Big freeze hits train punctuality

The bad weather either side of Christmas caused a drop in train punctuality, official figures out today revealed.

As many as a third of trains on the two main London to Scotland routes - the East Coast and the West Coast lines - did not run on time in the period from December 13 to January 9.

Punctuality was also particularly badly hit on services run by the Southeastern train company, with only 70 per cent of trains on time compared with 91.7 per cent in the same four-week period in 2008/09.

Overall, network-wide, 80 per cent of trains ran on time from December 13 to January 9 compared with 89.8 per cent in the same Christmas/New Year period in 2008/09, the figures from Network Rail (NR) showed.

In the most recent four-week period, the best-performing train company was Arriva Trains Wales, which ran 90.4 per cent of trains on time.

Virgin Trains, which runs on the West Coast Main Line, suffered the most from the bad weather - running only 65.7 per cent of trains on time.

On the East Coast line, now being operated in the public sector, the trains-on-time figure was only 67.2 per cent.

Two of the 19 passenger train companies did manage to improve their performance, with London Midland's punctuality rising 4.5 per cent and East Midlands Trains' going up 0.5 per cent.

NR's operations and customer service director Robin Gisby said today: "It's been a difficult month and we have not delivered the railway passengers have come to expect.

"Working closely with the operators, and despite the extreme weather, we have kept the railways open and most services ran with eight out of 10 services running to time. We will work to restore services to their punctual norm in the weeks ahead."