Signal failure brings second day of rail disruption across England

Power briefly cut out at the Manchester Rail Operating Center on Thursday afternoon. An emergency backup supply failed to come online in time, and the entire signaling system went down. The center sits at the heart of a major upgrade begun in 2014 that phased out trackside signal boxes in favor of remote-controlled facilities.

Criticism of years of restrained state funding and large-scale layoffs at Network Rail, which owns the track and signaling infrastructure and cut staff at the start of 2026, sharpened in the aftermath.

Government figures from the Office of Road and Rail for the January to March quarter show nearly 81,000 main-line train services, or 3.2%, were either pulled or partly canceled. The office flagged "severely disrupted days" when at least 5% of services were cancelled. By the same measure, more than 86% of trains arrived ahead of schedule or within three minutes of the timetable.

Network Rail's northwest director, Chris Wright, apologised and said engineers had worked through the night to get signaling back online and trains moving again. "Of course we will be conducting a really thorough investigation to understand what went wrong and how we learn from this in the future," he said. "We need to learn from this. We must do better."

Wright said most services were now operating. National Rail said the recovery would continue through Friday afternoon.