Birmingham students criticise number of rail cancellations

Recently there was an announcement saying all trains were cancelled, he said.

“I was fully prepared to email my lecturers, saying that unless I spend an extortionate amount of money, I can’t come in,” Mr Patterson added.

He managed to get in OK but it took double the amount of time to get home.

Mr Patterson stated “there has not been one week” when everything ran smoothly.

To plan for rail issues, he said he often gets to university “stupidly early”, arriving an hour and a half before lectures start.

He also misses out on socialising, as he worries about the journey home.

BBC analysis calculated the percentage of scheduled stops with a cancelled arrival and/or departure by using National Rail data collected by On Time Trains (OTT).

Rail Delivery Group, which represents National Rail and train operators, said everyone was working hard to ensure train services were reliable and punctual.

The government said it was committed to delivering the biggest overhaul of the railways in a generation, bringing services back into public ownership to reinvest in them.