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Notes to editors

1. Performance on the West Coast Main Line (WCML), particularly impacting upon Virgin’s services, dipped during period 8 with external factors and infrastructure problems being the main causes. The top five incidents during the month that had a substantial effect on Virgin’s PPM figures were the dewirement of overhead power-lines at North Wembley on 5^th November; three major cable thefts at Winsford (near Crewe) on 20^th and 21^st October and at Nuneaton on 27^th October; and a signalling problem at Wolverhampton on 11^th November

2. Around £20m of extra funding is being injected into a number of initiatives to improve the underlying performance of the infrastructure on the WCML, particularly targeting small track renewals to remove speed restrictions

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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