Despite a massive £9 billion upgrade to the busy West Coast Main Line, operated by Virgin Trains, the London to Scotland route was still way behind the average of the rest of the UK in their punctuality stakes.

Network Rail (NR) said that from 28th June until the 25th July they found that only 86.4 per cent of the services run on time. The national average was 92.4 per cent for July and was a UK record for time keeping. Also for the 12 months leading up to 25th July they were running much less on just over 80 per cent compared to the national average of 90.9 per cent. Virgin did however improve year on year when July 2008 saw record figures of just 77.3 per cent of trains running on time.

Despite the upgrade Virgin are still having problems with track and signals, NR said they were working hard to sort out the teething issues after they were warned about the poor performance of the West Coast Main Line.

“Most people would have thought that we would be able to run a really good service after a £9 billion upgrade but we are still having problems with track and signalling and overhead lines. NR has put in a series of actions supposed to dramatically improve things and we are co-operating fully with them. But the improvements have not happened yet,” said a spokesperson on behalf of Virgin Trains.

Thanks to www.independent.co.uk for the above quote, for more information on this article please visit their website.