Millions of rail passengers face further travel chaos on Friday morning after an external power outage at a communications centre in Manchester caused an electricity supply failure. 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 disruptions expected
Further disruptions are in store for Friday as many trains and their crew “are not where they would normally be after this unexpected incident”, National Rail have said. 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.
National Rail has warned major disruption will continue until the end of the day, while Northern has cautioned passengers to expect disruption into Friday morning and advised people to avoid travelling before 10am if possible.
Network Rail apology
Network Rail’s North West route director Chris Wright issued an apology yesterday regarding the outage, which has continued on until 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.”
The failure occurred at the Manchester Rail Operating Centre near Ashburys station in the city’s east, the main control hub for north-west England’s railways. 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. Further disruption on Friday is likely because many trains and their crew “are not where they would normally be after this unexpected incident”, it added.
