National Rail said a power failure at a communications centre affected five rail companies: Avanti West Coast, East Midlands, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales. Photograph: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenNational Rail said a power failure at a communications centre affected five rail companies: Avanti West Coast, East Midlands, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales. Photograph: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty ImagesRail passengers face second day of chaos across north-west EnglandDisruption after power failure at regional signalling centre likely to continue until noon with many crews and trains in wrong locations
Rail passengers are facing a second day of travel disruption across parts of north-west England, after a power failure hit the signalling centre controlling the railway in the region.
The power failure, which occurred shortly before 2pm on Thursday, triggered widespread cancellations and delays to services including CrossCountry and London Northwestern Railway.
Operators whose services continued to be affected on Friday morning were Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, Northern, TransPennine Express (TPE) and Transport for Wales.
National Rail said this morning that although trains are now able to operate, there could be delays until noon as several trains and crew are in the wrong locations for the start of service today.
“This means that some trains are still expected to be affected this morning. Trains across the Greater Manchester area and north-west of England may still be cancelled in full or revised to only run for part of their normal journey until service is able to fully recover,” it said.
Northern Rail has advised passengers not to travel before 10am today. TPE has told its passengers should prepare for disruption before midday today, with delays and cancellations to be expected.
Greater Manchester, the Midlands and north-west England were hit the hardest by the rail disruption, with thousands of passengers unable to complete their journeys.
The facility in Manchester that experienced the outage was one of 12 operating centres designed to eventually manage the entire British rail network, Network Rail said when it opened in 2014.
A wartime bomb was also discovered near the railway between Tamworth and Burton-on-Trent, which deepened disruption on Thursday, National Rail said.
Chris Wright, Network Rail’s north-west route director, said: “I’d like to thank passengers for their patience after yesterday’s power outage and the disruption it caused across the north-west.
“Our engineers worked through the night to restore signalling systems and recover the railway, and I’m pleased that most services are now running this morning.
“While some passengers may still experience disruption, we’re continuing to work closely with train operators to return services to normal as quickly as possible. Anyone planning to travel this morning should continue to check before they travel for the latest information.”
Andy Bowes-Roden, deputy editor at Modern Railways magazine, told BBC Radio 5 Live there would be “quite a lot of disruption this morning easing throughout the day”.
“Hopefully by rush hour the service will be back to normal, but it won’t be until tomorrow morning that this will be sorted,” he said. “As rail passengers, we are lucky. We have protections and the railways are obliged to get us where they promise to get us. But there will be an awful lot of refunds.”
