HUMILIATED Chris Grayling apologised for “all the mistakes” on Southern Rail yesterday but still tried to blame striking train guards.

A National Audit Office report, covered in yesterday’s Morning Star, damned the Transport Secretary for failing to foresee the chaos on Britain’s worst-performing rail franchise.

Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I’m extremely sorry that passengers on Southern have had such a difficult time, but most passengers on that network today will say over the past year things have got much better and so does the NAO.

“That is because we worked very hard to sort out the original problems but also because we’ve overcome most but not all of the industrial problems.”

Mr Grayling was left reeling from the hit just days after the Conservative Party mistakenly announced he was moving jobs.

And thousands of commuters faced more disruption yesterday as guards walked out in four other companies which want to follow Southern in removing safety-critical staff from trains.

Rail union RMT is resisting bosses’ attempts to roll out driver-only trains.

Management insist the practice is copper-bottomed, but unions fear for safety, disabled access and jobs.

Workers on South Western Railway, Merseyrail, Northern and Greater Anglia downed tools yesterday and will do so again tomorrow.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash turned his fire on Mr Grayling, saying the Transport Secretary had made “no response” to the union’s calls for “summit talks” to resolve the disputes.

"Mr Grayling's silence speaks volumes,” he blasted.

“With today's damning NAO report into the Southern Rail fiasco, it is becoming clearer by the minute that all the Tory government is interested in is protecting the fat profits of the greedy private rail companies, regardless of the impact on services and safety.

“The strikes today are about putting public safety before private profit.”

Northern said it would run “more than half” of its normal timetable,with swathes of cancellations before and after the rush hours.

SWR said it would cancel 30 per cent of its trains, while Merseyrail said it would run a “reduced service”.

Greater Anglia claimed it would run a normal service during the strike, but the company altered several services yesterday morning due to a “train fault” and “the passenger communication alarm being pulled earlier.”