Britain’s worst railway station for train cancellations revealed

Travelling by rail is often a quick and easy way to get around the country, until the train is cancelled.

New data has revealed the worst of the 100 busiest train stations in Britain for cancellations. 

City Thameslink, located in London, has been named the worst in the country for calling off rail journeys, according to Office of rail and Road (ORR) numbers analysed by the BBC. 

Between August 2024 and August 2025, around one in 13 of 150,000 stops were cancelled.

Meanwhile, across the country, there were 89 million scheduled train stops in the same time, and three million of those were called off. 

Last year, the cancellation rate in Britain was 3.2 per cent, and this has now slightly increased to 3.3 per cent.

Elsewhere, the North East of England faced the worst number of cancellations, with 4.5 per cent of stops called off between August 2024 and 2025.

The South West followed with 4.2 per cent, while the North West saw 4 per cent. 

Some passengers have recalled nightmare journeys, including Cat Egde, 23, who told the BBC how stops to her local station, Earlswood, were often cancelled, meaning she was late for university.

Earlswood ranked the sixth worst for cancellations across the country.

According to the broadcaster, one in ten stops were called off for Cat’s station in the past year.

The cancellations impacted Cat’s studies and she said: ‘It does feel like I miss out and come across poorly.

‘It’s difficult with professors who themselves have busy schedules, trying to say, ‘oh, can I have a 20-minute lenience window?’ It’s quite embarrassing.’

Cat explained how the train being so unreliable made her concerned about getting home in the evening.

She added: ‘It’s so stressful, especially if when you get on a train, it’s dark and you don’t know whether it’s actually going to stop at your station. It’s scary.’

The station is managed by Thameslink, as is City Thameslink. 

Emma Pickard, who works for Thameslink and Network Rail, apologised for the issues. 

The network operations and performance director insisted the companies were working towards improving the situation.

She said: ‘We understand our service hasn’t always been good enough, and we’re deeply sorry for the disruption this has caused to passengers. 

‘People rightly expect trains to run reliably and we understand how frustrating it is when trains are cancelled. We take full responsibility for the impact this has on our passengers. 

‘Problems such as staffing levels, power supply issues and weather precautions were being looked into.’

Emma added: ‘Across the industry we are working hard to do everything we can to prevent cancellations and make services more reliable. 

‘This includes tackling issues such as signalling and power supply faults, improving traincrew availability, and investing to make the network more resilient to severe weather and other unexpected events.

‘When incidents outside our control do occur, such as poor weather or trespass we aim to restore the service as quickly as possible, however on a network as busy and complex as Thameslink’s the disruption can be felt widely.’

She explained: ‘At times we have to make the very difficult decision to cancel some trains to get the timetable back on track, and prevent further disruption spreading across the network.’

Thameslink pointed out that trains arrive at City Thameslink every 3.5 minutes.

However, back in February, flooding shut the station for two days and caused significant disruption.