A real sleepless night for some RER B users this Saturday, blocked for more than 2 hours because of a tree branch that fell on the line’s electrical wires.
New ordeal for users on the RER B this Saturday. First a “incident” at La Plaine Stade de France interrupted all traffic between the Aulnay-sous-Bois and Châtelet–Les Halles stations and severely disrupted the rest of the line.
Then later in the evening, around half past midnight, users saw their trains blocked “due to climatic conditions”. A tree branch has indeed fallen on a catenary, an element that supplies trains with electricity.
According to an SNCF official, three trains were affected by these disturbances. “We wanted to evacuate the trains. But a lot of people, finding the evacuation too long, came out alone, pulling the alarm signals. As a result, we are forced to stop all traffic in these areas. “she explains.
the @RERB the worst really, there’s never anything that works. I had to travel all over France to get home when I left Châtelet at 11:30 p.m. I only got back at 3:30 a.m. Metro, Beijing night bus come back 😭#qml@vpecresse https://t.co/UUqRSvvyAl
— Moris salt (@moris_salt) October 3, 2021
A passenger’s version was a little different. The latter left the center of Paris and first found herself stranded in Châtelet around 11:45 p.m. “I waited on the platform for the RER B in the direction of Mitry-Claye. It was supposed to arrive in 6 minutes except that it did not pass. I waited for the next one which arrived at 00:34”says Amira.
Then, forced to board another train at Gare du Nord because of the interrupted traffic, she claims to have waited “12:56 a.m. until around 1:45 a.m. without any explanation of what was going on”. Resigned, she managed to take a metro and then a night bus and walked home: “So I went home at 3:30 in the morning”.
The latter laments “that the problems on line B are very recurrent. Rare are the times when there is no problem and it starts to become very annoying”.
Giant blackout in September
On Twitter, the network favored by the railway company to communicate on the movement of trains, other users have complained of poor communication and a lack of support.
For its part, the SNCF replies that buses and taxis have been mobilized for people who have followed the indications and have not gone out alone on the tracks.
This incident comes as RER B users have already suffered a giant breakdown at the Gare du Nord at the end of September. An SNCF Réseau service provider had damaged signaling and telecommunications cables as part of the work currently being carried out to “cut out the network” and create isolated catenary sections so that an incident does not propagate throughout the line.
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