Bad weather hits one in three east coast trains

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

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

In the most recent four-week period, the best-performing train company was Arriva Trains Wales, which ran 90.4% 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%.

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

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

Network Rail'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."

A spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said: "In what was the worst snow Britain has experienced in almost 30 years, today's figures show that train companies continued to keep services running in extremely testing circumstances.

"At a time when temperatures fell significantly below zero, train companies worked around the clock to keep services running during the snow and the ice to ensure disruption remained at a minimum and passengers were well-informed.

"It is testament to the hard work of staff that four out of five trains arrived on time over the course of the last month.

"In the five days during the height of the poor weather at the beginning of January, train companies ran 90,000 of the 104,000 trains that they would normally have operated.

"Performance over the last 12 months remains at historically high levels, with more than nine out of 10 trains arriving on time."