Tameside & High Peak railway stations among the UK's worst performing

A Tameside railway station is among the bottom 7% of performers in the country with fewer than one-in-three trains running on time.

Mossley, on the Manchester to Huddersfield line, ranks 2,472 out of 2,637 stations for punctuality after just 29% of services arrived as scheduled over the past 12 weeks. 

A further 42% of trains arrived between one and four minutes late, while 27% departed the station five or more minutes later than timetabled. 

The preceding station, Stalybridge, fared somewhat better with 18% of services being five or more minutes later, although it suffered from having 8% of trains being cancelled – mostly due to weekend disruption on Northern train because of their ongoing staffing issues. 

The only Tameside railway station not in the bottom third in the country is Fairfield with just 1% of services running more than ten minutes late. This includes all the stops on the Manchester Piccadilly to Hadfield branch line.  

Chinley is by far the worst performing station in High Peak, with 73% of trains departing on time or less than five minutes late.  

Despite the Manchester Piccadilly to Buxton line also struggling with Northern’s weekend staffing struggles – 8% of trains were cancelled in total - its High Peak stations are all in the Top 40% of the UK. 

Buxton had 82% of services leaving on schedule over the past three months, with just 4% leaving the terminus five or more minutes late. 

A spokesperson for Northern, said: “We are sorry for our recent performance, accept it has not been good enough and understand the impact this has on our customers.  

“We are working hard to address issues with traincrew availability so we can improve reliability for our customers.  

“We recently secured a new rest-day working agreement for our train drivers, however an offer that was put to our conductors in the North West to secure a commitment to work on Sundays was rejected by their members in a referendum vote.  

“If it had been accepted, we believe that deal would have improved reliability in the short-term while we worked with the RMT to secure a longer-term agreement.  

“Despite this setback, we will continue to work with colleagues and the RMT union to find a new way forward. We realise there is more to be done to address issues with performance and are now focused on delivering our improvement plan.” 

Mossley, however, isn’t the worst performing station in Greater Manchester.  

Eccles is the current 10th worst for punctuality in the UK, with just 15% of trains leaving on the button, and 41% either more than five minutes late or cancelled altogether. 

Kearsley, in Bolton, is fractionally worse. 14% of services are on time, making it the 8th worse station.  

Also in Bolton, Blackrod is the 6th worst-performing stop in the UK and 3rd worst in England after Oxenholme Lake District (4th) and Penrith (2nd). Ynyswen, a station in the Welsh valleys, holds the current top spot, although it has only seen one train over the past 12 weeks.