SNCF strike: 100 children took a “special TGV” to meet their families before Christmas

One hundred children were able to take the train to join their families despite the SNCF strike on Saturday, Christmas Eve. The “children’s special” TGV, transported by the railway company over the weekend, “departed this morning at 9:49 a.m. from Lille and will arrive this afternoon in Perpignan at 5:00 p.m.,” said Alain Krakovitch, director of TVG, on Saturday. -Intercités. tomorrow on BFMTV.

“We wanted to offer a solution to children whose train has been withdrawn. Therefore, we created a very special TGV that normally does not run,” said the SNCF manager.

This initiative was taken within the framework of the child support service of the SNCF Junior & Cie. Being the objective shown by the company to transport all the children that were planned as part of Junior & Cie.

900 more people benefited from the special TGV

Initially, this TGV was supposed to allow “at least 450 children” to be able to reunite with their families for Christmas. Finally, there are “about a hundred children” who boarded the train, Alain Krakovitch indicated on the BFMTV antenna, from the Gare de Lyon, in Paris. “The TGV that comes from Lille and will arrive at Gare de Lyon will have about 75 children on board and 25 will get on,” said the SNCF manager.

Alain Krakovitch adds that “900 more people were able to take advantage of this solution since we opened the train to everyone afterwards.” Not all SNCF customers have had the same luck.

200,000 passengers out of the 800,000 train users expected this Christmas weekend are affected by the SNCF strike. Among them, some cannot use the alternatives to the train and, therefore, are deprived of Christmas as a family.

A night of negotiations on Thursday helped find a solution to the dispute initiated by a group of non-union employers, which led to the lifting of the strike notice for New Year’s Day weekend by the unions, which did not . however, call a strike. But for this weekend of December 24 and 25, it is already too late: the trains that are prepared several days in advance could not be rescheduled overnight.