RAIL services were disrupted again yesterday for commuters even as ScotRail unveiled a plan to improve national services.

A train broke down at Blairhill on Tuesday morning, disrupting services from 6.30am to 10am through Clydebank and Dalmuir into Dumbarton and Helensburgh.

The cancelled and delayed trains came just days after ScotRail Alliance published an improvement plan, faced with a petition demanding Abellio lose its contract.

ScotRail said they would review timetable performance on routes including the North Clyde lines and identify “golden trains”, those which, if delayed, have the biggest impact on the network. It aims to monitor and protect those services.

Rail bosses continue to blame their performance numbers on industrial action and the upgrades at Glasgow Queen Street. But, as The Post revealed last week, statistics for Dalmuir have continued to fall even after the station’s services resumed. Only 29 per cent of trains now end their journeys on time in Dalmuir.

Jackie Baillie MSP said: “The SNP government sat on Abellio ScotRail’s improvement plan for almost a month, so I welcome the fact it has finally been published, even if only partially.

“However, this summary plan fails to provide any guarantee to passengers about when exactly they will see improvements to the punctuality and reliability of services.”

David Dickson, infrastructure director of the ScotRail Alliance, said: “Our railway is undergoing the biggest period of change and modernisation since the Victorian era. Over the course of the next year or so we will be completing huge projects to upgrade our infrastructure, electrifying large parts of the network and introducing new fleets of faster, longer and greener inter-city trains.

“With this amount of change, there is inevitably disruption. We are doing everything we can to minimise this. However, there is no doubt our performance in recent months, as a result of this work, dipped slightly.”