ScotRail warns of service disruption into Friday after major signal fault

Services to and from Edinburgh Waverley came to a halt just before 5pm on Thursday.

Edinburgh Waverley station (Andrew Milligan/PA) (PA Archive)

ScotRail has warned passengers to expect disruption on Friday morning after a major signal fault at one of Scotland’s busiest stations.

The operator said there had been a failure in the electricity supply at Edinburgh Waverley just before 5pm on Thursday, as rush hour commuters were making their way home for the day.

The incident caused major disruption on services to and from Edinburgh including cross-border trains.

ScotRail told passengers on X, formerly known as Twitter, that replacement bus services had been requested and tickets were being accepted by some bus operators.

However, passengers reported some buses would not accept train tickets and many had to arrange expensive last-minute hotels and taxis as a result of the incident.

Joanne Davidson tweeted: “Utter shambles. Understand that the actual fault may be Network Rail’s responsibility, but Scotrail have utterly washed their hands of their responsibility to get people to their paid for destinations this evening by alternative means if train is not an option, and that is on you (ScotRail).

“Sorry, but not good enough. Absolutely no ScotRail staff on the concourse at Edinburgh Waverley at 8.30pm – no advice or onward travel guidance for stranded passengers and ticket office closed. Appreciate you guys doing your best to help, but very poor.”

Dozens of passengers were also stranded at Drem station in East Lothian, around 18 miles from Edinburgh.

Yunhyong Kim tweeted that taxis from Drem to Edinburgh had still not been arranged by 9.55pm, more than three hours after the train stopped at Drem.

Network Rail said it suspected the outage was caused by a “telecoms fault”.

The firm tweeted: “We suspect that this outage has been caused by a Telecomms fault and a specialist engineer has been dispatched. They are expected to arrive at the fault location at around 1900 and will begin fault finding.

“We expect disruption to continue for the rest of the evening. Engineers are working to find and fix the fault as quickly as possible, but it’s a complex issue.

“Additional staff and resources in place and assisting in fault finding. Sorry again for the disruption tonight.”