SNCF report on "Hell on wheels" delay but not everyone is happy

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet is not a happy bunny - at least not when it comes to France's state-owned railway company, SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer français).

The French minister of transport (among other things) has threatened the company with sanctions and said that she had not been told the whole truth about the reasons behind that infamous 12-hour plus delay on the overnight train from Strasbourg to Nice and Port Bou just after Christmas.

The 4295 night train (screenshot from TF1 news report)

You might remember the so-called "Hell on wheels" trip on December 27 which saw the 600 passengers on board the 4295 night train endure a delay of 12 hours - the same length of time as the journey was supposed to take in the first place.

SNCF apologised (what else could it have done), offered all passengers a full refund and a free return ticket and announced that it would launch an internal inquiry and release a report on what exactly had caused the delay.

It has now published the 13-page "mea culpa", admitting that given the weather conditions and the number of personnel and logistical problems on the night in question, the train should never have left the platform at Strasbourg.

And at the top of a long list of reasons for the delay according to the report, which SNCF helpfully publishes in French on the English-language version of its site (grab a dictionary perhaps if you want to read all the details) is the time it took to find a replacement driver during a stop just 150 kilometres into its journey in the eastern French city of Belfort.

It was "a failure of planning" admits the report, a simple statement that has earned SNCF the wrath of Kosciusko-Morizet or NKM as she's commonly called here in France.

"That's not what I was told at the beginning," the minister for ecology, sustainable development, transport and housing (to give NKM her full title) said in a radio interview on Tuesday.

"When I was given the reason why it took so long for the replacement driver to arrive (he had to travel almost 350 kilometres from Lyon to Belfort) I was told he couldn't get there on time because of the weather."

As far as NKM was concerned she had been lied to (she used stronger words, but there might be children reading) and she was now going to "find out who was responsible for the error in planning and look into whether there would be sanctions to be imposed."

NKM wasn't the only person unhappy with the report.

Not surprisingly perhaps the unions were less than tender with SNCF's explanations with Sud-Rail saying in a statement that "The report is nothing more than hot air."

And a regional branch of the passengers association, Association des Usagers des Chemins de Fer de la Région Ouest (Avuc) has launched a petition "Fed up with SNCF".

So a bad PR end to 2010 for SNCF has hardly been helped by an equally miserable attempt to offer a mea culpa at the beginning of 2011.

Things can only get better - surely

SNCF 4295 - a French train journey (almost) "without end"

Snow and freezing temperatures throughout much of Europe have been taking their toll on those trying to travel and especially those choosing to take to the skies.

Cancelled flights, long delays, unscheduled overnight stays at airport concourses and the inevitable tales of luggage gone astray have been the stuff of headlines.

Rail travel has also been disrupted but, with some exceptions such as Eurostar, not quite to the same extent.

Until this past weekend that is, when passengers on the 4295 night train from Strasbourg to Portbou and Nice took a trip they're unlikely to forget in a hurry.

SNCF 4295 night train (screenshot TF1 news)

It was, as the national radio station RTL called it, a "journey without end". And even if that was perhaps a little bit of journalistic hyperbole at its best, it certainly must have seemed that way to those on board.

The train was supposed to leave the eastern French city of Strasbourg on Sunday for its 12-hour trip to Portbou, a town on (the Spanish side of) the French-Spanish border, and the city of Nice on the Côte d'Azur (obviously it was scheduled to split at some point).

Instead the 600 passengers arrived at their destinations with a slight delay of just 12 hours following what French national railways SNCF admitted had been "a succession of exceptional incidents".

In other words a series "cock-ups" with the weather playing a handsomely helping hand.

From the start the outlook wasn't particularly propitious as the train was late in setting off, but quickly what was to become something of a leitmotif for the whole trip clicked into motion (or rather lack thereof) as after just 150 kilometres the train stopped in Belfort to change drivers as the one who had been been aboard the train as it left Strasbourg had been working for three consecutive days (poor thing) and security regulations stipulated that he had to be replaced.

Except his stand-in was in Lyon - 342 kilometres away - and he only arrived at six o'clock in the morning.

When the 4295 eventually continued its journey, it wasn't long before it stopped for a second time as a regional train had broken down ahead of it just a few kilometres along the line at Montbéliard.

Another two hours were added to the trip in Tournus in Burgundy where the train was forced to come to a halt because of a problem with its own engine.

"We've done 300 kilometres in 17 hours," Ralph Lydi, one of those on board, told journalists by 'phone (the whole journey was followed by reporters from the comfort of the studio and of course covered in real time on Twitter).

"Some food was handed out but the drinks machines are no longer working and we have the impression that SNCF is just making fun of us," he added, saying that there had been little or no information provided as to what was happening.

Of course all good things - and bad - must come to an end, and the train eventually chugged in to Lyon at five o'clock on Monday evening, where those bound for Nice switched trains while those going south-west remained aboard.

SNCF apologised for what has been called the "hell on wheels journey" (BBC hyperbole this time) and (hurrah) as Didier Cazelles, a director of the company told TF1 news, offered all passengers a full refund and a free return ticket, which is probably exactly what they want!

While SNCF has put the whole sorry tale down to a combination of technical problems and weather conditions, the unions have a rather different interpretation of what happened.

"What the passengers have gone through is symptomatic of the cutbacks that SNCF has been making both in terms of rolling stock and personnel," Julien Trocaz of the Sud-Rail union told RTL radio, seeming to imply that the weather had not played any sort of role.

L'interminable voyage du train Strasbourg-Port-Bou