A power cut at CrossCountry's control centre in Birmingham on Saturday led the operator to cancel nearly all of its services across the United Kingdom, leaving passengers stranded on routes stretching from Glasgow to Penzance and Leeds to Manchester.
CrossCountry, which was ranked Britain's worst rail operator in June, said many of the systems used to manage the railway were unavailable following the outage. The disruption was described as "significant and unforeseen." The operator confirmed that tickets for Sunday would remain valid until Wednesday, and when asked on social media whether the situation would be resolved Monday, the company replied: "We would hope so, but at the moment we have no further updates."
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was "concerned to hear about a power outage" and had asked publicly owned operators to provide "extra services where possible." She added: "We've also sent Network Rail power teams who are onsite and working to restore power and systems as soon as possible."
Major affected routes include services between Manchester and Birmingham, which pass through Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry and Wolverhampton. Routes between Leeds and York, Cheltenham and Cardiff, and Glasgow and Edinburgh are also down. Services to Plymouth and Penzance are disrupted, with customers directed to Great Western Railway as a replacement. Chiltern Railways added services between Birmingham Moor Street and Oxford to help cover the gap.
Fans travelling to football matches were warned that trains to and from Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle could be extremely busy. Reese Proctor, 22, told BBC Newsbeat he had been trying to reach Manchester's Etihad Stadium for a 14:00 BST kickoff against Bournemouth. He had planned to take a train from Reading to Manchester, but instead drove more than 100 miles to a friend's house in Leicester before continuing to the ground. The detour added two hours to his trip. "If I couldn't drive, or have [my friend] to drive... I wouldn't have been able to go to the match. That would have been a waste of a match ticket," he said.
Passengers vented frustration across social media. One user on X wrote: "A massive thank you to Cross Country Trains for cancelling my train this morning to Birmingham. You are truly not fit for service. You have also cancelled my train coming back but that is immaterial. Useless. Utterly useless."
CrossCountry said it was "working closely with relevant partners" and would provide further updates as soon as possible. No timeline for full restoration of services had been given as of Sunday.
