Eurotunnel problems 27 July

[Taunton]

I find the stories of air con problems rather unlikely

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-44977934

Eurotunnel earlier warned of delays of about two-and-a-half hours at its terminal near Folkestone in Kent.

It took the "unprecedented decision" to stop passengers travelling on Friday if returning that day or Saturday.

It comes after reported delays on Thursday of more than five hours in 30C heat, caused by air conditioning problems on Eurotunnel's trains.

"We are not in control of the weather," a spokesman told the BBC.

"The prolonged and unprecedented temperatures in the south east of England are affecting the air conditioning on board our shuttles," he said.

I can't believe that temperatures at the terminals in the low 30s (86F to 93F0 are outside the specification for the trains for the time they are there rather than in the tunnel. Many passenger trips seem to have been arbitrarily cancelled.

 

[AlexNL]

If I understand it correctly, the problem is with the air conditioning on board the Eurotunnel trains. The Le Shuttle trains are 775 metre long stainless steel tubes - they will absorb a lot of the sun's energy and will heat up quickly. For the past couple of days the sun has been shining pretty hard on them so their air con systems have to work quite hard to keep the trains cool on the inside.

Under normal circumstances, the aircon units would have to work hard during tunnel traversal* but could relax a bit once they're outside the tunnel as it's much cooler.

*Inside the channel tunnel, temperatures may be up to 30 degrees.

 

[EAD]

The issue is much more likely to be the aircon working hard all the time and facing the harsh tunnel environment which is hot and humid too (when it is not summer it is much warmer down there than ambient temperatures outside the tunnel) after also working hard while loading/unloading. I do not know what the current tunnel temperatures are, but they could be surprisingly high given the natural warmth and heat generation by the trains including from hard working aircon at present.

 

[EC73LDN]

Also bear in mind that the heat given off by transported vehicles adds significantly to the ambient air heat that has to be removed by the air con in the carriages.

At this time of year (school summer holidays) you'll have more people doing longer journeys on the roads to get to the tunnel with fully loaded cars (compared to winter with more day trippers and weekend away vehicles lightly loaded), and in the hot sun they will have picked up more heat in the bodies and the engine bay. Added to that any of the cooling effect of the air at motorway speeds is lost when a car has to sit in direct sunlight for a couple of hours with the engine on, creeping forward to the loading area.

In addition there's a trend for more powerful and larger cars to be heading over because of the SUV boom, which doesn't help - when I started crossing 20 years ago you had mainly saloons and hatchbacks with some Scenic style people carriers and 4x4s, and now the proportions are reversed. Having a very quick scan of Autocar stats engine power in the average 1994 family car (e.g Golf size) was typically 80-120 bhp, and now it's 110-150 bhp and with many more vehicles at the high end of the power range adding more heat.

None of this excuses what has happened though, and Eurotunnel will need to look carefully at their maintenance records and the specification of the air con to see the exact causes of the failures, and if necessary improve the equipment in time for next summer. Also they need a massive improvement in the real-time information they give to passengers before and during their crossing.