Train Lines to London

When the day finally arrived to leave Paris, we dried our tears and left home four hours early for the train station.  We knew there would be some sort of weather delay because heavy snows had already cancelled most of the Eurostar trains from Paris to London the day before.  We stumbled out of the taxi at 6am and found the begining of a line, which we followed, past some bends, down the long part of the station, and then continuing outside of the station along the train tracks!  The line stretched as far as we could see (in the gloomy dark before dawn).  We considered a number of strategies for circumventing the line or finding alternate transport, but as luck would have it, Eurostar had managed to clear its tracks enough to avoid cancelling its morning trains. Eurostar was making no attempt to look at seat assignments; if and when trains arived from London, passengers from the line were seated first-come first-serve and the train rushed back out. There were delays due to slow speeds but all or most trains were expected to run. We walked the line and counted. There were over 1,000 people ahead of us (gulp!). Then we learned that each train holds 750 people. We ended up catching the "8am" train instead of the 10am train for which we originally had reservations! Working in a 90 minute station delay and an extra 90 minutes for slow travel speeds, after the initial shock and horror of the morning, we were thrilled to arrive in London no more than an hour behind the original schedule.