Status: 01/24/2023 12:43 p.m
Nothing works anymore at the Gare de l’Est in Paris: After a cable fire, no trains can enter or leave the Ostbahnhof. Connections to Germany are also affected. The French railway assumes an act of sabotage.
Train services at the important Gare de l’Est in Paris have been suspended for the entire day after a cable fire. Neither long-distance trains nor regional trains can enter or leave the station, as the French railway SNCF announced. Individual trains should end early or be diverted to the nearby Gare du Nord. The railway company was initially unable to provide exact figures for the affected connections.
According to SNCF, the fire broke out in a signal box around 20 kilometers east of Paris in the middle of the morning rush hour. A spokeswoman said it was arson. “According to initial findings, we can say that it was a deliberate fire on power cables,” said the spokeswoman for the AFP news agency.
Half a million travelers a day
Early in the morning, railway employees discovered the fire on around 50 cables, as reported by the newspaper “Le Parisien”. In an interview on the radio station “France Info”, Transport Minister Clement Beuane called for the perpetrator(s) to be punished quickly. The SNCF has already filed a complaint.
The breakdown hits the traffic hard. Half a million people travel daily via the Gare de l’Est, which is considered a hub. Gare de l’Est is one of the six major train stations in Paris. Trains to eastern France leave from there, as do international connections to Germany and Luxembourg, for example. So far there is no replacement for these connections. The SNCF announced that it would be difficult to repair the system.