International passengers faced major disruption from the early hours of Saturday 8 November as Network Rail and Infrabel began planned renewal works on the high-speed corridor between Rotterdam and Brussels. Dutch rail tracker ‘Rijdende Treinen’ confirmed that ALL Eurostar services between London St Pancras and Amsterdam Centraal are cancelled from 05:00 on 8 Nov until 23:59 on 9 Nov, with knock-on alterations continuing to 02:00 on 10 Nov.
Eurostar is honouring tickets on alternative routings via Paris and advising travellers to rebook where possible after 10 November; however capacity is extremely limited because only six of the usual thirteen weekend rotations are running. The operator says affected passengers can claim a full refund or a free exchange within 180 days. Business travellers heading to the COP30 preparatory meetings in The Hague and to Amsterdam FinTech Week were among those scrambling for last-minute flights.
![Weekend engineering works suspend London–Amsterdam Eurostar trains 8–10 Nov]()
For mobility managers the outage is a reminder that Eurostar’s expansion into mainland hubs is still vulnerable to infrastructure works owned by three different states. Companies with travel-policy commitments to reduce short-haul flights will need to build in resilience—either by allowing remote participation or by booking ferries and Thalys/ICE combinations in advance when maintenance windows are published.
The planned works coincide with separate reliability issues in the Channel Tunnel immigration halls where UK Border Force is trialling new biometric ‘smart-gate’ readers ahead of the EU’s Entry/Exit System. Eurostar staff unions warn that simultaneous engineering and e-gate testing could create a ‘perfect storm’ at St Pancras during the Christmas peak if lessons are not learned from this weekend.
Eurostar is honouring tickets on alternative routings via Paris and advising travellers to rebook where possible after 10 November; however capacity is extremely limited because only six of the usual thirteen weekend rotations are running. The operator says affected passengers can claim a full refund or a free exchange within 180 days. Business travellers heading to the COP30 preparatory meetings in The Hague and to Amsterdam FinTech Week were among those scrambling for last-minute flights.
For mobility managers the outage is a reminder that Eurostar’s expansion into mainland hubs is still vulnerable to infrastructure works owned by three different states. Companies with travel-policy commitments to reduce short-haul flights will need to build in resilience—either by allowing remote participation or by booking ferries and Thalys/ICE combinations in advance when maintenance windows are published.
The planned works coincide with separate reliability issues in the Channel Tunnel immigration halls where UK Border Force is trialling new biometric ‘smart-gate’ readers ahead of the EU’s Entry/Exit System. Eurostar staff unions warn that simultaneous engineering and e-gate testing could create a ‘perfect storm’ at St Pancras during the Christmas peak if lessons are not learned from this weekend.
