Eurostar passengers faced new winter misery yesterday with another high-speed train breaking down in the Channel Tunnel, while heavy snow also left thousands in Britain with no electricity.

Across the rest of northern Europe, one of the most brutal winters in decades caused more travel mayhem with scores of flights cancelled and many roads blocked.

Overnight temperatures dropped to minus 18 degrees Celsius in Woodford outside Manchester, northwest England, and in Benson, southern England. Glasgow saw minus nine degrees Celsius, while London fell to minus three.

No major British airports reported closures yesterday, with runways open following a day of disruption on Wednesday.

But budget airline easyJet scrapped around 80 flights "as a result of severe weather conditions," largely in and out of London Gatwick airport south of the British capital.

British Airways said it had cancelled a number of flights and was experiencing delays due to icy conditions at both Gatwick and London Heathrow.

Dublin airport, which closed for several hours on Wednesday, was operating normally but there were a number of flight cancellations and delays as some airlines continued to experience knock on effects.

At Orly, south of Paris, outgoing flights were cancelled or delayed, while incoming ones were diverted, a spokesman for Aeroports de Paris said.

Eurostar faced fresh embarrassment yesterday when a Brussels to London train had to be towed out of the tunnel after being stuck for around two hours.

Arctic temperatures were blamed for the breakdown last month of several Eurostar trains in the tunnel between Britain and France, which sparked a three-day suspension of the service.

"At first they told us that it was an engine problem," Jonattan Lurasin, 26, from Liege in Belgium, said at London's Saint Pancras International station. "They tried to restart two or three times, but it didn't work."

Eurostar spokesman Bram Smets said the cause of the latest breakdown was not immediately known, and warned of delays.

"We are not allowing any train to enter the tunnel at present, they are waiting. We don't want any (more) trains to be blocked in the tunnel if we don't know what happened," he said in Brussels.

Even before the new incident, Eurostar had already cancelled four of its services for a second straight day, due to disruptions caused by cold weather speed limits.

Meanwhile electricians were working round the clock to restore current to around 5,000 homes in southern England which were left in the dark when snow brought down power lines, said EDF Energy.

Britain's Met Office weather service said the cold spell was the worst since 1981 and warned of more to come.