London Midland is working hard to improve its performance after a number of services were affected by delays or cancellations in the first week of the new timetable.
Steve Banaghan, Managing Director of London Midland, says,
"The introduction of the new timetable for the West Coast route has been a major undertaking for the whole rail industry. London Midland worked in detail with Network Rail and the rail industry to stagger the introduction of the full timetable and as a result, London Midland is currently running fewer services than our published timetable until January.
"Also as part of the changes that came into effect from December 14 with the timetable change, we have introduced the first of a brand new fleet of trains on our longer distance routes and are also running more, longer trains than ever before into London Euston. This, together with some train crew and resourcing issues, as well as infrastructure and train failures, has resulted in poor performance for London Midland services over the last seven days.
"We apologise to our passengers for the inconvenience and impact on their journeys. This has not been the level of service that we should be providing and we are doing all that we can to ensure that passengers see an improvement in our services as quickly as possible."
Mr Banaghan said London Midland had a surplus of train drivers on West Coast routes for the last year in preparation for the extra services from December 14.
"We also continue to recruit and train new members of train crew, both drivers and senior conductors, to ensure that our manpower levels remain at the right level going forward."
On a typical day London Midland operates over 1,300 services and cancellations have decreased since the weekend.
As a result overall performance has increased significantly since the weekend (December 22, 23, 24).
