Southern Rail, operator of Britain’s least-punctual train route, has come up with an ingenious way of improving the service – by altering the timetable.

Statistics have shown that Southern’s 7.29am from Brighton never reached London Victoria on time at 8.35am throughout 2014.

Now Southern bosses have said that from Sunday, the 7.29am will be scheduled to arrive at Victoria three minutes later and will no longer stop at Wivelsfield, West Sussex.

The 6.56am service to Victoria will start at Gatwick Airport rather than Brighton and the 6.23pm from Victoria to Brighton will instead terminate at Gatwick.

MORE TOP STORIES:

Southern will introduce the changes on Sunday as part of its new summer timetable and passengers are advised to visit the National Rail website to check their journey before travelling.

The rail company offers services in the Bromley and Lewisham boroughs including trains to and from Beckenham Junction, Crystal Palace, New Cross, Brockley, Sydenham, Penge West and Anerley.

Commuters were stuck on a 6.56am train from Brighton for hours last month following a major power failure near Clapham Junction.

The passengers, who were due to arrive at Victoria at around 8.15am, were eventually rescued after their train was towed to Streatham station shortly before 1pm.

Many passengers seem unimpressed with the timetable changes.

One Twitter user, Lex, posted: “Don’t know why Southern Rail even bothers with a timetable. Not like they’re going to stick to any of it.”

Matthew Hankins tweeted: “Southern Rail – where the timetable is just an aspiration.”

Another, called Simon, said: “Just been handed a Southern Rail timetable. Should I file it under comedy or fiction? #traintweets.”

Southern said: "By creating extra time in the schedule, the late running of one service is less likely to have a knock-on effect on the following ones, improving our overall punctuality."

The rail company said it had withdrawn the two Brighton services to improve the punctuality of other services on the line and several alternatives were available.

A Southern spokesman said: "This is not about one train.

"The new timetable includes hundreds of changes, all designed to improve performance across the whole of the Southern network.

"These changes will free up space to allow a more even spread of trains and make the timetable more resilient."