How reliable have trains been recently?

[Nerd3]

Need to book a Trans Pennine Express Newcastle -Manchester at the end of August.
The one I was looking at gives me only about 20 min wiggle room to get to my meeting on time.
The earlier one arrives with 1.5h to spare.
Has anybody been travelling a lot by trains recently and can advise how reliable they have been?

There's reliability stats online but no one can ever guarantee it'll run to time as there will always be unforeseen circumstances such as sheep on the line, weather affecting travel etc that might mean you get there late. If you really have to be at the meeting on time I would get the earlier train.

I use trains loads and they have been getting better recently however I have to say I've never had a good experience with Trans Pennine!! So I'd go for the earlier one

Checked the stats for the TransPennine punctuality and only about 50% arrive on time. Shocking!

Get the earlier one.

We stood at Newcastle for 2 hours only to be told they were turning the trains at York to get them back on time and we should have used another operator to get to York.

How were we supposed to know this? It was just coming up on the board as cancelled.

Also, at least 2 1/2 hours and sometimes 4 hours to travel 150 miles, how on earth is this an express service?

Trans Pennine trundle would be a better name for it.

In the last 2 months I've taken the following journeys

Scotland London - return delayed 6 hours

Scotland London - outbound cancelled had to take a different train

Scotland London - no issues

Scotland York - outbound cancelled had to take a different train, return delayed 90 minutes

Local train - cancelled all after 9pm and had to get a taxi

Get the earlier one. My last journey from Leeds to York had 2 trains cancelled on the trot. No way would I rely on them - I'd give myself plenty of wiggle room.