Word: snow
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...needed to solve the problem of any writer telling a story--how do you end it? You can do a gentle fadeaway: "He went to the window and looked out into the darkness. Snow was falling gently through the spruce trees." But that's not good for half the year. If you just pause and say, "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average," problem solved...
...Bing Crosby or you're safely ensconced in front of a fire in a mountain hideaway somewhere. But hum a few bars of the song at the Eurostar terminals in Paris and London these days and you may get dirty looks. As difficult as it is to believe, snow is what apparently caused the breakdown of the Eurostar train network over the weekend that left service indefinitely suspended - and an ever-growing number of people stranded, their holiday plans in disarray...
...people eventually made it out of the tunnel -but nobody else has boarded a Eurostar train between the cities, or to Brussels, since then. Service is due to restart on Tuesday, provided officials can ensure that the trains won't break down in the tunnel again. (See pictures of snow crippling London...
...apparent cause of the problem was the weather - specifically the fine, powdery snow that fell in northern France last week as a cold snap swept across the continent. Eurostar officials said Sunday that the tiny flakes appear to have penetrated the air filters on the locomotive's engine blocks and then melted when the trains entered the heated tunnel, causing the electrical systems to short out. "It was lighter than normal, fluffier, and the temperature inside the tunnel and the humidity was higher than normal," Nick Mercer, Eurostar's commercial director, told the media...
...Since a similar problem in 2002 was resolved by "winterizing" the locomotives so that snow couldn't get into the engine blocks, Eurostar officials were guardedly optimistic that the same method would fix the problem this time. However, even if the trains do start running again, anger over the fiasco won't melt as quickly as the thinning French snow. (See the worst business deals...