Passengers stranded overnight on Eurostar overnight

Sea salt blown on to overhead power lines by the weekend storms forced more than 600 passengers to sleep on a Eurostar train on Monday night. Hundreds of other passengers were delayed for 24 hours.

The Eurostar train never left Chessy, its departure station at the Disneyland resort east of the French capital on Monday evening. After 19 hours in the train, the passengers were taken to Charles de Gaulle airport and flown to London yesterday afternoon.

Six other Eurostar trains were halted en route on Monday evening and all of yesterday's services were cancelled because the salt blown ashore by Sunday's storm had short-circuited the overhead wires near the Channel Tunnel entrance at Calais. More than 1,000 passengers on trains to London stranded near Calais and Lille were taken across the Channel by ferry after spending the night in hotels.

Jane Baker, 46, from Kent, who was returning to Britain on the 17.40pm Eurostar after a weekend in Paris, said: "We were stopped in open country for three hours without an adequate explanation of what was happening. We finally reached Lille at 10.30pm, with everyone starving and children crying. Frankly, the Eurostar staff did not seem to know what was going on or what to do."

French railways officials said the power lines had been coated with freezing salt. When the salt began to melt on Monday evening, it caused scores of short circuits on the high-speed line in the Calais area. Services are expected to return to normal today.