gare du Nord station in Paris with about 1,000 passengers still queuing for later trains.

Some among about 500 people queuing at St Pancras on Tuesday morning shouted at Eurostar staff, complaining about a lack of information.

Eurostar, owned by the French and Belgian state railway firms and by the British government, has given priority to passengers with tickets from previous days and said it was clearing the backlog quicker than expected.

Eurostar Chief Executive Richard Brown said that services would not be back to normal until after Christmas, adding that a lot of passengers had found alternative ways of crossing the Channel despite the bad weather.

He said passengers with tickets for Wednesday and Thursday could come to stations although there was no guarantee they would be able to get on to trains.