Revealed: Half of Shropshire's trains fail to turn up on time
Around half of trains fail to turn up on time at railway stations across Shropshire, new figures have revealed.
Network Rail figures reveal the true extent of delays for services in our county.
Telford has one of the worst record of the major stations in Shropshire, with just over 52 per cent of the 508 trains due arriving late over seven days in July.
But Shrewsbury, Wellington and Craven Arms fare little better, according to figures obtained from Network's Rail's signalling records.
The statistics give a snapshot of the punctuality of services, looking at a week between July 21-7.
The national punctuality rate for that period was 64 per cent.
But Shropshire's stations performed worse than the national average.
The statistics define a train as late if it arrives more than a minute late.
Shrewsbury, by some distance the busiest station in the county, was due to handle 933 trains over the period, but only 57 per cent of them arrived on time.
Craven Arms fared even worse, with nearly 57 per cent of its 297 trains being either cancelled or delayed.
More than half of the 5,205 trains due at Birmingham New Street were also late, although the stations in the urban West Midlands generally fared better. Wolverhampton, Stafford, and Sandwell & Dudley all saw around two-thirds of their trains arrive on time.
Nationally, 51.4 per cent of services operated by Virgin Trains on the West Coast main line were late or cancelled, with 4.5 per cent of these not arriving within the hour.
Arriva Trains Wales had 38.5 per cent of its trains delayed or cancelled, with 1.5 per cent of these not arriving within the hour.
Damien Henderson of Virgin Trains said: “Virgin Trains was the first train operator to publish detailed punctuality statistics over a year ago. Clearly, it is harder to run trains to within a few seconds of the timetable over a 400-mile route, and around 80 per cent of delays are outside of our control, but we always want to do the best for our passengers which is why we make claiming for delays as easy as possible and introduced industry-leading automatic compensation on our West Coast route.”
Arriva Trains Wales said the figures related to a single week which followed a major incident where a church had collapsed, causing major disruption
Lynne Milligan, customer services director for the company said: "As an operator we have been proud to have been in the top two performing train companies in the UK for Right Time Performance for much of 2017, including the most recent recording period, which is thanks to the hard work of our staff and strong partnership working with our Network Rail partners.
“Setting strong right time targets is something we have always aspired to and which will continue to inspire us to give the best possible service for our customers.”
