Rail passengers face second day of chaos across north-west England

Problems after power failure at regional signalling centre likely to continue until noon on Friday

Rail passengers are facing a second day of travel disruption across parts of north-west England, after a power cut hit the signalling centre controlling the region .

The power failure, which occurred shortly before 2pm on Thursday, temporarily halted trains and caused widespread cancellations and delays to services including CrossCountry and London Northwestern Railway.

On Friday morning, services on Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, Northern, TransPennine Express (TPE) and Transport for Wales continued to be affected.

National Rail said on Friday that although trains were now able to operate, there could be delays until noon as several trains and crew were in the wrong locations for the start of service. “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 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 , parts of the Midlands and north-west England were hit the hardest by the rail disruption, with thousands of passengers unable to complete their journeys.

Trains were left stranded as signals turned to red across the part of the railway managed from the Manchester rail operating centre, one of a dozen set up over the past 12 years to phase out signal boxes and manage the railway remotely.

The power cut affected the area surrounding area in Manchester but Network Rail’s back-up generators, which should have kicked in automatically, failed to start immediately, causing signals to default to red and halting all trains.

A controlled power-up and power-down to safely restart operations took several hours, with signalling fully restored only late on Thursday evening. Network Rail has launched an investigation.

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.

He added: “Anyone planning to travel this morning should continue to check before they travel for the latest information.”

The RMT union’s general secretary, Eddie Dempsey, praised train crew for handling the difficult circumstances, adding: “The impact of a 90-second power cut in an important operations centre in Manchester, covering a wide geographical area across the north-west, without a working backup supply has clearly been devastating.

“We will work with Network Rail to scrutinise how railway infrastructure coped and what actions need to be taken in the future.”

National Rail said disruption on Thursday was aggravated by the discovery of a wartime bomb near the railway between Tamworth and Burton-on-Trent.

Andy Bowes-Roden, deputy editor at Modern Railways magazine, told BBC Radio 5 Live on Friday 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.”