Passengers are being warned this evening of major disruption in the Manchester area after the electricity supply failed at the communications centre.
Disruption is expected until the end of the day, with some train operators warning passengers not to travel.
Avanti West Coast says that Macclesfield will not be served by a train and tickets are accepted with CrossCountry, London Northwestern Railway, Northern, TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales.
East Midlands Railway has a Do Not Travel alert for passengers between Sheffield and Liverpool Lime Street. Trains to and from Norwich cannot run between Sheffield and Liverpool until further notice.
Buses are in operation and tickets are in place between Norwich and London Liverpool Street (Greater Anglia) and Avanti West Coast between London Euston and Liverpool Lime Street.
Northern and TransPennine Express say passengers should not travel, whilst Transport for Wales and London Northwestern Railway say that buses are running to get passengers moving.
The full details are available on the National Rail Enquiries website.
Responses
Seems another World Class performance by the infrastructure controller Network Rail. No doubt some Director or Senior Manager given they seem to be in plentifull supply will have some soothing words to offer to customers
It does seem that Network Rail, with its current policy of concentrating signalling into a very small number of large signalling/communication centres, has not thought through the effects of a power failure at such a centre. Why haven’t they arranged for a backup power supply, knowing that failure would cause disruption over such a wide area?
They may have PROVIDED, but never TESTED.
Once the dust has settled, there will no doubt be a post-mortem. Lessons learned need to be applied.
The fact that this is such a rare occurrence means that the shock WHEN it happens is all the greater.