Ticket sales and passenger numbers rose at Eurostar in 2009, despite the breakdown of trains in December that left thousands of passengers stranded.

Sales at Eurostar last year reached £675.5m – an increase of 1.7% on 2008.

The cross-Channel rail service carried 1.2% more passengers, with total traffic rising to 9.2 million people.

On Monday the company admitted it expects to pay up to £10m in compensation to passengers affected by the travel chaos before Christmas.

Eurostar confirmed this morning that the train, which left Brussels at 8.05am CET and was due to arrive at London St Pancras at 8.56am GMT, had been delayed while crossing the channel.

It is not known why the train stopped in the tunnel, but authorities said it was expected to be on the move shortly. Further details are expected to be released shortly.

The company gave no guarantees that the high-speed services linking London with Paris and Brussels would be back to normal on Tuesday, but said it was modifying trains to prevent them breaking down again.

“Eurostar will not be operating services on Monday,” the company said in a statement on its website.

“We sincerely regret having to take this decision and we understand how frustrated and disappointed travellers will be, particularly those who have been waiting to travel for the last two days.

Wintry weather is thought to be to blame and there have been calls for the firm’s chief executive Richard Brown to resign and admit Eurostar was ”not adequately prepared”.

The closure of the tunnel left thousands more people stranded in Kent and France as they waited to board trains, while the closure of Calais port added to the chaos.

It is thought trains – all headed to London from Paris – failed as they left the cold air in northern France and entered the warmer air inside the tunnel.

Some passengers were stuck for 11 hours and two of the trains had no heating or lighting.

All the stranded passengers have since been taken out of the tunnel but services are not expected to resume until midday, causing further chaos for cross-Channel passengers already hit by a strike by border officials that has forced the cancellation of some ferries.

The train firm pledged that services will continue as normal despite the walkout.

Around 70 members of the drivers’ union Aslef are thought to have walked out, with further stoppages threatened for December 26 and 27.

A group of Eurostar managers belonging to the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), who were due to join the strike, called off the action yesterday after accepting a new offer on allowances.

The managers, members of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, were due to walk out from midnight, joining drivers belonging to Aslef.

The TSSA said its 20 train managers would be now be working normally over the next two days and further strikes on December 26 and 27 were now cancelled.

Gerry Doherty, the general secretary, said: ”This is obviously good news for the travelling public and our Eurostar members.

The dispute will see 71 drivers, who are members of the ASLEF trade union, walking out on Friday and Saturday, potentially hitting services to Paris, Brussels and Lille during the busiest weekend of the year. Further action is planned for next week.

Eurostar said it was confident of running a full service, drafting in drivers from Belgium and France to cover for the striking Aslef members, who account for about 40 per cent of the total.

Eurostar has reported a rise in sales between July and September, with “some signs of an upturn in business travel”.

Sales rose by 6.8% compared with the same period last year, when the high-speed Channel Tunnel train service was hit by a fire which depressed sales.

In total, 2.6 million passengers used the service during the quarter, compared with 2.4 million a year ago.