Rail traffic continues to be disrupted at one of Paris’s main railway stations on Tuesday, straining holidaymakers’ patience. However, authorities say they have now finally identified the source of the problem, reports FRANCE 24.
France’s national rail provider SNCF says that three-quarters of its high-speed TGV trains to and from Paris’s Montparnasse station would, on average, run on Tuesday. Some trains usually scheduled to depart from Paris-Montparnasse will instead be re-routed to the city’s Paris-Austerlitz station further east, it said.
On Sunday, would-be passengers at the French capital’s Montparnasse station found all trains heading for popular holiday destinations such as Brittany and destinations in southwest France had been cancelled.
Huge crowds of frustrated travellers were left without information for hours on Sunday as information screens went blank at the key train station.
The SNCF initially announced that there would be a gradual return to normal service on Monday, but disruptions continued as the rail company struggled to find the cause of the electrical failure.
Early Tuesday morning, after closing Paris-Montparnasse station between 10pm and 6am and mobilising 50-odd technicians to investigate, the SNCF announced that it had finally pinpointed the source of the problem, tweeting that it was due to “defective insulation on an electrical installation”.
The rail company said repairs began overnight Monday and into Tuesday morning and would have to continue overnight Tuesday.