Thousands of passengers trapped as signals fail

Thousands of commuters are stuck on board trains after signal failure halted services across Merseyside's local rail network.About 40 trains, each containing up to 200 passengers, were unable to move after contractors cut a signal cable at the control centre at about 08:50 BSTServices in Liverpool and Wirral, including those running under the River Mersey, were affected.Merseyrail said it hoped to start services again from about 10:45 BST.A spokeswoman for Merseyrail said the fault occurred when a contractor cut through a cable at the network control centre in Sandhills, north Liverpool.She said: "There are significant delays but the repair contractors are now on site and we are looking at a phased resumption of service starting at around 10.45am today."Several trains which were trapped in tunnels under the Mersey are being returned to stations on either side of the river.BBC reporter Julia Houston was one of the passengers on a train which was stuck in a tunnel under the river.She said: "We were trapped in the tunnel for about an hour."The guards kept walking through saying there was no communication and they didn't know what was happening. A few people did start to panic."Just before 10 o'clock there was an announcement that we were going back to Conway Park."When we got off there was a big sense of relief from many of the passengers." From / BBC