Train operator Northern has axed 165 daily services until the end of July to improve reliability amid major disruption.

Passengers have been hit with hundreds of delays and cancellations since new timetables were introduced on 20 May.

An “interim timetable” will be introduced on Monday with 165 trains removed – 6% of Northern’s total services. Areas affected include Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool and the Lakes Line between Oxenholme and Windermere.

Northern said it would still run more trains than it did before last month’s timetable change and it expected to “get back to a full timetable service by the end of July”.

Northern’s managing director, David Brown, said: “We have been experiencing some significant disruption to train services, especially around north Manchester, Bolton, Liverpool, Blackpool and up to the Lake District. I’d like to apologise for this unacceptable situation and for the disruption and inconvenience many passengers have faced. We’re truly sorry for this and are working hard to fix this.”

The announcement by Northern came as the head of the RMT union called on the transport secretary to resign after the chaos. Govia Thameslink (GTR) and Northern have cancelled or delayed thousands of services.

“[Chris] Grayling should get out, the private companies he is propping up should be sacked and the vital rail services the nation depends on should be returned to public ownership.,” the RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, said.

By 2pm on Friday, 9% of GTR trains were either cancelled or more than 30 minutes late. The company runs services in the south-east. Northern’s punctuality was even worse: 17% of trains were cancelled or more than 30 minutes late.

In a joint statement on Thursday, Network Rail, GTR and Northern said the disruption was due to the biggest modernisation of the railways since the Victorian era. They apologised for the chaos, blaming delayed engineering works and a shortage of trained drivers.

Cash described it as disgusting that Grayling and “his private train company bosses” had “dived for cover rather than face the passengers they have hung out to dry”.



“Meanwhile my members, working at the sharp end of the cancelled and delayed services, are bearing the brunt of the public anger without a shred of support from Govia, Arriva or the Department for Transport,” he said.

“Not only is Chris Grayling incompetent and not fit to run a railway but he is a coward as well, leaving RMT members to take the flack for failed policies that are his responsibility.”

Grayling provoked anger on Thursday by seeking to place all the blame for the timetable troubles on Network Rail, saying the rail industry had “failed the passengers it serves”.

Mark Carne, Network Rail’s chief executive, said there was no doubt the May timetable was finalised “significantly later than normal for reasons that were both within and without our control”.

On Friday, Grayling again said that the disruption experienced by passengers was “wholly unacceptable”.

“While this is currently a huge inconvenience to passengers as the changes bed in, we are investing in the biggest modernisation of the railway since Victorian times, and this new timetable will deliver hundreds more services up and down the country,” he said.

Manfred Rudhart, the chief executive of Arriva, the parent company of Northern, told the Times the disruption could continue for another two months.

“This is a bit like open heart surgery on the railway,” he said. “We have to maintain the service as good as we can on a day-to-day basis while taking drivers off routes to train them.”

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, described the performance of GTR as “wholly unsatisfactory”.

Writing to the transport secretary on Friday, he said he would be “totally supportive” of a decision to strip GTR of its franchise immediately.

Even before the introduction of the new timetable, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, had demanded an inquiry into Northern’s “unacceptably poor” services.

Last week, he was joined by Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool city region, in calling for Northern to be stripped of its franchise if it failed to improve.

The MP Lilian Greenwood said she would ask the Commons transport select committee which she chairs to review the situation on both networks on Monday, which could lead to a full parliamentary inquiry.

