A dramatic rise in the number of trains using the system has meant that a single incident can have a ripple effect

Delays on railways caused by bad weather, track faults and signal failures have increased by almost 12 per cent in the past year, new data shows.

Figures released by the Office of Rail and Road, the watchdog, showed that delays attributed to Network Rail rose by more than 17,000 hours in 2018-19 compared with a year earlier.

Almost six in every ten delays over the past year were blamed on issues out of train companies’ control.

Network Rail, the state-owned infrastructure operator, insisted that faults with the railway were at record low levels after multibillion-pound investments in recent years. As a proportion of all delays, those blamed on Network Rail were falling.

A dramatic rise in the number of trains using the system, however, meant