23 August 2026
RMT Press Office:
RAIL union RMT called for a root and branch review of railway operational control centres following another outage forcing most CrossCountry train services to be cancelled.
The power outage in Birmingham affected its control centre, resulting in many of the systems used to manage the railway being unavailable.
Private operator Arriva runs Cross Country services which have yet to be taken in-house under plans for Great British Railways (GBR).
RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said that passengers and rail workers should not have to bear the brunt of another week of travel chaos due to insufficient back-up systems.
“We clearly need a full root and branch review of critical areas of railway operational control centres to ensure they remain unaffected by power outages,” he said.
ENDS
PHOTO: By Anamyd - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=165607460
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