A RAILWAY champion says South Cumbria's train services have improved their reliability as figures reveal Barrow station ranks highly for punctuality.

Barrow rates 1,741st worst out of 2,566 UK stations with only a 29.9 per cent chance of your train being late.

Elsewhere on the Furness Line, Ulverston passengers face a 60 per cent chance of their train being delayed.

At Dalton’s railway station, passengers face late trains 47 per cent of the time, at Grange there is a 64.2 per cent chance of trains being late and Millom passengers see trains late 41 per cent of the time.

Oxenholme on the West Coast Mainline had a 67.6 per cent lateness rating and was rated the 207th least punctual station.

Lancaster's rating was 63.5 per cent and the city came 253rd on the list.

The figures came from stats app Rotacloud's online 'train lateness tool' gathered from punctuality data between January 2019 and January 2020.

Robert Parker, of the Furness Line Action Group, said many rail services had since improved and any low results were distorted by the summer of disruption last year.

“We have had a bit of trouble early on the year but we have moved on from the trouble of last year," said Mr Parker.

“This year things have improved dramatically. Last week every train apart from one arrived within five minutes on the Furness Line. The figures don’t look good but usually train companies use that amount of time to class a train as late.”

Rail services on the Northern rail network, which includes the Furness Line, have been taken under public control following years of poor performance. The Government’s Operator of Last Resort (OLR) has taken over from the Arriva-owned Northern.

Northern received the lowest overall score of all train companies in the latest major survey by watchdog Transport Focus.

Announcing the change, transport secretary Grant Shapps said: “This marks the beginning of rebuilding of trust in these services, and voices from the region will be essential as we work together to understand and deliver the improvements passengers need.

"Our aim is to give the North of England more powers over their railways, restoring the confidence of passengers and delivering a network they can truly rely on.”