Millions of rail passengers face another day of travel chaos on Friday after an external power outage caused an electricity supply failure at a communications centre in Manchester. The disruption, which began shortly before 2pm on Thursday, has affected signalling and triggered widespread cancellations, delays and altered services across Greater Manchester and the North West of England.
Further disruption expected
National Rail has warned that major disruption will continue until the end of the day, with further problems likely on Friday because many trains and their crew “are not where they would normally be after this unexpected incident”. Northern has advised passengers to avoid travelling before 10am if possible.
The outage has impacted several operators, including Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, London Northwestern Railway, Merseyrail, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales.
Network Rail apologises
Network Rail’s North West route director Chris Wright issued an apology yesterday regarding the outage, which has continued into Friday. He said: “I’m extremely sorry for the disruption today and the very difficult journeys many people have experienced. Our engineers are working tirelessly to restore the signalling systems impacted by the power cut at lunchtime.”
Engineers are making “good progress” fixing signalling issues, but there will be cancellations for the rest of the night, Network Rail said on Thursday night. The electricity cut out in the main control hub for north-west England’s railways, the Manchester Rail Operating Centre near Ashburys station in the city’s east.
