Revealed: the 10 worst major UK train stations for cancellations

Trains are great, except when they’re terrible. They get us places quickly, there’s much less faff than you’d get at an airport, and they mean you don’t have to drive, but trains can be unreliable. Sometimes they’re late. Sometimes they’re understaffed and overcrowded. Sometimes they just don’t show up at all.

Sure, we know that certain providers are better than others, but it turns out that it’s the same deal for stations. On Time Trains keeps track (no pun intended) of what’s going on in the world of UK rail travel, and now they’ve revealed what the most unreliable stations in the country were between January and November this year.

According to their findings, the UK station which sees the most cancellations is Manchester Victoria, where 9.5 percent of trains will never make their planned journeys. Compare that to the 3.8 per cent national average, and it isn’t a great look. In fact, three of the five worst in the country were in Manchester, with Oxford Road and Piccadilly in second and fifth places respectively.

Speaking on the poor service in Manchester, transport secretary Heidi Alexander said that she was ‘not happy about the performance of Northern Rail at the moment’, and that part of the issue was an over-reliance on staff working on rest days, an issue which has been causing Great Western Railway similar trouble over the past few weeks.

The other city which suffered most from cancelled services was London, whose stations almost entirely make up the rest of the list. Shepherd’s Bush was in third with a rate of 6.8 per cent, but Dalston Kingsland, Hackney Central, City Thameslink, and Blackfriars also made the cut. You can read about all the London stations in the list here.

Bristol Temple Meads bucked the Manchester-London trend, which probably isn’t something to be proud of. It was ninth, with 6.3 per cent of departures being called off.

Here’s the full list of the country’s least reliable train stations, in order of ‘very worst’ to ‘slightly less worse’, including the percentage of trains cancelled.

The UK’s 10 worst major train stations for cancellations in 2024

1. Manchester Victoria – 9.5 percent
2. Manchester Oxford Road – 8.1 percent
3. Shepherd’s Bush – 6.8 percent
4. St Albans – 6.8 percent
5. Manchester Piccadilly – 6.7 percent
6. Dalston Kingsland – 6.6 percent
7. Hackney Central – 6.5 percent
8. City Thameslink – 6.5 percent
9. Bristol Temple Meads – 6.3 percent
10. London Blackfriars – 6.3 percent

Train travel with Time Out 

Loco for locomotives? In other recent news from our railways, the UK’s first community-owned railway service will open in 2025, these three northern English cities will soon be linked by more frequent train services, UK rail fares are now officially the most expensive in all of Europe, and you can have a first look inside the brand-new luxury Belmond sleeper train which will link up London, Cornwall, Wales and the Lake District in 2025.

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Plus: A new national park could be coming to north Wales.

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