Off the rails

The breakdown of five Eurostar trains in the Channel Tunnel won't be the last high-profile crisis on the tracks, but it will be remembered as one of the most appalling.

Having spent large sums of money to travel on the service, passengers endured overflowing toilets and were left in the cold and the dark for hours on end. The image of pregnant women and small children forced to sit on "greasy floors or to lean against the sides of the carriage" sounds more like life in a Dickensian workhouse than 21st century transport,

The report, by former GNER East Coast Main Line rail boss Christopher Garnett and French transport expert Claude Gressier, lays bare Eurostar's failures. Its preparation was not good enough and nor was its maintenance – and when a spell of heavy snowfall was added, the service collapsed. Staff compounded the problem by providing scant information to passengers.

Eurostar has admitted its faults and shown a willingness to learn from this dreadful episode. Now the Government must do the same. Ministers must insist that private sector transport operators have contingency plans for extreme weather. It should be a key element of every franchise agreement.

Other countries can cope with weather extremes, and with the minimum of fuss. And so, too, can Britain if there's a change of direction – one that sees the railway industry pull together to ensure that the country is no longer the laughing stock of the world when

it snows.