'Unprecedented’ Merseyrail fail could reoccur without change, investigation finds

During a cold snap in January as snow and ice fell across Merseyside, services across the Merseyrail network were completely suspended for a number of hours, leaving commuters stranded and trying to find other ways to get to work or around the region.

As part of the inquest into what went wrong, Vernon Everitt, Greater Manchester’s transport commissioner, was asked by Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram to produce an independent assessment of the network and how issues could be fixed. In return, he delivered a 61-page report to the Liverpool City Region transport committee outlining his findings.

Mr Everitt, who has decades of experience in the rail industry, warned that if changes were not made to how the three partner organisations responsible for the network – Merseyrail, Network Rail and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority – operate the same collapse of the network could happen again later this year. He said: “You are likely to get the same outcome with the same set of circumstances.”

As part of his assessment, which was presented to the Metro Mayor on Wednesday ahead of the transport committee this afternoon, Mr Everitt made six findings and nine recommendations to the committee on how performance can be improved moving forward.

In his foreword, the commissioner described the scale of the disruption as “highly unusual” and this was in the context of 2024/25 being the first full winter period in which the new class 777 trains were operating and the first time a “relatively new” anti-icing product had been used on the network which had not been tested against snowy conditions.

He told the LDRS how the root cause of issues were icing on the third rail which provides power to the new trains. He said: “Dealing with ice on the third rail is something that is a challenge for every operator of third rail railways, they are an existence here on Merseyrail and London Underground.

“Generally, the way in which you mitigate the risk is to lay an anti-icing fluid on the third rail, which loosens the bond between ice and the rail, it doesn’t melt the ice, but what it does it makes sure that the ice doesn’t bond. Then it relies on trains then passing over that ice with their conductor shoe or with a scraper on other railways and removing the ice.”

Mr Everitt said assumptions had been made in the winter plan put together by the rail partners that the new trains would operate in a similar way in scraping the ice away. In fact, when the trains can’t draw power from the line, it cannot move and the shoe is designed in such a way to protect electrical components.

He added: “In the plan for 2024/25, there wasn’t an adequate enough shared understanding across all of the parties of that different design characteristic between the old stock and the new stock. That significant change wasn’t captured in the planning for 2024, and the focus was still on that philosophy of a morning startup and everything would be fine.”

Regarding the new anti-icing fluid, Mr Everitt said the agent had been used the year before in what he described as a “relatively mild” winter. He told the LDRS how officials had concluded it had performed well but had not exposed it to extreme weather.

He said: “That wasn’t carried through and therefore they went into 2024/25 with not only a differently designed unit, but they didn’t have a full appreciation of the best way in which to deploy the anti-icer because these things have to work in harmony to loosen the ice, sheer it off.” Mr Everitt, who sits as non-executive chair of Transport for Greater Manchester’s executive board, said as a result the service’s “window of vulnerability” moved from being a period in the morning to all day.

He added: “When the weather hit, it iced over and therefore everything started to not work while trains were in passenger service. That’s pretty unprecedented.”

At one point, some rail temperatures were recorded as -6°, which Mr Everitt described as “getting towards extreme.” He cited Merseyrail’s previous “good record” during winter but highlighted how at no point did any of the partner organisations allocate a single point of accountability.

He said: “Everybody worked diligently on their own individual elements of the plan, but there was no-one with the unambiguous responsibility of being able to piece everything together in the round.” Mr Everitt added how as a result, nobody had envisaged the whole network coming to a halt simultaneously “and therefore those plans hadn’t been tested against a wider range of scenarios.”

A failure to make good on some promises made to Mr Rotheram and the Combined Authority was also highlighted in his findings. These included how resilience would be improved, including testing, the anti-icing, and an analysis of whether heat strips being laid along the third rail might be a mitigant.

To tackle these issues, Mr Everitt outlined his key recommendations and called for January’s events to be a “line in the sand.” He said: “Let’s stop planning on the old basis.

