A power supply problem has caused problems across the East Midlands rail network this evening.
A number of trains between Bedford and St Pancras, Peterborough and London, have come to a stand with hundreds stranded between stations. Evacuations have taken place.
The power surge was caused by two faulty power generators at the national grid. All Thameslink Great Northern class 700s and 717s, and LNER Azumas, in the affected area seem most affected by the problem, with most requiring a full train reboot and battery reset to fix problems caused by the frequency drop. The train’s onboard computers locked the train down knocking out the traction power, with some units requiring an engineer to unlock the train, which had shut itself down to prevent further damage or issues. Other trains were running fine following the power cut, because passengers onboard the affected units took to Twitter to complain.
Haha giving an announcement about no trains moving 30 seconds after a fast train to Peterborough goes through Hitchin #commonsense
— Peter James Burrage (@pjburrage) August 9, 2019
Just saw a train go past us and we’re stuck at Stevenage
— Patrick Key (@poakey77) August 9, 2019
As of 9pm on Friday 9th evening, trains are still stranded on the east coast mainline.
Signalling across central England also went down with signalling failures reaching as far as Bristol.
A spokeswoman for Network Rail explained: ‘There was a power surge on the National Grid this evening which means we lost power to all our signalling over a wide area, including the Newport, Gloucester, Ashford, Bristol, Eastbourne, Hastings, Three Bridges and Exeter areas.
Not only were trains affected. Airports and street lighting were also affected, with a large number of traffic lights going out causing havoc on London’s roads.
Author: matt
Owner of Rail Record