More than 4,000 homes and businesses across Shropshire were blacked out during a power cut which also pulled the plug on TV signals to 120,000 homes across the Midlands.Commuters were also hit when train signals at Oakengates in Telford failed during the blackout. There were still long delays today on the Shrewsbury to Birmingham line.

Rebecca Mara, spokeswoman for electricity distributor Central Networks, said the cause was traced to the Ketley area of Telford.

She said: “It was a trip on the main cable at 9.57pm and there were 4,100 homes left without power.

“The actual fault was in the Ketley area and affected the circuit lines in Ironbridge and Shrewsbury.

“We managed to get 2,819 of the customers back on line at 10.01pm and power was restored to the remainder at 12.05am.”

Steve Arnold, spokesman for Arqiva, which manages the TV and radio transmitter at The Wrekin, said: “There was a 15-minute shut-down which coincided with the power failure shortly before 10pm.

“This affected about 120,000 homes.”

Mr Arnold said the aerial covers Telford, Shrewsbury, the west of Wolverhampton, Bridgnorth, Church Stretton, Market Drayton and the west of Newport.

All Arriva Train Wales services between Shrewsbury and Birmingham were hit, and two of them cancelled, when signals in Oakengates were knocked out.

Maggie Abbett, for the train operator, said the company expected most trains to be running normally again by this afternoon and apologised to passengers for any inconvenience caused.

One resident of Oakengates, who did not want to be named, said: “Whatever happened must have been big. I was looking out of my window towards Wellington when there was a big flash in the sky and all the power went off.”

Robert Riddell, of Dawley Bank, Telford, said: “We were watching television and it went down and it sort of flickered. It went on and off quickly and then about two minutes later the power went off for about three or four minutes.”

*The power cut caused major production difficulties at the Shropshire Star’s Ketley headquarters, leading to the production of a special edition of the newspaper this morning.

By Lizzie Yates and Jo Cunningham