[Amy]

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LONDON'S POWER BACK ON

Power has been restored to London after a National Grid fault caused "unprecedented" chaos on London's rail and Tube lines during the busy rush-hour.


Thousands of passengers were stuck in tunnels when trains ground to a halt at around 6.30pm.

And some 270 sets of traffic lights were out in many areas, causing confusion on the roads before power was finally restored at 7pm.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone said at least 250,000 people were affected by the blackout.

The National Grid is investigating the cause of the fault.

Spokesman Sean Regan said: "There was a fault in the 275,000 volt system affecting a ring around London, which occurred at 6.26pm.

"Power to the distribution network in London was restored at 7pm.

"Obviously it is going to take the regional distribution network some time to restore supplies to the end users of their system. Hopefully it shouldn't be long now.

"We are obviously investigating the cause of the fault. An alarm went off in one of our circuits so we had to take that circuit out."

Wimbledon and New Cross were the south London regional suppliers most badly affected.

"Any loss of supply in the system is something we take very seriously and is not something that happens with any regularity. It is an unusual occurrence," he added.

British Transport Police said power is slowly being restored to lines.

"Trains are slowly beginning to travel into places where they were stuck," said a spokesman.

"We are obviously having difficulty in contacting staff in the places which have been affected but things are now starting to move slowly."

Network Rail spokesman Kevin Groves said trains had been "badly" hit and the situation had been "unprecedented".

He said a stretch of rail 20 to 30 miles south of London had been put out, affecting "tens of thousands" of passengers. Train drivers had told passengers to sit tight.

"We have back-up generators but they can't be used in a power failure of this magnitude. You practically need a power station."

Battery power kept lights on and address systems working.

The power cut comes two weeks after a massive blackout brought the north east coast of America to its knees and prompted fears of a terrorist attack.

The blackout affected 50 million people in most of New York State, parts of New England, Ohio and Michigan and central Canada.


from Sky news