OREANDA-NEWS. A second month of severe storms and the wettest January on record tested the rail industry's resilience during a difficult period 11.

Punctuality on the railways reached 89.0% during Period 11, according to monthly performance data released today by Network Rail. The data for Britain's train services covers the period from 05 January 2014 - 01 February 2014. This compares to 87.3% for the same period last year. The moving annual average is now at 90.2%.

During the last month an already saturated railway has seen further record levels of rainfall and storms bringing strong winds and further substantial damage to the rail network including almost 100 trees brought down and over 140 flooded sites and landslips, some blocking major routes. Thousands of railway staff responded with dedication and professionalism to repair, and continue to repair the damage caused.

Our projection for performance on exiting CP4 has been further eroded as a result of the weather over the last few months and we now predict this to be less than 90.3% rather than 91.4% the ORR forecast in the final determination.

Franchise

Punctuality % Period 11, 2013/14

Punctuality % Period 11, 2012/13

Moving annual average (MAA)

Arriva Trains Wales

92.8

91.5

93.5

c2c Rail

96.2

95.9

96.9

Chiltern

95.2

92.9

95.3

Crosscountry

86.4

81.7

87.7

East Coast

88.1

71.5

83.6

East Midlands Trains

90.4

90.2

91.2

First Capital Connect

82.4

81.0

86.3

First Great Western

88.0

87.9

88.7

First Scotrail

93.3

92.8

91.1

First Transpennine Express

92.8

88.8

90.3

Greater Anglia

91.6

86.3

92.0

London Midland

87.7

79.8

85.9

London Overground

96.7

94.4

96.1

Merseyrail

97.3

95.2

95.8

Northern Rail

93.4

89.2

90.8

Southeastern

86.6

85.5

89.8

Southern

79.2

81.9

86.8

South West Trains

83.0

88.4

90.2

Virgin Trains

89.2

72.0

85.3

Total

89.0

87.3

90.2

Delays attributable to Network Rail (this includes external factors such as fatalities, which made up around 20% of all delays) accounted for 60% of delays nationally during the period

For Southern, the extreme weather had a particularly significant impact with scores of trees blocking routes and a handful of major landslips on the patch

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.