OREANDA-NEWS. Engineers were carrying out improvement work on the section of railway throughout Sunday and into the early hours of Monday morning. They were alerted to the issue which prevents trains from switching lines and the signalling system working correctly. The fault was identified and engineers are working to repair the points as quickly as possible.

The impact of the work means the Manchester Victoria to Clitheroe service is stopping at Blackburn with buses continuing to Clitheroe.

Terry Strickland, area director for Network Rail said: “I apologise for the disruption caused by this morning’s incident. We care about passengers and will complete the repairs as quickly as possible so a normal service can resume. We are keeping Northern Rail fully informed and doing all we can to help them run the best possible service in the circumstances.”

About Network Rail

Network Rail owns, manages and develops Britain’s railway – the 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and viaducts, and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations (the largest of which we also run). In partnership with train operators we help people take more than 1.6bn journeys by rail every year - double the number of 1996 - and move hundreds of millions of tonnes of freight, saving almost 8m lorry journeys. We’re investing ?38bn in the railway by 2019 to deliver more frequent, more reliable, safer services and brighter and better stations.