SCOTRAIL Alliance chief Alex Hynes has issued an apology for "unacceptable" disruption to services since the weekend caused by overhead line damage, signal failures, electricity failure and a mouse.
Tens of thousands of rail passengers endured travel chaos over the Bank Holiday weekend after an electrical fault caused hundreds of trains to be cancelled or delayed across the west of Scotland.
On Monday there was signal equipment failure near Rutherglen which affected services in and out of Glasgow Central and Glasgow Queen Street.
On Tuesday train passengers in Glasgow faced severe disruption after a signalling fault hit rush hour journeys.
Mr Hynes, head of the partnership between the train operator Abellio ScotRail and Network Rail Scotland, revealed a fault with the power to the signalling system at Yoker that had impacted many routes across the Central Belt was the result of a mouse eating through a cable.
Another delay on Tuesday was caused by cows straying onto the line near Uphall.
Mr Hynes said: "Network Rail Scotland knows this level of disruption is unacceptable and is sorry that train services were affected so badly on Scotland's railway over last weekend this week.
Power line fault brings rail chaos for tens of thousands
"Overhead line damage, failure of the electricity supply and signal failures means our performance has been well below the standard customers deserve and expect.
"We are acutely aware of the frustration and inconvenience felt by customers when things go wrong. We are working constantly to give you a more reliable railway infrastructure and train service, investing billions of pounds to improve services across Scotland.
"We are improving signally, replacing old equipment and bringing in modern technology and new trains to provide a more reliable service to customers."
The disruption came as new figures reveal Scotland’s national rail firm received record fines of nearly £4.6 million in the last financial year for failing to meet required standards.
ScotRail clocked up a record £1.6m in financial penalties over the last three months alone over its failings, nearly £400,000 more than in the previous three months.
The firm, which posted a £3.5m after-tax loss for 2016, failed to reach the required standard in 21 out of 34 areas in the last three months of the financial year.
Although this marks an improvement on 26 failures during the previous quarter, the latest report card shows key targets were not met in areas including litter and contamination, train seats, train racks, refreshments, food, help points, telephones, ticket machines, train and station toilets.
Some of the biggest quarterly dips in performance came in station CCTV and security, which is at the centre of a union dispute, dropping from an average performance of 86.33% to 77.8%.
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