Train reliability across Britain reached the worst level on record in recent weeks, with Avanti West Coast cancelling the equivalent of about one in five services.
Train operators have been ordered by a regulator to stop misusing a process which removes services from schedules without them being classed as cancelled.
Train operating companies have made a “best and final offer” to the biggest rail workers union in a bid to break the deadlocked dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
HS2 minister Huw Merriman hailed the “extraordinary feat of engineering and architecture” as he inspected construction of what will be the UK’s longest railway bridge.