“Get in a room together, work through. And also rehearse against a wider range of scenarios than just assuming that once you’ve got the service up running in the morning, then you’re all right. because we now know that it is not the case.

“You will never eliminate all risk of this because third rails are inherently open. You can get to the conditions where ice does form, but you need the anti-icer and the train working in harmony to minimise that risk to the lowest possible level, and you need to start work on that now.”

Mr Everitt said the Liverpool City Region should take responsibility for appointing somebody with accountability for plans moving forward. He also called on train operators to adapt the units to be able to scrape ice off the rails and apply anti-icer as they go.

He said: “You don’t have to do every one of them. There are 53 units, but there are seven of these units that can operate in battery power only, which means they don’t have to draw power from the third rail. So, if you adapted them with some sort of brush or scraper, and even enabled them to deploy anti-icing fluid themselves, which would be on top of what Network Rail put down the night before, that will make an enormous difference.”

The commissioner said if plans were to be in place for the next period of cold weather, partners “need to get going now.” He also cited the possible use of a shunt battery on the trains to help get stranded services – like one stuck at Old Roan for three hours in January – to a station to let passengers off.

He said: “I think the collective planning had become something of a routine because by and large, it had worked. In previous years it had worked and I think that all parties just continued to operate on assumptions that those big changes had fundamentally changed.

“My review is about understanding what happened and making recommendations to minimise the chances of it happening again, so that’s what I’ve done. It’s not about blame apportionment, but it is about a collective team effort to make sure that this doesn’t happen again or we minimise the risk of it happening again.”

Mr Everitt also underlined the seriousness of the challenges ahead if changes were not made. He said: It could happen again.

“If we had a repeat of it, it would happen today, so action needs to be taken now and I say in my report that work needs to start immediately. There certainly needs to be a fully comprehensive plan in place by June for how all this stuff gets implemented. Then there needs to be formal program management to make sure it gets done.”

Responding to Mr Everitt’s findings, Mr Rotheram said: “Well, it’s a very comprehensive report and it stems from the fact that on January 9 this year, we let passengers down and I said I wanted to learn the lessons of what had happened so that we can prevent those mistakes happening again and that’s what Vernon has provided for us. It’s a really good report and all of the recommendations are things that we can implement.

Mr Rotheram said he couldn’t “see how anybody can refute the evidence that’s being presented” and not act. He admitted there had been communication issues with Merseyrail and highlighted how the rail infrastructure itself is in the purview of Network Rail.

He added: “Then there are issues that we need to contend with such as ensuring that when people promise us that they’re going to do something, that we already address those shortfalls to ensure that they don’t happen again. That’s what this report does for us.

“It codifies all of the issues and then it puts a name against who that issue is the responsibility of, and now we need to get on and ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

The Metro Mayor said plans on how to ensure the network can cope in winter will be made public and said all partners were now “willing” to address the issues. He said: “Merseyrail, for instance, are really interested in working more collaboratively with us than at any stage that I can remember.

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“They’re very keen on putting their house in order. The Network Rail stuff is a bit of a frustration because we have very little sway over what happens at a national level and their funding is a national pot and what I’ve continually said to them is that when you don’t maintain something, it costs you more in the end and we’ve seen that just recently with some of the breakdowns that we’ve had on the infrastructure, which of course trained delays, and of course, that frustration to passengers.

“So they really do need to step up to the mark, but I do think that this report is quite salutary and they’ll have to do something more than they’ve currently done to ensure that passengers aren’t inconvenienced like they were on January 9.”

In a joint statement, Merseyrail, Stadler and Network Rail said: “We welcome the findings of the review of the disruption on the 9th January 2025. As the report makes clear, Merseyrail is a well-managed and high performing network.

“It’s right therefore that when things don’t go to plan that we review and learn from them. Merseyrail, Network Rail and Stadler are committed to working closely with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, to ensure that the plan for winter resilience is the best it can possibly be.”