Punctuality on the railways reached 88.9% during period 8, according to monthly performance data released today by Network Rail. The data for Britain’s train services covers the period from 14 October 2012 - 10 November 2012. This compares to 89.3% for the same period last year. The moving annual average is now at 91.7%.

A number of factors impacted on the operation of London Midland over this period. These included a major dewirement at Watford Junction, which disrupted services for two days (6 and 7 November), as well as issues with overhead wires at Four Oaks (17 Oct) and Stetchford (19 October) in the West Midlands and Crewe (27 October). A fatality at Apsley and signal cable theft between Wolverhampton and Birmingham also resulted in disruption on the London Midland network. This was compounded by a temporary imbalance between trainee and qualified drivers.

Arrived on time - the measure of train punctuality also known as PPM (public performance measure) means trains arriving at their destinations within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long distance services. This measure of punctuality is commonly used throughout Europe.

National train punctuality is measured for all trains across the whole network, including cancelled services and delays caused by external factors (such as vandalism, extreme weather, suicides etc). Punctuality did not start to be recorded in this vigorous and thorough way until 1997. Before then Railtrack, and BR before, did not measure all services and also excluded external factors and other items from their numbers.

These figures represent provisional data for the period and individual operators’ performance data may vary slightly from the full period performance report that Network Rail publishes on its website every month.

Network Rail and the train operators run more trains across Great Britain than are run in most European countries - almost 20% more than in France and 60% more than in Italy. Great Britain’s 24,000 trains per-day is also more than Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Norway combined.

Right time train performance data (% of trains arriving within 59 seconds of schedule) both for period 7 and for the year to the end of period 7 are also available by using this link http://www.networkrail.co.uk/about/performance/.