Media centre

Notes to editors

• The performance of Virgin Trains on the West Coast mainl was affected by six days when PPM was lower than 80%. The worst of these was 27 May (daily PPM 63.2%), due to a signal failure at Kenton, some tape on the overhead lines at Watford and a points failure at Norton Bridge. Other incidents affecting the period were flooding near Carlisle on 23 June (daily PPM 70.8%), and overhead line problems south of Bourne End on 14 June (73.1%)

• Network Rail recently announced the secondment of the chief operating officer of Virgin Trains, Chris Gibb, to the company. Working collaboratively with Network Rail, Virgin Trains has agreed to this secondment for the remainder of this year to work with the Network Rail team on improving the performance of the infrastructure on the southern part of the West Coast main line

• 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. Heathrow Express, Grand Central, Hull Trains and Eurostar are not included in the national PPM

• 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 it, 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