Revealed: Britain's most cancelled train services due to flooding
New data has revealed the stations and train operators worst hit by flooding in recent years, bringing travel chaos for thousands of passengers and demonstrating the "disruptive impact" of climate change.
Analysis of the huge stash of data shared exclusively with Sky News shows that in the last ten years:
• Most cancelled route: Travellers to Edinburgh had their trains cancelled more than anyone else - with 1,805 cancellations due to flooding
• Most cancelled network: Scotrail cancelled the highest number of trains, 8,371
• Almost 45,000 trains were cancelled due to flooding from severe weather - an average of 4,500 a year
• Worst years: 2023 the second worst in the last decade for train cancellations, partly due to Storm Babet, following 2020, when Storm Dennis hit
The Network Rail data was released under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws to non-profit Round Our Way, which advocates for people impacted by climate change.
Janet Mumcu lives near Hungerford in Berkshire and takes the train to work at a care home in Newbury.
Twice this year trains have been cancelled because of flooding on the railway.
"I get very frustrated with the trains," she said.
"Because of the job I do, being late for work or not turning up has quite an impact on a lot of people."
In January she was forced to cancel a shift in the care home, and at Easter she again paid for a hotel near her work in case she couldn't get in the next day.
"It's really difficult. It's quite stressful… and it's also costing me money," she said.
Roger Harding, director of Round Our Way, said "all across Britain" people's train journeys have been "disrupted by floods caused by severe weather linked to climate change".
"This impacts people's lives in so many ways - from missing work and hospital appointments, to not being able to see our loved ones."
He called it "vital" that politicians take the impacts of climate change more seriously and stop them from becoming "more frequent and more damaging".
How flooding disrupts the railway
The rain doesn't just flood tracks, forcing trains to run slowly or stop altogether.
It can also trigger landslides, subsidence or power cuts.
Urban developments can make flooding worse because rain that would have soaked into the land now has nowhere to go.
Warmer temperatures are also increasing sea levels, which eat away at coastal train tracks.
The track at Dawlish in South Devon was famously destroyed by storms in 2014, requiring a new £80m sea wall and costing businesses cut off from their customers.
The 'uphill' struggle to keep trains running
But climate change is making it harder to keep Britain's railways on track.
A Network Rail spokesperson told Sky News climate change is "without doubt, the biggest challenge facing the railway".
A recent study found hotter temperatures made the UK's recent wet winter even worse, making the total rainfall 10 times more likely and 20% wetter.
And the many left waiting on soggy Scottish platforms won't be surprised to learn that Scotland has seen the biggest increase in rain, the Met Office has found.
Jim Hall is a commissioner for the government's National Infrastructure Commission and professor of climate and environmental risks at Oxford University
Speaking before the general election had been called, he said Network Rail and train companies are generally "doing their best" to keep the trains running, but it is an "uphill struggle".
Much of the infrastructure, from bridges to embankments, was designed and built 150 years ago.
It simply wasn't designed to cope with the "aggressive weather we're now experiencing", as Network Rail puts it.
Victor Thevenet from pressure group Transport and Environment warned extra delays or cancellations would "inevitably affect the attractiveness of the train", making people switch to "more polluting" cars.
What are the solutions?
A spokesperson for Network Rail said it can "never make [the railway] completely weatherproof", but is making "huge strides to mitigate the worst Mother Nature throws at us to keep passengers and services safe and moving".
It recently doubled its spending on climate resilience to £2.8bn over the next five years.
That cash will pay for things like new CCTV at flooding hotspots and smart sensors that predict landslides - as well as issues caused by heat, such as buckled railways, as seen in the baking summer of 2022.
But funding is "probably going to have to increase even more in the future", warned Prof Hall.
Who would cover the cost is a decision for the future government, which dictates how much train companies can push up ticket prices, and how much taxpayer subsidies they receive.
And not every service can be saved, Network Rail warned, with places like Penzance and Folkestone at risk of sea level rise and storm flooding.
Philip Harrison, rail director at engineering firm Arup, which advises Network Rail, says some parts of the track are stuck in an expensive "cycle of damage and repair".
Industry has been "quite reactive" but now needs to think "more strategically" about how to futureproof infrastructure to avoid huge upfront repair costs - such as the hefty clean-up bill at Dawlish, he said.
Prof Hall said a decision must be made about "how reliable we want the railways to be" versus "how much are we prepared to pay".
In future the government needs to "look much more carefully at how these growing risks from weather-related disruptions are going to have an impact on people... [and] on the economy".
