WEYMOUTH railway station has the worst delays in the country, it has been found.

Data from Network Rail has revealed that Weymouth railway station has the highest percentage of delays and cancellations.

The data showed that 22.5 per cent of trains were delayed by at least 10 minutes or cancelled, which is a higher percentage than stations in London.

Dorchester West and Upwey railway stations also faced a high percentage of delays with 17.7 per cent and 16.3 per cent of trains delayed by at least 10 minutes or cancelled respectively.

The data also revealed the worst days to travel by train nationwide. Almost 50 per cent of evening trains on Tuesdays were late by at least one minute and 15.2 per cent were five minutes late or cancelled.

The railway stations with the highest percentage of delays were Weymouth, Westerfield, Georgemas Junction, Bruton and Dorchester West.

The stations with the least amount of delays were Paisley Canal, Carnoustie, Duffield, Turkey Street, Wemyss Bay, Belper, Theobalds Grove, Poppleton, Sheringham, Saltburn, Cardiff Bay and Stourbridge Town.

The figures come after severe disruption to the service between Weymouth and Wool and also on the Bristol line on Sunday because of overrunning engineering works in the Dorchester area.

Weymouth-Waterloo passengers are also facing disruption this month due to major works at the London terminus.

Bob Driscoll of West Dorset Western Area Transport Action Group (WATAG), said the signalling problems are becoming more common.

He said: “In the last two years there seems to have been a definite increase in the number of occasions were the infrastructure has appeared to become more frail or fragile and the incidents of signalling failures have become apparent. When signalling fails that means the trains can’t run and that will obviously have a big impact on time keeping and trains being cancelled or delayed.”

South Dorset MP Richard Drax has been campaigning to improve the rail services in the area and is aware of the delays to the Weymouth service.

Mr Drax wants to see journey times reduced from Weymouth to London and has met with the new franchise owners First MTR South Western Trains Limited, which will take over operation of the Weymouth-Waterloo rail service from South West Trains on August 20.

FirstGroup Chief Executive, Tim O’Toole, said passengers can expect ‘quicker’ journey times from the new operators.

He said: “We are delighted that our partnership with MTR has been selected by the Department for Transport to run the South Western rail franchise, a key part of the country’s railway network which millions of people rely on every day.

“Passengers can look forward to new and better trains, more seats and services, quicker journey times, improved stations and more flexible fare options.”

A spokesman for South West Trains said the delays were out of their control.

He said: "We operate one of the busiest railways in Europe with nearly 1,700 services and half a million passenger journeys per day. National industry figures show South West Trains performance is in line with the national average and over 87 per cent of services arrive within five minutes of their scheduled time.

"Punctuality figures will always represent the combined performance of train operators and Network Rail and many of the causes of delays to this service are outside of the control of South West Trains."

Weymouth-Bristol operator Great Western Railway has been contacted for comment.