THE notoriously unreliable early-morning train from Paddington to Worcester appears to be back on track since it was rescheduled to run 11 minutes earlier.

After a poor start, the 5.52am from Paddington has been providing a reliable and punctual service to travellers heading to Worcestershire from the capital along the Cotswold Line for the past month.

The 6.03am services was rescheduled to run 11 minutes early a month ago after a lamentable record of failure when the train regularly ran late and even failed to reach its destination of Worcester's Foregate Street Station. It was often cancelled at Oxford, Moreton-in-Marsh, Evesham or Worcester Shrub Hill, leaving passengers stranded.

The earlier start aimed to remove any chance that the train would conflict with other services travelling towards London on the single track sections of the line.

The newly scheduled service got off to a bad start in its first week when it arrived 15 minutes late on the first day and failed to reach its destination at all on the second day - it was cancelled at Moreton-in-Marsh due to dense fog.

But, according to the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, the services has settled down since then and they have received no complaints about reliability or punctuality.

Chairman of the group Derek Potter said: "From my point of view, moving the service forward has been a success. It looks like a sensible move to get it out of London earlier. They are learning the lesson, but they are taking a long time.

"The poor performance of First Great Western was standing out and they knew they had to do something about it."

First Great Western's managing director Alison Forster admitted that the recent monthly performance figures showed most of the delays on the Cotswold Line to Worcester were due to infrastructure problems, although 28 per cent of them were down to First Great Western.

The rescheduling of the 6.03am from Paddington was one measure to help solve the problems.